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Netanyahu: ‘Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.’

March 4, 2015

Netanyahu: ‘Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.’ Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 4, 2015

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“America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad,” he said. It was the type of clarity that he had brought to the difficult questions of life as a teenager. It is a clarity that still evades Obama today.

A measure of how thoroughly Netanyahu exposed Obama’s unseriousness can be found in Obama’s reply that before taking a position on a nuclear deal “it is very important not to be distracted by the nature of the Iranian regimes’ ambitions when it comes to territory or terrorism.”

For Netanyahu and for many in Congress, Iran’s terrorism is not a distraction; it is the main issue.

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In 1967, Benjamin Netanyahu skipped his high school graduation in Pennsylvania to head off to Israel to help in the Six Day War. That same year Obama moved with his mother to Indonesia.

When Obama suggested that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, described by Ambassador Eban, no right-winger, as “Auschwitz borders,” it was personal for Netanyahu. Like many Israeli teens, he had put his life on hold and risked it protecting those borders.

In the seventies, Obama was part of the Choom Gang and Netanyahu was sneaking up on Sabena Flight 571 dressed as an airline technician. Inside were four terrorists who had already separated Jewish passengers and taken them hostage. Two hijackers were killed. Netanyahu took a bullet in the arm.

The Prime Minister of Israel defended the operation in plain language. “When blackmail like this succeeds, it only leads to more blackmail,” she said.

Netanyahu’s speech in Congress was part of that same clash of worldviews. His high school teacher remembered him saying that his fellow students were living superficially and that there was “more to life than adolescent issues.” He came to Congress to cut through the issues of an administration that has never learned to get beyond its adolescence.

Obama’s people had taunted him with by calling him “chickens__t.” They had encouraged a boycott of his speech and accused him of insulting Obama. They had thrown out every possible distraction to the argument he came to make. Unable to argue with his facts, they played Mean Girls politics instead.

Benjamin Netanyahu had left high school behind to go to war. Now he was up against overgrown boys and girls who had never grown beyond high school. But even back then he had been, as a fellow student had described him, “The lone voice in the wilderness in support of the conservative line.”

“We were all against the war in Vietnam because we were kids,” she said. The kids are still against the war. Against all the wars; unless it’s their own wars. Netanyahu grew up fast. They never did.

Netanyahu could have played their game, but instead he began by thanking Obama. His message was not about personal attacks, but about the real threat that Iran poses to his country, to the region and to the world. He made that case decisively and effectively as few other leaders could.

He did it using plain language and obvious facts.

Netanyahu reminded Congress that the attempt to stop North Korea from going nuclear using inspectors failed. The deal would not mean a denuclearized Iran. “Not a single nuclear facility would be demolished,” he warned. And secret facilities would continue working outside the inspections regime.

He quoted the former head of IAEA’s inspections as saying, “If there’s no undeclared installation today in Iran, it will be the first time in 20 years that it doesn’t have one.”

And Netanyahu reminded everyone that Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program would be backed by ongoing development of its intercontinental ballistic missile program that would not be touched under the deal.

He warned that the deal would leave Iran with a clear path to a nuclear endgame that would allow it to “make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal” in “a matter of weeks”.

Iran’s mission is to export Jihad around the world, he cautioned. It’s a terrorist state that has murdered Americans. While Obama claims to have Iran under control, it has seized control of an American ally in Yemen and is expanding its influence from Iraq to Syria.

Its newly moderate government “hangs gays, persecutes Christians, jails journalists.” It’s just as bad as ISIS, except that ISIS isn’t close to getting a nuclear bomb.

“America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad,” he said. It was the type of clarity that he had brought to the difficult questions of life as a teenager. It is a clarity that still evades Obama today.

A measure of how thoroughly Netanyahu exposed Obama’s unseriousness can be found in Obama’s reply that before taking a position on a nuclear deal “it is very important not to be distracted by the nature of the Iranian regimes’ ambitions when it comes to territory or terrorism.”

For Netanyahu and for many in Congress, Iran’s terrorism is not a distraction; it is the main issue.

Obama insists in that same interview that “sanctions are not sufficient to prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions.” And yet the entire premise of the deal he’s pushing is that the sanctions forced Iran to come to the negotiating table and agree to give up its race for the bomb. Sanctions can’t stop Iran from going nuclear, but negotiations using the sanctions as leverage can.

And to believe all this, we have to avoid being distracted by Iran’s invasions of other countries and support for terrorists.

It’s self-contradictory nonsense that wouldn’t pass muster in a high school paper in 1967. And yet it’s the unchallenged argument dominating the political class, foreign policy experts and the media today.

Netanyahu came to challenge the argument that Iran could be appeased out of getting the bomb. He had to do it because Obama and his media allies had ignored or shut up everyone who had made it before him. By making Netanyahu’s very appearance into the issue, they hoped to shut him down the way they had senators from their own party. They succeeded in making his appearance controversial, but that just meant that more people were listening when he finally broke through and spoke.

“Would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger? If Iran is gobbling up four countries right now while it’s under sanctions, how many more countries will Iran devour when sanctions are lifted? Would Iran fund less terrorism when it has mountains of cash with which to fund more terrorism?” he asked.

It’s a question that the administration and its defenders do not want to answer because it strikes at the heart of their logic of appeasement.

The appeasers claim that the negotiations will stabilize the region. Instead Netanyahu demonstrated that they will lead to a region in which every major Muslim country has nukes and is ready to use them.

The appeasers insist that we need to ally with Iran to stop ISIS. Netanyahu brought clarity to that as well.

“Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world,” he warned. “They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire,”

Netanyahu offered an alternative to another worthless nuclear agreement by focusing not only on Iran’s nuclear capability, but on its intentions. He asked the world to turn its attention to stopping Iran from attacking its neighbors and engaging in terrorism.

The things that Obama calls a distraction are for Benjamin Netanyahu the main point.

The former high school student who had been described as a “lone voice in the wilderness” closed his speech by saying, “Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.”

Netanyahu knows something about standing alone. No Israeli politician has faced the continuing level of hate by the left that he has. The mockery and sneers directed at him by Obama’s media allies in these past weeks have been nothing. The teenager who had learned to stand by his values in a high school in the sixties and as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in the eighties has let it all roll off him.

In war, Netanyahu had nearly drowned in the Suez Canal. In politics, he has kept his head above water. In Congress, he concluded by quoting Moses. “Be strong and resolute, neither fear nor dread them.”

It can refer to Iran or to the political mobs of the left who thought that smearing him would silence him.

Netanyahu understood what was at stake when Israel was fighting for its life in 1967. He did not let the comforts of suburbia blind him to the personal sacrifices that he had to make by going to Israel.

That is why he came to America now.

Categories: Appeasement, Caliphate, Choom gang, Foreign policy, Free world, IAEA, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Terrorism, U.S. Congress
Tags: Appeasement, Caliphate, Choom gang, Foreign Policy, Free world, IAEA, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Netanyahu, Terrorism, U.S. Congress

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Netanyahu, Churchill and Congress

March 2, 2015

Netanyahu, Churchill and Congress, The Gatestone Institute, Richard Kemp, March 1, 2015

There are striking similarities between the objectives of Churchill’s speech nearly 75 years ago and Netanyahu’s today; both with no less purpose than to avert global conflagration. And, like Churchill’s in the 1930s, Netanyahu’s is the lone voice among world leaders today.

There is no doubt abut Iran’s intent. It has been described as a nuclear Auschwitz. Israel is not the only target of Iranian violence. Iran has long been making good on its promises to mobilize Islamic forces against the US, as well as the UK and other American allies. Attacks directed and supported by Iran have killed an estimated 1,100 American troops in Iraq in recent years. Iran provided direct support to Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.

Between 2010 and 2013, Iran either ordered or allowed at least three major terrorist plots against the US and Europe to be planned from its soil. Fortunately, all were foiled.

Iran’s ballistic missile program, inexplicably outside the scope of current P5+1 negotiations, brings Europe into Iran’s range, and future development will extend Tehran’s reach to the US.

It is not yet too late to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. In his 1941 speech to Congress, Churchill reminded the American people that five or six years previously it would have been easy to prevent Germany from rearming without bloodshed. But by then it was too late.

This vengeful and volatile regime must not in any circumstances be allowed to gain a nuclear weapons capability, whatever the P5+1 states might consider the short-term economic, political or strategic benefits to themselves of a deal with Tehran.

In a few days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the US Congress for the third time. The only other foreign leader to have had that privilege was Winston Churchill. Like Churchill when he first spoke to Congress in December 1941, Netanyahu is taking a risk.

For Churchill the risk was to his life — he had to make a hazardous transatlantic voyage aboard the battleship HMS Duke of York through stormy, U-boat infested waters. For Netanyahu the risk is to his own political life and to his country’s relationship with the United States, given the intense presidential opposition to his speech.

But like Churchill was, Netanyahu is a fighting soldier and, like Churchill, a tough political leader, unafraid to shoulder such risks when so much is at stake. And in both cases, the stakes could not be higher, greater than their own lives, political fortunes or rivalries and affecting not just their own countries and the United States, but the whole of the world.

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of U.S. Congress on May 24, 2011. (Image source: PBS video screenshot)

There are striking similarities between the objectives of Churchill’s speech nearly 75 years ago and Netanyahu’s today: both with no less a purpose than to avert global conflagration.

Speaking days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill summarized the course of the war thus far but then concluded with a dramatic appeal to the American people for Anglo-American unity to prevent conflict in the future, reminding them that “twice in a single generation, the catastrophe of world war has fallen upon us.”

“Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, and to mankind,” he asked, “to make sure that these catastrophes do not engulf us for the third time?”

No less profound, and no less far-reaching, will be Netanyahu’s appeal for American-Israeli unity in the face of a new danger. A danger perhaps even greater than Churchill was able to comprehend in pre-nuclear 1941. Whereas Churchill spoke of a future, as yet unknown peril, Netanyahu will focus on the clear and present threat to world peace if Iran is allowed to produce nuclear weapons.

And like Churchill in the 1930s, Netanyahu’s is a lone voice among world leaders today.

In pursuit of both uranium and plutonium tracks to a bomb, as well as the development of long-range ballistic missiles, there is no doubt about Iran’s intent. It has been described as a nuclear Auschwitz.

It is Netanyahu’s duty to sound the alarm against such a prospect. It is Israel’s survival that is at stake. It is Israel that will have to conduct military intervention if the US will not. And it is Israelis who will die in any subsequent regional conflagration.

But this is not only an existential threat to Israel — it is a danger to other states in the Middle East and to us all. Doubtful of Western resolve, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey are already investigating the development of their own nuclear capabilities.

An agreement that leaves Iran with the potential to achieve nuclear breakout will trigger a Middle East arms race that will exponentially increase the risks of global nuclear war, a risk multiplied by the vulnerability of regional governments to overthrow by extremists.

Iran’s ballistic missile program, inexplicably outside the scope of current P5+1 negotiations, brings Europe into Iran’s range, and future development will extend Tehran’s nuclear reach to the US. The world’s number one sponsor of terrorism, the regime of the ayatollahs would have no qualms about supplying their terrorist proxies with nuclear weapons.

This is the greatest threat the world faces today. Yet all the signals suggest that the P5+1, driven by President Obama’s apparent desperation for détente with Tehran, is already set on a path towards 1930s-style appeasement that will end with Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The view that Cold War style containment and mutual deterrence could prevent this apocalyptic, fanatical regime from using its nuclear weapons is dangerously naïve. Yet the Western leaders who seem to be on the verge of reaching an agreement are not naïve. Lacking the moral strength to face down Iran, they see deception and appeasement as the only way out of their dilemma.

To gauge their intentions, we do not need to rely just on frequent Iranian threats, such as those of General Hossein Salami, who said recently, with negotiations still under way: “As long as the US continue to use the Islamic world as the scene for their regional policies, all the forces of the Islamic world will undoubtedly be mobilized against them.” In the same interview, he threatened Israel too: “The very existence of the Zionist entity and its collapse are of crucial importance.”

Iran’s determination to bring about the violent collapse of the “Zionist entity” is continuously manifested in its directing and funding of armed attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians at home and overseas, by proxies including Hizballah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Gaza conflict last summer, for example, owed much to Iranian funding and weaponry.

Just a few weeks ago, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Mohammad Allahadi was operating with senior Hizballah commanders to set up a new front on Syrian territory in the Golan, from which to launch attacks against Israel. He was killed by an Israeli air strike while visiting his planned area of operations.

Israel is not the only target of Iranian violence. Iran has long been making good on its promises to mobilize Islamic forces against the US, as well as the UK and other American allies. Attacks directed and supplied from Tehran killed an estimated 1,100 American troops in Iraq in recent years. Strikes have been facilitated in Afghanistan, killing US, British and other Coalition soldiers.

Iran provided direct support to Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks and continues to harbor Al Qaeda terrorists. Between 2010 and 2013, Tehran either ordered or allowed at least three major terrorist plots against the US and Europe to be planned from its soil. Fortunately, all were foiled. Direction, support and facilitation to both Sunni and Shia terrorist groups in planning attacks against the US and its allies continues today.

This vengeful and volatile regime must not in any circumstances be allowed to gain a nuclear weapons capability, whatever the P5+1 states might consider the short-term economic, political or strategic benefits to themselves of a deal with Tehran.

Even before the world’s first experience of nuclear bombing in August 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt both understood the dangers of allowing their enemies and potential enemies to acquire such capability. When Allied intelligence identified a Nazi uranium production plant in Oranienburg in eastern Germany, 612 bombers destroyed it in a single raid in March 1945 with 1,506 tons of high explosives and 178 tons of incendiary bombs, to prevent it falling into the hands of advancing Russian troops.

Only a strong stand by the West, and rejection of an agreement that allows development of nuclear weapons, will ensure that such action does not in the future become necessary against Iran. In his 1941 speech to Congress, Churchill reminded the American people that five or six years previously it would have been easy to prevent Germany from rearming without bloodshed. But by then it was too late, and the world was engulfed in unprecedented violence.

It is not yet too late to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. The American people, the American government and the West as a whole must heed Netanyahu’s clear warning not to reach a deal that will allow the mendacious and malevolent Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons. Instead, sanctions that stand a chance of compelling Tehran to abandon its world-threatening ambitions must be maintained, and if necessary, increased.

Categories: Caliphate, Churchill, Foreign policy, Free world, International Community, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Leftists, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, U.S. Congress
Tags: Caliphate, Churchill, Foreign Policy, Free world, International Community, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Islam, Israel, Leftists, Middle East, Netanyahu, U.S. Congress

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Sleeper Cell Documentary: Radical Islamic Camps in America

March 1, 2015

Sleeper Cell Documentary: Radical Islamic Camps in America, Counter Jihad Report, Ryan Mauro, March 1, 2015

(“Islamophobia” or rational concern? Somehow, it seems unlikely that “jobs for jihadists” will deal satisfactorily with the problem. Thanks again to Counter Jihad Report, one of the few sites to deal adequately with such threats.– DM)

This Blaze TV episode of “For the Record” aired February 19, 2014 and is largely based on the research of Ryan Mauro of the Clarion Project. It exposes the network of Muslims of the Americas, a branch of the Pakistani group Jamaat ul-Fuqra, across the U.S. It is headquartered at “Islamberg,” New York.

Read about Mauro’s identification of an ul-Fuqra jihadist enclave in Texas:

Exclusive: Islamist Terror Enclave Discovered in Texas
The discovery led a dozen North American Muslim groups and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) to call on the State Department to list ul-Fuqra as a Foreign Terrorist Organization:

Muslims Join Clarion’s Call for ul-Fuqra to be Foreign Terrorist Org.
Texas Congressman: Terror Enclave Discovery ‘Appalling’

Categories: Caliphate, Diversity, Domestic policy, FBI, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jihad, Jobs for jihadists, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Muslims, Obama, Pakistan, Sleeper cells, Terrorists
Tags: Caliphate, DIversity, Domestic policy, FBI, Foreign Policy, Free world, Freedom, Funding terrorism, human rights, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jihad, Jobs for jihadists, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Pakistan, Sleeper cells, Terrorists

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Bring Back the Bush Doctrine—with One Addition

March 1, 2015

Bring Back the Bush Doctrine—with One Addition, National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy, February 28, 2015

Our enemies are not driven by American foreign policy, our friendship with Israel, our detention of jihadists at Gitmo, or the supposed “arrogance” our current president likes to apologize for. Those are all pretexts for aggression.

Our enemies are driven by an ideology, Islamic supremacism, that is rooted in a classical interpretation of sharia — Islamic law. Islamic supremacism is rabidly anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. It rejects the fundamental premise of our liberty: that people are free to govern themselves, rather than be ruled by a totalitarian legal code that suffocates liberty and brutally discriminates against non-Muslims and apostates. And sharia is an actual war on women — denying them equal rights under the law, subjecting them to unthinkable abuse, and reducing them in many ways to chattel.

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There is a path to victory in the fight against radical Islam, and our next president should embrace it.

What should be our strategy against ISIS? We ask the question without ever considering Iran. What concessions about centrifuges and spent fuel should we demand to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power? We ask the question never linking the mullahs’ weapons ambitions with its sponsorship of the global jihad . . . the only reason we dread a nuclear Iran. What should be the national-defense strategy of the United States against radical Islam, the most immediate and thoroughgoing security and cultural threat we face today?

I had the good fortune to be asked to participate in a CPAC panel Friday on defending America against rogue states. With 2016 hopefuls crowding the halls, it got me to thinking: What should we hope to hear from Republicans who want to be the party’s standard-bearer?

It is often said that we lack a strategy for defeating our enemies. Actually, we have had a strategy for 14 years, ever since the fleeting moment of clarity right after the 9/11 attacks.

That strategy is called the Bush Doctrine, and it remains the only one that has any chance of working . . . at least if we add a small but crucial addendum — one that should have been obvious enough back in 2001, and that hard lessons of history have now made inescapable.

The Bush Doctrine has become the source of copious rebuke. On the left, that’s because of that four-letter word (hint: It’s not “Doctrine”). On the right, there have been plenty of catcalls, too. The reaction, however, has been against what the Bush Doctrine evolved into, not against the Bush Doctrine as it was first announced.

The unadorned Bush Doctrine had two straightforward parts. First, because violent jihadists launch attacks against the United States when they have safe havens from which to plot and train, we must hunt down those terrorists wherever on earth they operate. Second, the nations of the world must be put to a choice: You are with us or you are with the terrorists. Period — no middle ground. If you are with the terrorists, you will be regarded, as they are regarded, as an enemy of the United States.

Before we get to that aforementioned addendum, it is important to remember why the Bush Doctrine was so necessary. For the nine years before it, we were living with the Clinton Doctrine.

That is the doctrine President Obama came to office promising to move us back to — and has he ever. It is the doctrine under which the enemy strikes us with bombs and weaponized jumbo jets, and we respond with subpoenas and indictments. It is the doctrine under which our enemies say, “allahu akbar! Death to America!” and we respond, “Gee, you know America has been arrogant. We can see why you’re so upset.”

The Clinton Doctrine — the one the Democrats will be running on in 2016, perhaps with its namesake leading the way — is the one that gave us a series of ever more audacious attacks through the 1990s: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; a plot to bomb New York City landmarks such as the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels; a plot to blow American airliners out of the sky over the Pacific; the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, in which Iran and al-Qaeda teamed up to kill 19 American airmen; the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed over 200 innocent people; detonating a bomb next to our destroyer, the U.S.S. Cole, in October 2000, killing 17 members of the U.S. Navy; and finally, the 9/11 atrocities, killing nearly 3,000 of our citizens.

And what has gradually restoring the Clinton Doctrine gotten us? While President Obama pleads for a deal that will inevitably make Iran a nuclear power, the mullahs continue to back anti-American terrorists and conduct military exercises in which they practice blowing up American ships. The Iraq so many Americans gave their lives for is now an extension of Iran. Afghanistan is being returned to the Taliban, which the president empowers by releasing its commanders. Libya is now a failed state where jihadists murder Americans with impunity and frolic in the former American embassy. Al-Qaeda is expanding through northern Africa, now a bigger, more potent threat than it was on the eve of 9/11. And yet it may pale compared with its breakaway faction, the Islamic State, which now controls more territory than Great Britain, as it decapitates, incinerates, and rapes its way to a global caliphate.

But Obama tells us there’s good news: Yemen is a success . . . or at least it was until it was recently overrun by an Iran-backed militia — oops. Well, we have indicted exactly one of the scores of terrorists who attacked our embassy at Benghazi. He got his Miranda warnings, of course, and he’ll be getting his civilian trial any month now. Hopefully, we’ll do better than Obama’s civilian trial of Ahmed Ghailani, the bomber of our embassies who was acquitted on 284 out of 285 counts.

Is it any wonder we’re losing?

Largely, it is because we’re worried about the wrong things — like whether we can sweep the enemy off its feet with enough Islamophilic, blame-America-first rhetoric. In reality, our enemies could not care less whether we — the infidel West — think their literalist, scripturally based belief system is a “perversion” of Islam. Radical Islam hears only one message from America: strength or weakness. The Clinton Doctrine is weakness cubed.

The Bush Doctrine, by contrast, is the path to victory — if we get that one addendum right.

It is this: Our enemies are not driven by American foreign policy, our friendship with Israel, our detention of jihadists at Gitmo, or the supposed “arrogance” our current president likes to apologize for. Those are all pretexts for aggression.

Our enemies are driven by an ideology, Islamic supremacism, that is rooted in a classical interpretation of sharia — Islamic law. Islamic supremacism is rabidly anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. It rejects the fundamental premise of our liberty: that people are free to govern themselves, rather than be ruled by a totalitarian legal code that suffocates liberty and brutally discriminates against non-Muslims and apostates. And sharia is an actual war on women — denying them equal rights under the law, subjecting them to unthinkable abuse, and reducing them in many ways to chattel.

In the “you are with us or you are with the terrorists” view of national security, any Muslim nation, organization, or individual that adheres to Islamic supremacism is on the wrong side. Failing to come to terms with that brute fact is where the Bush Doctrine went awry.

Sharia and Western democracy cannot coexist. They are antithetical to each other. So insists Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood jurist who is the world’s most influential Islamic scholar. It may be the only thing we should agree with him about.

The Bush Doctrine was allowed to evolve from an American national-security strategy to an illusion that our national security would be strengthened by promoting a chimera — sharia democracy. We put the lives of our best young men and women in harm’s way in the service of a dubious experiment: that we could build stable Islamic democracies that would be reliable American allies against jihadist terror.

Perhaps the worst thing about this experiment is not its inevitable failure. It is the sapping of America’s will that it has caused. Defeating our jihadist enemies is going to require a will to win, because the enemy’s will is strong — the jihadists truly believe Allah has already helped them vanquish the Soviet empire, and that we are next.

The American people vigorously support military operations that are essential to our defense. They support a vigorous war to defeat violent jihadists and their support networks. They understand that we cannot cede our enemies safe havens and nuclear weapons.

They do not support the notion that promoting our national security obliges us to move into hostile Islamic countries for a decade or three to civilize them. That’s not our job. Worse, when Americans become convinced that Washington — ever more remote from the public — thinks it is our job, they will not support military action, even action that is vital to protecting our nation. They will not trust the government to defeat our enemies without becoming entangled in Islam’s endless internal strife.

Understanding Islamic supremacism so we can distinguish allies from those hostile to us will restore the Bush Doctrine. And let’s not be cowed by the critics: Nothing I’ve said means endless war, or that we have to invade or occupy every country. But it does mean we should be using all our assets — not just military but intelligence, law-enforcement, financial, and diplomatic — to undermine regimes that support sharia supremacism. Cutting off that jihadist life-line is the path to victory — just as maintaining a strong military that is allowed to show it means business, that is not hamstrung by irresponsible rules of engagement, is the best way to ensure we won’t have to use it too often.

In Iran, where sharia is the law of the land, they persecute non-Muslims and apostates just like ISIS does. In Saudi Arabia, where sharia is the law of the land, they behead their prisoners just like ISIS does. A candidate who cannot tell liberty’s friends from liberty’s enemies is not fit to be commander-in-chief.

Categories: Bush doctrine, Caliphate, Clinton, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Moral equivalence, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Violent extremism
Tags: Bush doctrine, Caliphate, Clinton, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, human rights, Iran, Iran Scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Moral equivalence, Nukes, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Violent extremism

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Humor: Obama to preempt all programming to address Climate change: March 3

February 28, 2015

Obama to preempt all programming to address Climate change: March 3, Dan Miller’s Blog, The Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-scimitar, February 28, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and those of my (imaginary) guest author, the Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-Scimitar. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Warsclerotic or any of its other editors.– DM)

This is a guest post by my (imaginary) guest author, the Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-scimitar, President Obama’s chief adviser on Islamic relations with Christians and Jews.

The Most Revereddd Mohamed Allah-scimitar

The Most Revereddd Mohamed Allah-scimitar

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The worst crisis ever to face The Obama Nation — man-caused ~~global warming~~ climate change — continues to immobilize the country. It does so contemptuously despite the decades-long warming trend recognized by all reputable scientists. Therefore, President Obama will use the emergency broadcast system to preempt all other programming, including the internet, to address the nation on March 3.

Hell Niagara Falls freezes over

~~Hell~~ Niagara Falls freezes over

Violent right-wing Christian and Jewish extremist Islamophobes have contended that, by virtue of its timing, President Obama’s address is intended to preempt media coverage of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks to the Congress on the alleged “existential threat” of a nuclear deal with Iran.

However, White House press secretary Josh Earnest vigorously denied their racist and therefore specious claims. He pointed out that Obama is extraordinarily busy fulfilling His duties as the President of all of His people. He has, therefore, made — and continues to make — historic efforts to help potential non-Islamic Islamic State recruits find jobs and hence to feel good about themselves. Do we want more of this non-Islamic violence? No? Then you should not watch Netanyahu’s address, even if you could.

President Obama also owes it to His people to continue His Herculean efforts to prevent the Republican Congress from destroying His country by passing legislation which He has to waste time vetoing, thereby attempting to impede His noble efforts to give His people — American citizens and American citizens in waiting — everything they need and want by executive ~~decree~~ action.

Unfortunately, the only time He has available coincides, unexpectedly, with PM Netanyahu’s frivolous speech — which nobody in his right mind would watch anyway because Netanyahu is an untrustworthy nattering nabob of negativism and a war criminal to boot.

Moreover, as explained by Robert Kagan in a February 27th Washington Post article, there is no need for anyone to hear Netanyahu’s meddlesome nonsense:

Do we really need the Israeli prime minister to appear before Congress to explain the dangers and pitfalls of certain prospective deals on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs? Would we not know otherwise? Have the U.S. critics of those prospective deals lost their voice? Are they shy about expressing their concerns? Are they inarticulate or incompetent? Do they lack the wherewithal to get their message out?

Not exactly. Every day a new report or analysis warns of the consequences of various concessions that the Obama administration may or may not be making. Some think tanks in Washington devote themselves almost entirely to the subject of Iran’s nuclear program. Congress has held numerous hearings on the subject. Every week, perhaps every day, high-ranking members of the House and Senate, from both parties, lay out the dangers they see. The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others publish countless stories on the talks in which experts weigh in to express their doubts. If all the articles, statements and analyses produced in the United States on this subject could be traded for centrifuges, the Iranian nuclear program would be eliminated in a week.

. . . .

Given all this, can it really be the case that the American people will not know what to think about any prospective Iran deal until one man, and only one man, gets up to speak in one venue, and only one venue, and does so in the first week of March, and only in that week? That is what those who insist it is vital that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak before a joint meeting of Congress next week would have us believe. [Emphasis added.]

President Obama is greatly, and perfectly understandably, distressed that Netanyahu will offer nothing new in support of His legacy achievement of world peace in His time and that his address will therefore force Him to create insuperable problems for Israel. Indeed, He has already asked Iran, under the auspices of the United Nations, to mediate a binding peace agreement among Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. President Obama did not want to do it, because He loves Israel just as He would His only begotten son if He had one. However, in the circumstances Netanyahu has created, He has has no alternative. Only a vile Islamophobic Jew-hater like Netanyahu would destroy his own country by opposing President Obama’s grand plan for world peace.

As the world’s second greatest authority — second only to Obama — on Islam and its profoundly helpful relations with Jews and Christians everywhere, I call upon everyone in Israel and elsewhere to ignore whatever nonsense the soon-to-be-former Prime Minister of that ~~insignificant~~ beautiful little country may try to spew.

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

Editor’s comment:

All citizens of the World with half a brain — and even less — should pay heed to The Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-scimitar’s profound words and trust only Dear Leader Obama. He, and only He, can and will do all that needs to be done to keep them warm, safe and content. Should they place unwarranted trust elsewhere, their Dear Leader may well be unable to achieve ~~world peace~~ whirled peas in His time.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Executions, Foreign policy, Humor, Internet, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Israeli elections, Jews, Jobs for jihadists, Kerry, Leftists, Media, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Terrorists, Two state solution, U.S. Congress
Tags: Caliphate, Christians, Executions, Foreign Policy, Humor, Internet, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia, Israel, Israel and Palestinians, Israeli elections, Jews, Jobs for jihadists, Leftists, Media, Netanyahu, Nukes, Terrorists, Two state solution, U.S. Congress

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Egypt goes to war on ISIS, masses troops against Islamist Libyan stronghold at Darnah

February 28, 2015

Egypt goes to war on ISIS, masses troops against Islamist Libyan stronghold at Darnah, DEBKAfile, February 28, 2015

(Perhaps the Congress should invite President al-Sisi to address it on fighting the ~~Non-Islamic~~ Islamic State and its cohorts. How would Obama react?– DM)

The Egyptian president was stirred into action by the barbaric beheading on Feb. 15 of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who had found work in Libya.

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

Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi has deployed his troops for all-out war on ISIS strongholds in Libya, the first Arab ruler to challenge the Islamists in a fellow Arab country, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.

His intiative dramatizes the spillover of the Islamist State’s threat across the Middle East, and the fading impetus of the US-led coalition effort to reverse Islamic State gains in Iraq and Syria.

Our Washington sources report that the Obama administration’s planned spring campaign to free Iraqi Mosul from the Islamic State’s occupation is stuck in the sand. Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike accuse the president of having no clear war strategy and of holding back from the US-led coalition the fighting manpower necessary for a successful operation.

Answering questions in the Senate Wednesday, Feb. 25, the coalition commander, retired Gen. John Allen, said he had no hard-and-fast timeline for the war. The influential Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California responded angrily: Your answers show one thing about the timeline defined by the White House as an enduring ground operation: “There is none.”

Jihadi John, who was filmed beheading ISIS victims, was revealed Thursday, Feb. 26, as a northwest Londoner of Kuwaiti descent called Mohammed Emwaz, who had been known to British intelligence. This was leaked by US sources to signal Washington’s aggravation over the relatively passive British role in the war on the Islamic State.

Also released was a video showing Islamic barbarians smashing priceless Assyrian artifacts in a Mosul museum – following which Friday, four ISIS members were burned alive for refusing to join the savage spree to vandalize the relics of an ancient world civilization.

Even so, US-led air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq remain sporadic, no better than pinpricks.

The Egyptian president was stirred into action by the barbaric beheading on Feb. 15 of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who had found work in Libya.

El-Sisi first launched a series of air strikes against ISIS and allied Islamist militias in one of their Libyan strongholds in Darnah, following which he has now ordered Egyptian commando and marine forces to prepare for sea landings to seize the town and destroy the terrorist elements there, another landmark operation in the war on Islamist terror. .

Part of the Libyan terrorist movement and one of ISIS’s closest allies is the Ansar al-Sharia militia, which in September 2012 burned down the US consulate in Benghazi and murdered the US ambassador and three other American officials.

Cairo’s Darnah operation is believed to be days away. It is scheduled to take place at the same time as another anti-terrorist operation, which El-Sisi is planning to launch on Egypt’s longest-running front against the Islamist threat in Sinai, 2,000 kilometers east of Darnah. There, Egyptian and ground forces will go into action against the ISIS affiliate’s hideouts.

He is also considering aerial bombardments of the Gaza Strip to target Hamas’ military arm whose active collaboration with the jihadis has been confirmed by intelligence.

Some of the militias which have divided Darnah, a town of app. 50,000, among themselves, have declared their territories provinces of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s Islamic Caliphate.

According to our military sources, Egyptian forces will be assigned to attack the town from the north after a beach landing. They plan to link up with allied Libyan militias commanded by the former Qaddafi regime general Khalifa Hifter, who will come from Benghazi to strike the town from the south. Khalif and his armed men have been pursuing a relentless war on the inroads made by al Qaeda in Libya, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, with quiet backing from Cairo.

The London-based Arabic Alquds Alarabi, which is known for its solid sources in the Middle East, reported this week that Gen. Hafter had recently paid at least two secret visits to Cairo to collect the weapons he needs for his part in the Darnah offensive and coordination.

After one of those trips, the paper reports, Hafter set out for Jordan where he had meetings with Israeli military and intelligence officials.

Categories: Caliphate, Combat troops, Department of Defense, Egypt, Foreign policy, Israel, Libya, Obama, Sisi
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On moral blindness

February 27, 2015

On moral blindness, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, February 27, 2015

1. Scholars who study our civilization a hundred years in the future will be able to point out the key geopolitical shifts in the Middle East, the collapse of the geographical nations and the return to the ancient social borders, and the rise of radical Islam. They will describe how the Islamic Republic of Iran took over countries like Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, its tentacles of terrorism reaching every corner, including Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

They will study the Iranian nuclear issue and be able to quote hundreds of instances in which Iranian leaders vowed to destroy the Jewish state. But when they begin studying the Israeli society of our time, they will encounter a failure of logic. Amid a virtual consensus on preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb, they will not be able to understand the Israeli focus on bottles recycled by the prime minister’s wife, the electrician the prime minister hired and the frivolous reports that grabbed massive headlines while world powers were busy leaving Iran with the ability to manufacture a bomb. They will have trouble understanding what the Jews were arguing about while facing such an obvious threat.

In an effort to solve this mystery, the scholars will turn to historians who studied the 1930s in Europe: Western leaders’ willful blindness to Hitler’s explicit threats; Europe’s desperate longing for reconciliation with the fuhrer. They will review the history of France, which was warned in those years but failed to prepare an army. They will review Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of “peace for our time” while waving a worthless piece of paper. They will examine the history of European Jewry, which failed to accurately read the political map. Among other things, they will look at U.S. Jewry in the 1940s. They may read the memoirs of Rebecca Kook, the daughter of Hillel Kook, a prominent member of the Irgun.

2. In 1940, the members of the Irgun arrived in the U.S. at the behest of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, to recruit a Hebrew army to fight the Nazis alongside the allied forces. In 1942, when the extermination of Europe’s Jewry began to emerge, the delegation changed course and devoted themselves to saving Jewish lives. They had the nerve to challenge the official stance adopted by the Roosevelt administration — accepted with little opposition by the Jewish leaders of the United States — that the only way to save the Jews was to win the war.

The Irgun members pressured the leaders of the free world to make saving Jewish lives a goal of equal importance to winning the war, and to dedicate special resources to making it happen. They focused their efforts on campaigning in the media, among intellectuals, in the U.S. Congress and to the administration. They convinced then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board — an executive agency created to save Jews. It is estimated that the board was responsible for saving 200,000 Jewish lives.

The future scholars will delve deep into the battle waged by the Jewish leadership in America against the Irgun’s delegation. The mudslinging campaign against them was not led by the administration. It was spearheaded by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Sol Bloom — a New York Jew, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise and Nahum Goldmann of the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish leaders.

Every effort made by the Irgun delegation was met with criticism and active sabotage efforts. They claimed that their activity was too political, too vocal, too aggressive, and that in fact they did not represent anyone. Hundreds of letters were sent to senators and representatives and Jewish leaders. The letters said that the Irgun members were part of a fascist terrorist outfit from Palestine. Jewish activists handed out pamphlets warning that the delegation would bring catastrophe and destruction on the Jewish people.

Several explanations were provided for this hostile behavior. The main explanation was that Jewish leadership’s fear of tarnishing the image of the Jewish community. In a secret British Foreign Office document, Nahum Goldmann was quoted as saying that just as Hitler brought anti-Semitism to Europe, Hillel Kook would bring anti-Semitism to the U.S.

At the end of the 19th century, Germany’s Jews were also fearful of Zionism. It made them susceptible to accusations of dual loyalty, and labeled them as belonging in Palestine. That is why they resisted the Zionist movement and made extra efforts to be even more German than the rest of the Germans.

3. For the last 20 years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning anyone who would listen of Iran’s perilous ambitions. Much like Nazi Germany, Iran and radical Islam do not threaten only Israel but the entire free world. But the left-wing liberal mindset, inspired by U.S. President Barack Obama, complacently dismisses these warnings, often with a side of disrespect.

Over the last month, the White House and a long line of cultural figures and politicians have been confronting a far greater threat: Netanyahu’s upcoming speech at the U.S. Congress. The future historians will note the American Jews who disrespected the Israeli prime minister for fighting for the safety of his people. They will add to that list a number of Israelis who took pains to undermine Netanyahu’s legitimacy and sabotage his address.

One of these critics, Peter Beinart, recently slammed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel for urging Obama to join him at Netanyahu’s address.

“Wiesel is acutely, and understandably, sensitive to the harm Jews suffer. Yet he is largely blind to the harm Jews cause,” Beinart wrote. Cause to whom? To the Palestinians, of course. The American Left is stuck in its 1980s elitist morality that refused to see that the reality has changed.

There is no occupation anymore, Mr. Beinart. Certainly not in the way that you and your friends make it out. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria enjoy expanded autonomy — a de facto state with a national anthem, a flag, a government and enormous budgets. It is true that the IDF is present on the outskirts, because we do not trust our neighbors. But incidentally, they, too, do not trust themselves to ward off Hamas and the radical Islamists. Israel in fact protects the lives of the Palestinian leadership and population from the perils of the Islamic caliphate, which has the ability to turn the lives of these Arabs into a hell devoid of human rights, and heads.

4. This blindness is not just geopolitical, but it is also moral. We are students of the great teacher Rabbi Akiva, who in the second century classified the commandment to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) as a great principle of the Torah (Genesis Rabbah 24:7). In this he built on the work of Hillel the Elder who in the first century B.C.E. placed the entire Torah upon the foundation of this dictum (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Shabbat 31a).

But the same Rabbi Akiva taught us that in the event of a conflict between your life and your neighbor’s life, “your brother shall live with you.” Namely, your own life comes first (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Mezi’a, 62a). That is the proper way to approach altruistic love. If you do not love your own life, or the lives of your own people, more than the lives of others, especially those who are hostile toward you, then you do not truly possess a moral understanding, but rather a nihilistic intellectualism that plays pretend in living rooms across the east and west coasts of the U.S.

Next Tuesday, truth seekers will be called upon to support Netanyahu when he addresses a joint session of Congress. The State of Israel needs your courageous support.

Categories: Caliphate, Elections in Israel, Foreign policy, Free world, Germany, History, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Media, Middle East, Nazis, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Terrorism, U.S. Congress
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From The Mediterranean to the Golan, Iran Builds Active Front And Direct Military Presence

February 23, 2015

From The Mediterranean to the Golan, Iran Builds Active Front And Direct Military Presence On Israel’s Border To Deter Israel And Further Ideology Of Eliminating The Zionist Regime

By: Y. Carmon and Y. Yehoshua*

February 16, 2015

via From The Mediterranean to the Golan, Iran Builds Active Front And Direct Military Presence On Israel’s Border To Deter Israel And Further Ideology Of Eliminating The Zionist Regime.

Israel faces a fateful crisis. As much as it feared the Iranian nuclear program, it never imagined that Iran would be standing on its border even before its nuclear agreement with the Americans was complete. The Iranian threat to Israel is no longer theoretical, nor does it have anything to do with Israel’s deterrent of using its nuclear weapons, which cannot be used considering the international power balance. The threat has become direct, practical and conventional.”[1]

Introduction

In recent years, Iran has based its deployment in Syria on the establishment of a new Hizbullah Syria organization along the lines of Hizbullah Lebanon, as well as on the direct presence of Iranian forces in Syria, particularly in the Golan Heights.

Iran’s deployment in Syria, and particularly the presence of its forces in the Golan Heights, at first only as command posts and a limited number of special forces, reveals a trend of Iranian activity in the region that is direct, not only by proxy as it has been to date. According to the Iranian plan, the command posts are meant to operate “130,000 trained Iranian Basij fighters waiting to enter Syria,” as is evident from May 2014 statements by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) senior official Hossein Hamedani, that were censored and removed immediately after publication in Iran.[2]

Statements expressing intent to establish a front of anti-Israel activity in the Golan were heard from Iranian and Syrian officials as early as 2013, and have been implemented openly and in practice in the past two years (see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5307, Assad And His Allies Threaten To Open A Front In Golan Heights, May 21, 2013). During this time, there were also a few terror operations as well as operations to collect intelligence information in the Golan, which Israel claims were carried out by Hizbullah and Iranian elements; for example, there have been rocket fire, roadside bombs, drones launched, and weapons transferred to Hizbullah. Israel for its part has carried out pinpoint counter-operations inside Syrian territory, such as bombing missile deliveries and attacking senior Iranian officials in Syria, for example, the January 2015 assassination of Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi and other IRGC soldiers who have not been publicly identified, alongside several Hizbullah operatives, and the February 2013 assassination of top IRGC official Hassan Shateri, which Iran claims was carried out by Israel.[3]

Iran’s direct deployment in the Golan creates a single battle front against Israel from Rosh HaNikra to Quneitra.[4] It also constitutes a violation of the status quo of the Golan Heights front, which has been quiet since the Separation of Forces Agreement of 1974,[5] and comes on top of Hizbullah’s violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.[6] Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Mu’allem said in an interview on Iran’s Al-Alam TV channel that “there is resistance in the Golan that is acting against Jabhat Al-Nusra and against the Israeli plans.”[7] Lebanese analyst Anis Naqash, who is close to Hizbullah, also said that “there is indeed resistance in the Golan.” According to him, there have been several actions against Israel by the Golan resistance, which he called popular Syrian resistance, and Israel has not acknowledged this so as to not reveal its helplessness. Regarding the violation of Resolution 1701 he said: “From the onset there was confusion about it. We – the resistance camp – violated Resolution 1701 from the moment they began implementing it.”[8]

Furthermore, Iran’s deployment on the border has implications for the chances of a war breaking out in the region and for the character of such a war. This, because it increases the possibility that any local eruption could quickly develop into a regional conflict, since Iran now commands the theater that stretches from Iran and Iraq through Syria and Lebanon and the Mediterranean.[9] It should be noted that Hizbullah’s January 28, 2015 retaliatory attack against Israel’s January 18 attack in itself did not develop into a broader conflict only because Israel refrained from responding to it. A senior Iranian spokesman assessed that this was due to Israel’s “intense fear of the outbreak of an all-out war.”[10]

Iran’s aim in deploying in the Golan Heights is not only to deter Israel from acting against its nuclear program, defend Syria as part of the resistance axis, and establish an active front for anti-Israel terror attacks in the Golan and even liberate the Israeli Golan. It also meshes with the Iranian regime’s ideological perception of Israel as an entity that must be eliminated, as is evident in statements by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. According to this perception, the West Bank must be armed, as the Gaza Strip was, in advance of eliminating the state of Israel.

It should be noted that in addition to its deployment for the purpose of eliminating the state of Israel, Iran is building capabilities and ways of operating against Israel and against Jewish/Israeli targets worldwide; these are occasionally put into action.[11]

Iran’s front on Israel’s northern border, in addition to its involvement in other arenas in the region, creates tremendous pressure on its dwindling resources and exhausts it, intensifying its dependence on regional forces. But the export of Iran’s Islamic Revolution always contributes directly to the survival of the Iranian regime. This is because the mobilization of Iranian national forces and Iranian youth in the ideological framework of struggle outside Iran inoculates Iran’s dictatorial regime against internal uprising and rebellion against it.

I. Regional Background: Under Guise Of Fighting Sunni Jihadi Organizations, Iran Deploys On Israel’s Border

In recent years Iran has taken advantage of the fact that the theater between Iraq and the Mediterranean – that is, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon – has become a veritable no man’s land like Afghanistan, and has tightened its grip there and built up its deployment vis-a-vis Israel. Following the abandonment of the Syrian theater by the West, primarily the U.S., and the absence of any operation to decide the conflict following the Syrian uprising, Syria has become an arena of regional and global conflict. Participating in this conflict are fighters in the global jihad, such as Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic State (ISIS), which have the support of Sunni elements, and on the other side Iran and its satellites, such as Hizbullah Lebanon and Hizbullah Syria, as well as the Iraqi militia Asa’ib ‘Ahl Al-Haqq and “the Fatimiyyoun Brigade” of Afghan Shi’ites.[12]

The West’s nonintervention in Syria has spawned not only Iran’s infiltration into that country but also its infiltration into two additional theaters where it has tightened its grip. First, the non-intervention has brought about the undermining of the situation in Lebanon, where in addition to the influx of millions of refugees and the collapse of the political system, the country has become an arena of conflict between Iran and the Sunni jihadis. Likewise, it has brought about the complete undermining of the situation in Iraq, where ISIS – which first established itself in Syria – has invaded the Sunni region and has consolidated its status there. The Iraqi army has collapsed, leading to the emergence on the ground of pro-Iran militias and of troops of the IRGC’s Qods Force, which is headed by Qassem Soleimani.[13]

Thus, Iran has created for itself a single theater of operation stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean, as Iranian officials describe it. For example, Yahya Rahim Safavi, former IRGC commander and security affairs advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, boasted in May 2014: “Our strategic depth reaches to the Mediterranean, and above Israel’s head.”[14] In recent similar statements, Ali Saeedi, Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC, said: “The borders of Islamic Iran have expanded [all the way] to the shores of the Mediterranean, and the countries of the region are supported by Iran.” He said further that “we must prepare the ground for the globalization of the Islamic Revolution.”[15] In another speech, he said: “In the past, our borders were Haji Omran [on the Iran-Iraq border], while today our borders are the shore of the Mediterranean and Bab El-Mandeb [in Yemen].”[16] IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said: “Today, the borders of Islamic Iran and [its Islamic] Revolution have expanded, and we are not defending our country from its own borders but are standing fast and fighting together with our Shi’ite and Sunni brothers against the front of the arrogance [i.e. the West, headed by the U.S.] many kilometers from Iran’s borders.”[17]

In deploying directly on Israel’s border, Iran has effectively become a country neighboring Israel, despite being geographically distant, while Syria and Lebanon have become components in a broader Iran-led regional resistance entity bordering Israel.

II. Building A Single Conflict Front With Israel From Rosh HaNikra To Quneitra

Implementing the statements it has made over the past two years, Iran has created a single conflict front with Israel stretching from Rosh HaNikra to Quneitra, where it and its satellites, Hizbullah Lebanon and Hizbullah Syria, operate freely against Israel in violation of UN Resolution 1701 and while changing the status quo that has existed between Israel and Syria since the Separation of Forces Agreement of 1974.

As part of this implementation, the Syrian Golan has become an Iranian theater of operation as well. This strategic Iranian presence in the Golan was at first clandestine, under the auspices of “defending the resistance axis” and in the name of “the war on Sunni terrorism,” but later became public, and was accompanied by open threats to target Israel from the Syrian border. Thus, for example, in response to a May 2013 Israeli airstrike in the Damascus area targeting Fateh-110 long-range missiles being transferred from Iran to Hizbullah, spokesmen in Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah issued statements regarding the need for resistance in the Golan.[18] At a May 7, 2013 meeting with Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad announced, “The Golan will become a front of resistance.”[19] Iranian Army chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi also revealed that “according to Assad’s strategic decision, a popular resistance based on the Hizbullah template is being established across Syria.”[20]

In their statements, the top leaders of the resistance axis stress that, in addition to forming an active front in the Syrian Golan vis-a-vis Israel, the axis means to actually “liberate the Syrian Golan” from Israeli control. The deputy of the Iranian chief of staff, Mas’oud Jazeyeri, promised that the region would see many changes, “some of which will pass through the Golan,” and added that “the liberation of the Golan is not impossible.”[21] Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah announced, for his part, that his organization would aid the Syrian resistance “in order to liberate the Syrian Golan.”[22] Nahed Hattar wrote in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar that “ending the Syria war [i.e., expelling the jihad organizations from it] is meaningless without wresting the Golan from Israeli hands.”[23]

In the framework of this plan for creating a single front from Rosh HaNikra to Quneitra, Hizbullah Lebanon is ignoring the Lebanon-Syria border and is operating freely in Syria, particularly in the Golan, despite criticism in Lebanon.[24] Nasrallah’s January 30, 2015 speech, delivered two days after Hizbullah’s counterattack following Israel’s January 18 attack in Quneitra, amounted to an acknowledgement of a reality in which “there is no recognition of division into arenas” and the resistance is entitled to confront the enemy “wherever it wants and however it wants.” Moreover, in this speech Nasrallah described the death of Hizbullah and IRGC operatives in Israel’s operation as “the mingling of Lebanese blood with Iranian blood on Syrian soil” and stated that this reflected the fact that there is “one cause, one destiny, and one battle.”[25] He also declared in his speech that “the rules of engagement” with Israel had now changed, referring to the rules set out in UN Resolution 1701; as a matter of fact, Hizbullah is indeed violating this resolution in various ways, including with its presence south of Lebanon’s Litani River, alongside the presence of IRGC forces.

III. Elements Of The New Iranian Deployment In Syria: Hizbullah Syria And A Direct Iranian Presence On Israel’s Border

The building of the new Iranian front has two elements: a) establishing a Hizbullah Syria based on the Hizbullah Lebanon model, and b) Iranian forces’ direct involvement in the Golan.

A. Hizbullah Syria – Another Resistance Arm Against Israel

The new Hizbullah Syria is also being established as part of an extensive strategic view and in preparation for the coming conflict with Israel. Senior IRGC official Hossein Hamedani said in a May 2014 speech that “Syria has become a decisive geopolitical region in the regional power balance” and that Iran has established “a second Hizbullah – popular militias in 14 Syrian governorates with 70,000 members, from Syria’s Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Alawites.”[26]

Likewise, an April 21, 2014 analysis published by the moderate conservative Iranian website Farda stated, “The establishment of a Hizbullah Syria, as a bud of resistance, will not only impact the Syrian crisis but will also serve as a mighty arm of the resistance that will give the Zionists nightmares. The Zionist regime, which was previously concerned with the threats along the Lebanese border, must now prepare itself for the new situation. As ongoing events show, the resistance front is uniting from day to day, and the situation for the Zionists and their supporters is worsening.”[27]

Also, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of the Basij paramilitary force, explained: “Hizbullah emerged after the 1982 war in Lebanon. The Palestinian resistance was born after the attacks against Palestine. And today in Syria we are witnessing the establishment of a military force, following the aggression and plots against Syria.” He added, “The resistance force will liberate Jerusalem.”[28]

B. Direct Iranian Activity In The Golan And Lebanon

In the past, Iran preferred to manage the conflict with Israel exclusively through its proxies and allies – Assad and Hizbullah. However, there has recently been open physical presence of IRGC and Qods Force soldiers in Syria, specifically in the Syrian Golan. As mentioned above, Hossein Hamedani, former IRGC commander in the Tehran province, even stated in a speech that “there are 130,000 trained Iranian Basij fighters waiting to enter Syria.”[29]

Arab media also published reports that Iranian forces have been present in the Golan since May 2013. The reports included details provided by Syrian oppositionist circles regarding important bases in the Golan where IRGC forces were present: bases in the Tal Al-Sha’ar area and Tal Al-Ahmar, the Division 90 headquarters, an espionage base near Mazari’ Al-Amal, and a camp in Al-Shuhada.[30]

Testimony also appeared regarding significant IRGC presence on the Israeli-Lebanese border, including on a Twitter account close to the IRGC which posted photos indicating that “the IRGC soldiers of the Islamic revolution are on the border of [Lebanon and] occupied Palestine.”[31] In this context it should be mentioned that, back in January 2012, there was outrage in Lebanon following statements by the commander of the IRGC’s Qods Force, General Qassem Soleimani, who said that “Iran has a presence in South Lebanon and Iraq” and that “these regions are under the influence of the activity and philosophy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”[32]

The physical presence of senior IRGC generals in the Golan and South Lebanon also indicates the importance of this arena in Iran’s eyes. Examples are presence of Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi in the Golan, which was exposed after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in January 2015, and of Iranian General and IRGC commander in Lebanon Hassan Shateri, who was killed in February 2014 in an attack on a military convoy from Damascus to Beirut.[33] This, alongside reports that General Qassem Soleimani was present in Syria in general and in the Quneitra and Dar’a areas in particular.[34]

IV. Calls In Palestinian Resistance Movements To Join Northern Front

Palestinian resistance movements such as Hamas also expressed willingness to join the northern front against Israel by activating Palestinians living in refugee camps there.

Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar called to enable the establishment of military groups belonging to the Al-Qassam Brigades – Hamas’s military wing – in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps in order “to resist the enemy from northern Palestine.”[35] At the same time, there have been increasing reports recently on renewed Hamas contacts with Iran and Hizbullah, after a period of tension between them due to Hamas’s support for the Syrian revolution.[36]

Abu Ahmad Fouad, deputy secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), supported Al-Zahar’s call and said that the establishment of these militias “should take place as part of a general framework of resistance movements, including the Lebanese Hizbullah.” He told the Al-Mayadeen TV channel: “We believe what Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said regarding uniting the fronts against the Israeli occupation, and there are ongoing meetings to develop the Palestinian resistance operation and coordinate it with the Lebanese resistance.”[37]

‘Imad Zaqout, news director for Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, even admitted for the first time that the ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades have already operated groups in neighboring countries, and that the rocket fire from Lebanon into Israel during the 2014 conflict in Gaza had been ordered by the Brigades. He added: “Hamas thought and planned for every future war with the Zionist enemy to be a total one. Meaning that it would include every inch of land in Palestine and inflict large-scale damage on the enemy.”[38]

V. The Iranian Front In The Golan – Implementing Iranian Ideological Perception Regarding Need To Eliminate Israel

Constructing a united front from Rosh HaNikra to Quneitra meshes with Iran’s comprehensive strategy to eliminate Israel. Iranian regime heads have repeatedly stated their commitment to this goal over the years, from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to other regime and military leaders.[39]

To bring only a handful of examples, in a July 23, 2014 speech, Khamenei said that “the only solution is to destroy the Zionist regime.”[40] Furthermore, Mehdi Taeb, head of Khamenei’s “Ammar Headquarters” think tank and the brother of IRGC intelligence chief Hossein Taeb, said in a November 12, 2014 speech in Qom that “Iran’s sword is currently stuck in the throat of the accursed Israeli regime, and according to the instructions of the founder of the Islamic Republic [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini, we must remove this oppressive regime from the world map… The Imam Khomeini saw the Basij [as a force] that would destroy the Zionist regime, and today, thanks to divine grace, Iran has besieged Israel with those same popular forces.”[41] Similar statements were repeatedly made by IRGC officials as well. On August 27, 2014, IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami said: “Destroying the Zionist regime is a very simple matter… [It] will take place gradually. It is a matter of divine faith, [it is] more than a mere wish for us.”[42] On November 26, 2014, Basij Commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi said: “The Iranian nation and Basij members are determined to hold victory prayers led by their Imam [Khamenei] at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”[43] The next day, IRGC navy official Ali Razmjou said that the Zionist regime “will be eliminated from the world map in the near future thanks to the resistance of Basij and Hizbullah members throughout the world.”[44]

VI. Developing The Palestinian Front By Arming West Bank, Israeli Arabs

To comprehensively implement this Iranian strategy to eliminate Israel, in addition to its activity in Syria and the Golan, the Iranian regime has increasingly expressed its intent to arm the West Bank, and even the Israeli Arabs, as it has armed the Gaza Strip.[45] Khamenei called on several occasions to arm the West Bank. In a July 23, 2014 speech, he said: “Allah willing, the day will come when this regime is destroyed. [But] so long as this false regime is on its feet – what is the solution? The solution is total armed resistance against this regime. This is the solution… Therefore, it is my belief that the West Bank should be armed just like Gaza.”[46] A July 26, 2015 post on Khamenei’s Facebook page said: “The West Bank should be armed like Gaza.”[47]

Other officials also referred to the arming of the West Bank as part of a strategic policy of the Iranian regime. The deputy chair of the Majlis National Security Committee, Mansour Haghighatpour, said: “One of our goals is to arm the West Bank, because it is the best measure for fighting the Zionist regime.”[48] Ahmad Vahidi, who was defense minister under Ahmadinejad and commander of the IRGC Qods Force, said that “arming the West Bank is a strategic policy of the Leader [Khamenei], whose implementation will transform the Palestine arena,” and even called to arm the territories that were conquered in 1948, in addition to the West Bank. [49] Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said in a rally honoring the Hizbullah members killed in the Quneitra attack, held on January 27, 2015 at the Hizbullah representation in Tehran: “We will utilize every available capability in order to arm the West Bank… The policy of the Islamic Republic regime is to arm the West Bank and strengthen the resistance axis and the forces of Hizbullah in order to fight the usurping and occupying Zionist regime.”[50]

In an August 29, 2014 message of congratulations to the Palestinian people at the close of the 2014 Gaza conflict, IRGC commander Jafari expressed Iran’s support of the Gaza resistance, while mentioning the hope for the elimination of the Zionist regime. He said: “We shall stand fast with you to the end. Continue to raise the banner of jihad in the path of God, for your honor and the honor of all Muslims is linked to this holy jihad. And know that, with Allah’s help, eliminating this crumbling and bloodthirsty Zionist regime will be the greatest achievement on this divine path, and the final victory is not so far away.”[51]

VII. The Battle In The Dar’a Region – Completing The Siege Around Israel

It should be mentioned that the Syrian army, Hizbullah and Iranian forces recently launched a large-scale joint attack on the southern front to expel the rebels from the Dar’a region. During this campaign, titled “The Quneitra Martyrs Battle,” the Syrian regime admitted openly for the first time that Iranian forces were fighting in Syria alongside Assad’s forces. In addition, Gen. Qassem Soleimani visited the region, and Hizbullah and IRGC flags were flown there.[52]

This joint effort to wrest control of the southern Syria front from the hands of the rebels is regarded by Syria, Iran and Hizbullah as part of their struggle against Israel and its allies. A victory in this region will bring the Iranian forces closer to the Jordanian border in the south and the Israeli border in the west, will prepare the ground for defeating the opposition forces in the Quneitra area, and will enable the creation of a territorial continuum of resistance axis forces stretching from Dar’a through Damascus and Quneitra to Lebanon.

A Syrian army commander admitted on Syrian TV that the operation in the Dar’a region was being carried out “in collaboration with the resistance axis – Hizbullah and Iran.” He added that the goal of the army’s actions in the Dar’a and Quneitra area was “to ensure calm on the borders with the neighboring countries [Israel and Jordan] and disrupt the security zone they are attempting to establish.”[53]

The Al-Hadath News website, which is close to the Syrian regime, also exposed Iran’s involvement in the fighting, and even posted a photo of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in the area. It reported: “Iran, which had been taking part in the fighting in Syria by means of military advisors within the Syrian army, recently decided to join the military conflict officially and openly.” According to the site, Soleimani arrived in the area “to supervise and follow the campaign in southern Syria, and take part in directing it,” and his presence there lends the campaign “a clear geopolitical military character” that means that “the resistance is calling the shots in southern Syria.” The site added that the first goal of this attack was to defeat the armed opposition forces in Dar’a in advance of defeating them in Quneitra, which would be “a blow to the Zionist enemy.” This, in addition to preventing them from advancing towards Damascus. The site stated further that “southern Syria is clearly no longer involved in an inter-Syrian conflict, or a conflict between Syrians and takfiri forces [i.e., the jihad groups], but rather in a conflict between the resistance axis [comprising] Iran, Syria and Hizbullah on the one hand and the Israel-Jordan-U.S. alliance on the other.”[54]

Ibrahim Al-Amin, board chairman of the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, which is close to Hizbullah, wrote on this matter on February 11 that the top leadership of the resistance axis has decided “to create new political, military and security facts [on the ground] along the border between Jordan and occupied Palestine.”[55]

VIII. The Implications Of Iran And Its Proxies Surrounding Israel

Iran’s presence in the Golan, as well as in Lebanon and on the Mediterranean, creates a situation where any local conflict can rapidly escalate into a comprehensive regional war with direct Iranian involvement. Though Nasrallah stressed in his speech in late January 2015 that Hizbullah had completed its punitive measures for the killing of its six operatives in Quneitra, and that it is not interested in war, Iran continues to threaten further attacks, and may arrange further eruptions in the region or outside it by employing Hizbullah cells in various parts of the world.[56] In addition, articles in the Lebanese press spoke of the possible outbreak of a regional war.[57]

As long as Hizbullah operates from Lebanon, Israel is able to deter it, since Israel’s response to an attack from Lebanon employing the full force of Hizbullah’s missile arsenal (comprising over 100,000 missiles) will be the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructures, a scenario that deters Hizbullah. However, if Hizbullah is activated from outside Lebanon, Israel will not be able to respond in the same manner.

As for Iran, it does not regard itself as deterred by Israel, now that it has built a single, comprehensive front against Israel stretching from the Mediterranean to southern Syria. It also has the capability of activating Hizbullah, despite the heavy price this organization will pay.

In fact, the Syrian front in general, and especially in the Golan, has become Iran’s favored theatre of operations, since acting there diminishes the chance of a war within its own borders. In this context, Khamenei’s advisor Ali Ahmad Velayati said on February 8, 2013 that “Iran has planned its defensive positions outside its own borders, and has linked its fate to the fate of the Islamic countries; this is why it will support those such as [Syrian President] Bashar Al-Assad to the end…”[58] Mehdi Taeb, the head of Khamenei’s “Ammar Headquarters” think tank, said in one of his speeches: “The loss of Syria will lead to the loss of Tehran itself.”[59]

Moreover, Iran’s presence on the Israeli border limits Israel’s ability to use military measures against Iran’s nuclear program. This, since Iran is building up its response capabilities in the region, to complement its long-range missiles. In the past, it was Hizbullah Lebanon that deterred Israel, to some extent, from acting militarily against Iran’s nuclear program. Today this deterrence is significantly strengthened by the advent of Hizbullah Syria and the direct presence of Iranian forces in the Golan.

According to Mehdi Taeb, the centrality of Hizbullah to Iran’s deterrence vis-a-vis Israel was already demonstrated in the 2006 Lebanon war. In a 2013 speech, he said that Iran never had to attack Israel’s nuclear warheads because “we completely locked up [Israel] with Hizbullah. During the 2006 Lebanon war, the Zionist regime tried to break this lock [i.e. Hizbullah], but after 33 days [of fighting], it gave up, and left [Lebanon].”[60]

Al-Akhbar columnist Nahed Al-Hattar also addressed the implications of Iran’s deployment on Israel’s border. He said that, while Israel is unable to use its nuclear capabilities due to international considerations, Iran has created a “practical, direct and conventional” threat against it: “Israel faces a fateful crisis. As much as it feared the Iranian nuclear program, it never imagined that Iran would be standing on its border even before its nuclear agreement with the Americans was complete. The Iranian threat to Israel is no longer theoretical, nor does it have anything to do with Israel’s deterrent of using its nuclear weapons, which cannot be used considering the international power balance. The threat has become direct, practical and conventional.”[61]

*Y. Carmon is President and Founder of MEMRI; Y. Yehoshua is Vice President for Research and Director of MEMRI Israel.

Endnotes:

[1] From a February 13, 2015 article by columnist Nahed Al-Hattar in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar.

[2] Fars (Iran), April 5, 2014. See also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5848, Iranian Media Reports Deleted Following Publication (1): Senior IRGC Official Speaking On Iran’s Military Involvement In Syria Says Iran Has Established ‘Second Hizbullah’ There, September 25, 2014.

[3] In the last two years, numerous security incidents have occurred on Israel’s northern border. The incidents include the launch of a drone from South Lebanon in April 2013, which, according to Israeli estimates, was carried out by IRGC members; rocket fire towards the Hermon outpost in May 2013; a roadside bomb near the Israeli-Lebanese border in August 2013; roadside bombs on the Israeli-Syrian border in March and October 2014; anti-tank missile fire from Syria towards an Israeli vehicle in June 2014; a drone infiltrating Israel from Quneitra in August 2014; and rocket fire on the Golan in January 2015. This, alongside Israeli attacks on weapons shipments such as a shipment of SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles to Hizbullah in Syria in January 2013, an attack on a truck convoy carrying missiles and a launcher in February 2014, and an attack on a warehouse storing Russian-made missiles that were on their way from Syria to Lebanon in December 2014.

[4] The notion of a single front from the Rosh HaNikra to Quneitra (i.e., from the Mediterranean to the Golan) was expressed repeatedly in the Lebanese press. See for example a January 19, 2015 article in the daily Al-Safir, an article by Firas Al-Shoufi from the same date in Al-Akhbar, and Nahed Hattar’s January 21, 2015 article in Al-Akhbar. The head of Al-Akhbar‘s board of directors, Ibrahim Al-Amin, expressed a similar notion in the daily as early as May 27, 2013.

[5] This violation of a decades-long status quo is so grave that, in a late January 2015 interview with Foreign Affairs magazine, Bashar Al-Assad persisted in denying that it was happening, claiming, “Never has an operation against Israel happened through the Golan Heights since the cease-fire in 1974. It has never happened. So for Israel to allege that there was a plan for an operation—that’s a far cry from reality, just an excuse, because they wanted to assassinate somebody from Hizbullah.” Foreign Affairs (U.S.), January 25, 2015.

[6] On Hizbullah’s violations of Resolution 1701, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5857, “Daily Close To Hizbullah: In Violation Of UNSCR 1701, Hizbullah Has Resumed Operations South Of The Litani River,” October 13, 2014.

[7] Al-Alam TV (Iran), February 2, 2015.

[8] LDC (Lebanon), January 29, 2015.

[9] Many columnists close to Hizbullah and Iran addressed the scenario of an imminent all-out war with Israel. For example, columnist Wafiq Qanso described Hizbullah’s considerations prior to reacting to the Israeli attack as follows: “The time, place, and manner of a reaction is subject to the examination of the leadership of the resistance.” He said that such an examination takes into account several elements, including “the reality in the region and the possibility of a counter-reaction [by Israel] and a slide into extensive war.” Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), January 21, 2015. Lebanese analyst ‘Ali Haidar wrote: “It is now clear that direct Israeli military intervention will trigger a parallel regional intervention on an [even] larger and more dangerous scale, leading to a scenario of regional escalation.” Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), February 13, 2015. Iranian analyst Hassan Hanizadeh, who is close to Iranian regime circles, wrote: “The current confrontation is a prelude to a comprehensive war that will not be confined to South Lebanon, and may even spread south of Quneitra.” Fars, Iran, January 28, 2015. Al-Akhbar’s Ibrahim Al-Amin wrote, “The possibility of an all-out conflict breaking out that will leave no border between Lebanon and Syria is valid and in effect.” Al-Akhbar, Lebanon, May 27, 2013.

[10] Brigadier Yadollah Javani, an advisor to Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC, said in a February 15, 2015 interview on Iran’s Al-Alam TV: “Nasrallah announced they [Hizbullah] would respond to the [January 18] attack, and we saw how this response was carried out. The beauty of it is that the Zionists, for their part, did not respond at all. The reason is their intense fear of the outbreak of an all-out war.”

[11] Recently, many Iran and Hizbullah cells across the world planning attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets were discovered. For example, Uruguay in early January 2015 expelled a top diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Montevideo on suspicion of his involvement in placing a bomb near the Israeli Embassy in the city; see: English.alarabiya.net, February 6, 2015. Likewise, in April 2014, two Hizbullah operatives planning an attack against Israeli tourists were arrested in Thailand; see: English.alarabiya.net, April 18, 2014. In May 2013, Nigerian security forces uncovered a Hizbullah terror cell that planned to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in the country and in other parts of West Africa. In February 2013, Nigerian security forces uncovered a terror squad operated by the IRGC’s Qods Force that was planning attacks against Chabad House and against offices of the Israeli Zim shipping lines in the city of Lagos. See: Haaretz, IBA, May 30, 2013.

[12] Reports on Iranian forces participating in the fighting in Syria appeared in Iran as early as 2013. See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1040, “Despite Denials By Iranian Regime, Statements By Majlis Member And Reports In Iran Indicate Involvement Of Iranian Troops In Syria Fighting,” December 4, 2013.

Recently, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported, citing Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, that Iran was airlifting Shi’ite warriors, especially Iraqis and Afghans, to Latakia, Syria, where they are trained by the IRGC before being dispatched to Dar’a. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, February 13, 2015.

[13] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5877, Iranian Campaign Touts IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani As ‘Savior Of Iraq’; Soleimani: Iran Has Thousands Of Organizations Like Hizbullah; I Pray To Die A Martyr, November 10, 2014.

[14] Mehr (Iran), February 5, 2015.

[15] Tasnim (Iran), February 11, 2015.

[16] Tasnim (Iran), February 4, 2015.

[17] Mehr (Iran), January 30, 2015.

[18] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5848, Iranian Media Reports Deleted Following Publication (1): Senior IRGC Official Speaking On Iran’s Military Involvement In Syria Says Iran Has Established ‘Second Hizbullah’ There, September 25, 2014.

[19] Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), Almayadeen.net, May 7, 2013.

[20] ISNA (Iran), May 11, 2013.

[21] The statements were made in an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV. Irinn.ir, May 17, 2013.

[22] Al-Safir (Lebanon), May 10, 2013.

[23] Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), February 13, 2015.

[24] Recently, former Lebanese prime minister Sa’d Al-Hariri, chairman of the Al-Mustaqbal faction, expressed harsh criticism of Hizbullah’s involvement in Syria. In a speech marking the 10^th anniversary of the assassination of his father, Rafiq Al-Hariri, he said: “[In the past] we said to Hizbullah: entering the Syrian war is lunacy in itself. It has brought the terrorist insanity into our country. Today we say to it that connecting the Golan with the South [of Lebanon] is also lunacy, and another reason for us to say to it: Get out of Syria. Stop importing Syrian conflagrations into our country, first a terrorist conflagration, then a conflagration from the Golan, and tomorrow who knows where [the conflagration] will come from.” See Youtube.com/watch?v=G90oHQpD-AU#t=174, February 14, 2015.

On earlier criticism inside Lebanon on Hizbullah’s involvement in Syria, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 980, Lebanon Openly Enters Fighting In Syria, June 13, 2013. The Lebanese press close to Hizbullah has since May 2013 mentioned numerous times the notion of abolishing the Lebanon-Syria border and the expansion of the resistance front from Lebanon to Syria in the framework of all-out conflict with Israel. For example, Ibrahim Al-Amin wrote in Al-Akhbar: “Everyone must act based on the expansion in practice of [Israel’s] northern front, [which now stretches from Lebanon to Syria]. In the near future, we may see the border with Lebanon remaining calm, while the most active front will be on the Palestine-Syria border [in the Golan]… We are simply facing a new level of unity between the resistance in Lebanon and [that in] Syria… such that the possibility of an all-out conflict breaking out that will leave no border between Lebanon and Syria is valid and in effect.” Al-Akhbar, Lebanon, May 27, 2013. Columnist Nahed Hattar wrote in Al-Akhbar recently that the Golan was “a pan-Arab arena shared by the Lebanese, the Syrian, the Jordanian, and the Iraqi [people]. From today onwards, there is no longer room for partial resistance and for partial national plans.” Al-Akhbar, Lebanon, January 23, 2015. See also MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1138, Following Killing Of Hizbullah Operative Jihad Mughniyah, New Information Comes To Light Regarding Hizbullah, Iranian Activity In Syrian Golan On Israeli Border, January 28, 2015.

[25] Al-Safir (Lebanon), January 31, 2015. The previous day, similar statements were made by IRGC commander Jafari: “Iran and Hizbullah are one, and everywhere the blood of our martyrs on the front is spilled together, and our response will be the same.” Fars, Iran, January 30, 2015.

[26] Fars (Iran), May 4, 2014. See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5848, Iranian Media Reports Deleted Following Publication (1): Senior IRGC Official Speaking On Iran’s Military Involvement In Syria Says Iran Has Established ‘Second Hizbullah’ There, September 25, 2014.

[27] Farda (Iran), April 21, 2014.

[28] Al-Manar TV (Lebanon), May 10, 2013.

[29] Fars (Iran), May 4, 2014.

[30] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Series Report No. 1138, Following Killing Of Hizbullah Operative Jihad Mughniyah, New Information Comes To Light Regarding Hizbullah, Iranian Activity In Syrian Golan On Israeli Border, January 28, 2015.

[31] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5915, Iranian Army Twitter Account, Iranian Army-Affiliated Blog Report: IRGC Troops At Lebanon-Israel Border, December 26, 2014.

[32] ISNA (Iran), January 18, 2012. The Lebanese government requested clarifications on these statements, which resulted in denials by the Iranian foreign ministry. See Fars (Iran), January 25, 2012.

[33] Al-Gumhouriyya (Egypt), Alarabiya.net, February 15, 2014.

[34] The Syrian opposition reported that Soleimani was spotted in Quneitra. Al-Nahar (Lebanon), January 19, 2015. Another report indicated that, on January 11, 2015, “Qassem Soleimani visited Damascus on his way to Beirut, where he met with the resistance leadership.” Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), January 21, 2015. There were also reports, accompanied with photos, that Soleimani recently visited the Dar’a region. Alhadathnews.net, February 10, 2015.

[35] Almanar.com, February 4, 2015.

[36] Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), January 10, 2015, October 23, 2014.

[37] Alwatanvoice.com, February 6, 2015.

[38] Alwatanvoice.com, February 6, 2015.

[39] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5906, Iranian Regime Escalates Threats To Annihilate Israel, December 17, 2014.

[40] See MEMRI TV Clip 4366, Iran’s Leader Khamenei: Armed Struggle Should Continue until Israel Is Destroyed by a Referendum, July 23, 2014.

[41] Snn.ir, November 12, 2014.

[42] Fars (Iran), August 27, 2014.

[43] Fars (Iran), November 26, 2014.

[44] IRNA (Iran), November 27, 2014.

[45] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 5906, Iranian Regime Escalates Threats To Annihilate Israel, December 17, 2014.

[46] See MEMRI TV Clip No. 4366, “Iran’s Leader Khamenei: Armed Struggle Should Continue until Israel Is Destroyed by a Referendum,” July 23, 2014.

[47] See Special Dispatch No. 5808, “Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei Calls For The Annihilation Of Israel,” July 28, 2014.

[48] Fars (Iran), November 27, 2014.

[49] Tasnim (Iran), July 26, 2014.

[50] ISNA (Iran), January 27, 2015.

[51] Tasnim (Iran), August 29, 2014.

[52] On Soleimani’s presence in Dar’a, including photos, see Alhadathnews.net, February 11, 2015. There have recently been many other reports in the Arab press on the involvement of Iranian troops in the fighting in Dar’a. See a February 13, 2015 report in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar, as well as reports in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat from February 12 and February 13. The February 12 article in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat stated that Hizbullah’s leadership in the area was stationed in a special war room in the 9^th Division base in Sanamin, north of Dar’a.

[53] Lbcgrouop.tv; Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), February 12, 2015.

[54] Alhadathnews.net, February 11, 2015.

[55] Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), February 11, 2015.

[56] Iran has made numerous threats to this effect. IRGC Qods Force deputy commander Esmail Qaani said after the Quneitra attack: “We will not rest until Israel is eliminated,” Mehr (Iran), January 22, 2015. IRGC commander ‘Ali Jafari threatened a response by means of Hizbullah’s cells across the world: “They [Israel] are surely familiar with the capabilities of the Hizbullah cells that have been established around the world [to fight] the enemies of Islam, and they fear them. If they expect Hizbullah to respond to their action, they must expect a firm and crushing response not only in the region of their border but in any part of the world where there are Zionist Israelis or their supporters” Fars (Iran), January 30, 2015.

[57] On this, see note 9.

[58] Yjc.ir, February 8, 2013.

[59] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 946, “Iranian Official: The Loss Of Syria Will Lead To The Loss Of Tehran Itself; Syria Is An Iranian Province; Iran Has Formed A 60,000-Strong Syrian Basij; Israel Is Our Only Threat,” March 11, 2013.

[60] See reference in note 59.

[61] Al-Akhbar (Lebanon), February 13, 2015.

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Tags: Anti Semitism, Caliphate, Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian Basij fighters, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jihad, Middle East War, Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Terrorism, United Nations, USA

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Iran prepares to attack Northern Israel

February 22, 2015

February 21, 2015

Iran prepares to attack Northern Israel

By James Lewis

via Articles: Iran prepares to attack Northern Israel.

Take an old-fashioned iron bar magnet and a flat piece of white paper with hundreds of scattered iron filings. As soon as the paper is placed on the magnet, all the particles align around the two separate poles of the bar’s magnetic field. Every iron particle becomes polarized around one of the two extremes.

This is what Obama and Jarrett have managed to achieve in the Middle East. It is not an accident. We know that the two-person cult of Obama-Jarrett have been secretly “negotiating” with the mullahs since the beginning of the Obama years. But time is running out, and everybody over there is planning for the post-O years.

For the Iranians that means moving as fast as possible to capitalize on a historic moment of Western weakness, collusion, and accommodation. The mullahs remember what happened when Ronald Reagan won over Jimmy Carter. They have less than two years to grab whatever they can.

That is why Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops are now moving through Syria into high mountain positions to attack the Golan Heights, the northeastern tip of Israel. Syrian Army forces and Shi’ites recruited in Pakistan and Afghanistan are working under the command of Iran’s Guards.

DEBKAfile has a detailed article on this. (Debka is linked to Israeli intelligence, but this kind of stuff they don’t kid about).

DEBKAfile February 18, 2015, 9:04 AM (IDT)

“Even in stormy winter conditions, the Syrian army continued Wednesday to press forward with Iranian, Hizballah and imported Afghani and Pakistani Shiite forces towards the Golan and Israeli lines. Their immediate objective appears to be the lofty Tel al-Hara mountain fortress, which the Syrian army lost to rebel forces. … Our military sources report that the fall of Tel al-Hara would lay Quneitra (on the Goland Heights) open to attack. …(In) Quneitra… Tehran plans to establish a major military outpost and forward command center up against Israel’s Golan deployment. This is the first instance of Syria’s Bashar Assad agreeing to pass a warfront to Iranian command.”

In response, Israel has conducted a successful decapitation strike across the border, killing half a dozen top Guard officers and half a dozen Hizb’allah planners. Syrian artillery has reportedly killed 200 Guards in a “friendly fire” accident -– but Israel probably knows how to penetrate Syrian battlefield electronics.

Of all the extremely dangerous events that are now gathering momentum in the region, the Iranian-Syrian drive against northern Israel is the most dangerous. The reason is simple. Israel has a sophisticated nuclear, WMD, and missile deterrent, to be used under military doctrines similar to our own. For rational nations, WMDs are a last resort, only usable when a threat is direct and existential. Iran has always played the crazy card, a big show of irrational fanaticism and rage. Maybe they really are crazy — nobody knows for sure.

The mullahs are now trying to push Israel to the wall –- which is when a Western-style deterrent doctrine comes into force. Ayatollah Khamenei, the “Supreme Guide,” has obviously decided this is the moment when America will not defend its former allies. Maybe Obama and Jarrett have actually told him so; maybe Iran has penetrated this supremely foolish and malignant administration. Whatever the case may be, Iran is moving military forces through Syria toward Israel. Iran is also winning power in Yemen (which controls the narrow entrance to the Red Sea). All these moves directly threaten Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Israel and U.S. naval and air force assets in the region.

This is an enormous Iranian gamble, maybe a martyrdom gamble, following Khomeinist war theology.

This is therefore the most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It is a moment of unpredictable confrontation, with nuclear weapons in the offing.

Obama and the Iranians are gambling everything on the toss of a coin.

Israel does not have the manpower to match Iran, Syria, and Hizb’allah at the Golan border. If the Iranians stage a blitzkrieg against the Golan, using a force of fifty or more tanks now located in Syria, Israel may resort to unconventional weapons. These can range from massive electronic warfare to arming the Syrian Sunni rebels, to a wide range of WMD’s.

If the Golan becomes the flashpoint, a likely outcome is a huge regional war, pitting Shi’ite Iran against Sunni Arabs. Israel has long had contacts with the Saudis and Egyptians on how to respond to Iranian aggression. If Israel is drawn into regional chaos, it is likely to support the Sunni powers, who will need all the help they can get.

Iran has a Shi’ite martyrdom creed, which suggests it is trying to provoke an Israeli strike that will predictably enrage Obama and Western liberals, so that Iran can play the aggrieved victim. The Muslim world, which is 80% Sunni, may then back Shi’ite Iran.

The most intelligent form of preemption on the Golan is therefore the most invisible one. Big nuclear bangs are self-defeating. Silent strikes may work. There is now a range of unconventional weapons available to technically advanced nations. However, any local war can spread unpredictably around the Middle East.

Obama has brought us to the nuclear brink. It is vital to understand that this is not an accident. It is purposeful. It is a continuation of the Carter-Brzezinski strategy that put Ayatollah Khomeini into power forty years ago — the first Islamic Caliphate. The Obama-Carter strategy makes no rational sense at all, except perhaps in some drunken faculty lounge. The risks are enormous, and the potential for a major violent backlash against the United States and Europe is very great. Iran now has ICBMs that can reach Europe and soon, the United States.

The single biggest factor in this crisis is the vacuum of American power. For decades the United States was trusted to keep the peace in the Persian Gulf, where Persians and Arabs have been staring at each with implacable hatred for a thousand years, across fifty miles of water.

Obama has destroyed any trust in America. We have “community disorganized” the Middle East.

When Netanyahu comes to Washington in defiance of Obama, the Iranians and ISIS will cheer for Obama.

But maybe the American people will come to their own conclusions.

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Tags: Anti Semitism, Caliphate, IDF, Iran Scam, Iraq, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Jihad, Middle East War, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism, UN, USA

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Obama kept reform Muslims out of summit on extremism

February 21, 2015

Obama kept reform Muslims out of summit on extremism, Washington Examiner, Charles Hoskinson, February 21, 2015

Some of the most prominent reformers have argued for years that the ideological and theological roots of Islamist extremism must be addressed, but administration officials carefully avoided exactly that subject during Obama’s three-day summit.

The White House is also undermining its own efforts by working with people who sympathize with the goals of violent extremist groups, if not their methods, the reformers say.

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

The White House excluded members of a prominent group of reformist Muslims from its terror summit this week, apparently because President Obama rejects their argument that such groups as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are actually motivated by Islam.

A group of 23 prominent Muslim reformers signed a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times on Jan. 11 asking “What can Muslims do to reclaim their ‘beautiful religion’?”

But Obama and officials throughout his administration deny any connection between Islam and the terrorists beheading and burning their victims in a reign of terror in the Middle East.

Muslim reformers say the administration is ignoring them because they disagree with Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the Islamic roots of the extremists’ ideology.

Some of the most prominent reformers have argued for years that the ideological and theological roots of Islamist extremism must be addressed, but administration officials carefully avoided exactly that subject during Obama’s three-day summit.

The White House is also undermining its own efforts by working with people who sympathize with the goals of violent extremist groups, if not their methods, the reformers say.

“We have to own the issue of extremist Islamic theology in order to defeat it and remove it from our world. We have to name it to tame it,” Muslim journalists Asra Nomani and Hala Arafa wrote in an essay published Friday by the Daily Beast.

“Among Muslims, stuck in face-saving, shame-based cultures, we need to own up to our extremist theology instead of always reverting to a strategy of denial, deflection and demonization.”

Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, was close friends with her colleague Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamist extremists in Pakistan in 2002.

At the summit, Obama and other officials insisted there is no link between Islam and the Islamist extremist groups that have been at the forefront of a dramatic spike in terrorist violence worldwide.

“Al Qaeda and [the Islamic State] and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders — holy warriors in defense of Islam,” Obama said Wednesday.

“We must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

The summit aimed at empowering community leaders to help Muslims resist the extremists’ message and improved strategies to communicate a more moderate message. But the administration’s refusal to identify the threat — and the exclusion of those who do from the conversation — works against meeting those goals, reformers said.

Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist radical andone of those who signed the Times advertisement, is co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremist British think-tank. The refusal of Obama and his officials to name their real enemy is referred to among reformers as the “Voldemort effect,” after the villain in the Harry Potter books whose name could not be mentioned.

Nawaz told CNN on Wednesday that refusing to address the Islamist ideology directly puts all Muslims at risk of being blamed for the actions of a tiny minority — the exact opposite effect of what Obama intended by his approach.

“When the president said there’s a poisonous ideology that needs to be refuted by Muslim clerics, the average everyday non-Muslim, the only word they know for that is the religion of Islam and they will think that the ideology we are referring to is the faith of Islam itself and thereby they would end up blaming all Muslims,” Nawaz said.

“Islam is a religion like any other with all the various sects and denominations. Islamism is a desire to impose Islam over society. And that is a very theocratic extremist desire. It can manifest itself violently. When it does, I call it jihadism. But it can also manifest itself politically. It’s still a problematic ideology because any desire to impose anyone’s faith over anyone else is inherently flawed and must be challenged,” he said.

“Al Qaeda didn’t inspire extremism. It was this extremist Islamist ideology that inspired al Qaeda. And unless and until we recognize the problem isn’t these Mafiosi-style groups that we can just take out by taking out their leaderships, but it’s the ideology that inspires them, we’ll have a new [Islamic State] tomorrow.”

The ad, by the Gatestone Institute, states, “If Islam is a religion that stands for justice and peaceful coexistence, then the quest for an Islamic state cannot be justified as sanctioned by a just and merciful creator. It is the duty of us Muslims to actively and vigorously affirm and promote universal human rights, including gender equality and freedom of conscience.”

One of the 23 signatories, Tarek Fatah, is a columnist for the Toronto Sun in Canada, and has noted the lack of response from administration officials and journalists.

“Instead of engaging with these progressive Muslims and supporting their call for reform, not only did the White House ignore them, but every media outlet I saw other than Fox News did as well,” he wrote on Feb. 3.

Instead, the White House and many in the mainstream media work with Muslim leaders who sympathize with the extremists, says Zuhdi Jasser, a doctor and former Navy officer who leads the American Islamic Foundation for Democracy.

“This is a Muslim problem that needs a Muslim solution,” he told the Washington Examiner in November. “You can’t just say it’s about violence. You need sermons that call upon America as the leading force for goodness in the world.”

Jasser’s activism against Islamist theocracy recently landed him a prominent role in what the left-wing Center for American Progress calls the “Islamophobia network.” In a report released Feb. 11, the group said Jasser “promotes conspiratorial claims that America is infiltrated by radical Muslims.”

But many so-called mainstream Muslim groups that Jasser has criticized have documented extremist ties. Sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based Islamist movement, landed two U.S. groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, on the list of terrorist organizations banned by the United Arab Emirates.

Though both groups vigorously deny extremist sympathies or ties, there is ample evidence that CAIR was founded by supporters of Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch and a banned terrorist organization in the United States, and that the Muslim American Society is the Brotherhood’s U.S. branch.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jobs for jihadists, Koran, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Terrorism, Terrorists, Violent extremism
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Jobs for jihadists, Koran, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism, Terrorists, Violent extremism

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