Posted tagged ‘Foreign Policy’

Rouhani Threatens Nuclear Breakout

July 2, 2015

Rouhani Threatens Nuclear Breakout, Commentary Magazine, July 2, 2015

Obama, Kerry, and negotiator Wendy Sherman have effectively become Iran’s lawyers. In doing so, they have applied the logic of “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” to U.S. national security. All one has to do, however, is look at the thinly veiled threats and logical somersaults of Iran’s top leaders . . . to understand just what a capability Tehran is after.

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Where brinkmanship is in the blood of Iranian negotiators, careerism and obsession about legacy appears to be in the blood of their American counterparts. By playing good cop, bad cop with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by quibbling over every understanding previously reached, and by increasingly threatening to walk away, the Iranians appear to be wringing the Americans dry. Obama and Kerry have voided their own red lines, and prepare to normalize an Iranian path to a bomb whenever the Iranian government makes a decision to pursue that option.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is part and parcel of Iran’s brinkmanship. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency in Persian, he declared: “…If they do not fulfill their commitments, the government will be ready to immediately reverse the path in a more severe way than they can ever dream of.”

If Iran’s program has always been peaceful—as repeated Iranian officials have maintained—then reverting to Iran’s previous behavior would mean what exactly?  Threats from Rouhani, the supposed moderate, should get the attention of Congress.

Increasingly, Iran is tripping upon its own internal inconsistencies. First, there was Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s (as yet unseen) sacrosanct nuclear fatwa that forbids nuclear weaponry and yet the Iranian leadership refuses to come clean on past nuclear work for fear it would show nuclear weaponry work. There has also been Iran’s insistence that it seeks a completely indigenous program, yet it doesn’t possess enough natural uranium to fuel an expanded civilian energy program. Now, Rouhani has more or less threatened to build a nuclear bomb, the same threat made previously by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a number of clerical associates of Khamenei himself. On May 29, 2005, for example, Hojjat ol-Islam Gholam Reza Hasani, the Supreme Leader’s representative in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, declared possession of nuclear weapons to be one of Iran’s top goals. “An atom bomb …must be produced as well,” he said.

Obama, Kerry, and negotiator Wendy Sherman have effectively become Iran’s lawyers. In doing so, they have applied the logic of “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” to U.S. national security. All one has to do, however, is look at the thinly veiled threats and logical somersaults of Iran’s top leaders, however, to understand just what a capability Tehran is after.

Pulling down the slaver flags of Islam and Africa

July 2, 2015

Pulling down the slaver flags of Islam and Africa, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 2, 2015

flag_of_muslim_league_1

In our incredibly tolerant culture, it has become politically incorrect to watch the General Lee jump a fence or a barn, but paying tribute to the culture that sent the slaves here and that still practices slavery is the culturally sensitive thing to do.

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The return of the Confederacy was averted in the summer of 2015 when major retailers frantically scoured through their vast offerings to purge any images of a car from the Dukes of Hazzard. If not for their quick thinking, armies of men in gray might have come marching down the streets of New York and San Francisco to stop off for an Iced Mocha Frappucino ™ at a local Starbucks before restoring slavery.

History will little note nor long remember the tired wage slaves making $7.25 an hour while checking Amazon and eBay databases for tin models of an orange car with a Confederate flag on top. During this courageous defense of the homeland from the scourge of a mildly politically incorrect 80s show, Hillary Clinton committed her own unpardonable racist hate crime by saying, “All lives matter”.

The politically correct term is, “Black lives matter.”

Even while our own Boss Hoggs in DC and SF are locking up the Duke boys as a symbol of racism, they are loudly arguing that black lives matter, all lives don’t. The proportion that the weight of a life should be measured by race is the sort of idea that we might have associated with slavery. Today it’s an idea that we associate with racial tolerance as we heal our nation’s racial wounds one race riot at a time.

Romanticizing the South means a whipping from our cultural elite. Instead of romanticizing the culture that bought slaves, they romanticize the Middle Eastern and African cultures that sold them the slaves.

When Obama condemned Christianity for the Crusades, only a thousand years too late, in attendance was the Foreign Minister of Sudan; a country that practices slavery and genocide. Obama could have taken time out from his rigorous denunciation of the Middle Ages to speak truth to the emissary of a Muslim Brotherhood regime whose leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. But our moral liberals spend too much time romanticizing actual slaver cultures.

It’s a lot easier for Obama to get in his million dollar Cadillac with its 5-inch thick bulletproof windows, a ride Boss Hogg could only envy, and chase down a couple of good ole boys than it is to condemn a culture that committed genocide in our own time, not in 1099, and that keeps slaves today, not in 1815.

Even while the Duke boys were being chased through Georgia, Obama appeared at an Iftar dinner; an event at which Muslims emulate Mohammed, who had more slaves than Robert E. Lee. There are no slaves in Arlington House today, but in the heartlands of Islam, from Saudi mansions to ISIS dungeons, there are still slaves, laboring, beaten, bought, sold, raped and disposed of in Mohammed’s name.

Slavery does not exist under the Confederate flag eagerly being pulled down. It does exist under the black and green flags of Islam rising over mosques in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and America today.

In our incredibly tolerant culture, it has become politically incorrect to watch the General Lee jump a fence or a barn, but paying tribute to the culture that sent the slaves here and that still practices slavery is the culturally sensitive thing to do. In 2015, slavery is no longer freedom, but it certainly is tolerance.

And it’s not just about Islam.

If romanticizing Dixie is wrong, so is romanticizing those ancient African cultures so beloved by amateur anthropologists and professional sociologists with more plastic tribal jewelry than sense. Slavery was an indigenous African and Middle Eastern practice. Not to mention an indigenous practice in America among indigenous cultures.

If justice demands that we pull down the Confederate flag everywhere, even from the top of the orange car sailing through the air in the freeze frame of an old television show, then what possible justification is there for all the faux Aztec knickknacks? Even the worst Southern plantation owners didn’t tear out the hearts of their slaves on top of pyramids. The romanticization of Aztec brutality plays a crucial role in the mythology of Mexican nationalist groups like La Raza promoting the Reconquista of America today.

Black nationalists romanticize the slave-holding civilization of Egypt despite the fact that the narrative of the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from bondage played a crucial role in the end of slavery in America. The endless stories about the “Amazons” of the African kingdom of Dahomey neatly fit into the leftist myth of a peaceful matriarchal Africa disrupted by European colonialism, but Dahomey ran on slavery.

The “Amazons” helped capture slaves for the Atlantic slave trade. White and black liberals are romanticizing the very culture that captured and sold their forefathers into slavery. “In Dahomey,” the first major mainstream black musical was about African-Americans moving to Dahomey. By then the French had taken over old Dahomey and together with the British had put an end to the slave trade.

The French dismantled the “Amazons” and freed many of Dahomey’s slaves only for the idiot descendants of both groups to romanticize the noble last stand of Dahomey fighting for the right to export black slaves to Cuba and condemn the European liberators who put a stop to that atrocity.

If we crack down on romanticizing Dixie, how can we possibly justify romanticizing Dahomey or the Aztecs or Mohammed? If slavery and racism are wrong, then they are wrong across the board.

Even by the miserably racist standard under which all lives don’t matter, only black lives matter, Dahomey and Mohammed had bought, sold and killed enough black lives to be frowned upon.

If we go back far enough in time, most cultures kept slaves. The Romans and Greeks certainly did. That’s why the meaningful standard is not whether a culture ever had slaves, but whether it has slaves today. If we are going to eradicate the symbols of every culture that ever traded in slaves, there will be few cultural symbols that will escape unscathed. But the academics who insist on cultural relativism in 19th century Africa, reject it in 19th century South Carolina thereby revealing their own racism.

And so instead of fighting actual modern day slavery in Africa and the Middle East, social justice warriors are swarming to invade Hazzard County.

As Ben Carson pointed out, we will not get rid of racism by banning the Confederate flag. Even when it is used at its worst, by the likes of Dylann Storm Roof, it is a symptom, not the problem. Roof was not radicalized by the dead Confederacy, but by the racial tensions kicked off by the Trayvon Martin case.

The same racial tensions that led to the murder of two police officers by a #BlackLivesMatter protester in New York City led to the massacre of nine black congregants in a church in Charleston. This surge of violence has its roots in racist activism by Obama and his supporters seeking power and political gain, but feeding racial tensions for political purposes eventually risks leading to actual violence.

The Confederate flag is a matter of history. The racial tensions stirred up by Obama have actually gotten people killed. Slavery is not making a comeback and Robert E. Lee will not come riding into San Francisco any time soon. The Civil War ended long ago. The country would be a better place if modern racists who believe that some lives, whether black or white, matter more than others would stop trying to start one.

Cartoons of the day

July 2, 2015

H/t Joopklepzeiker

EU and Islamists

H/t Bring the heat, bring the stupid

kerry-iran

US blocks attempts by Arab allies to fly heavy weapons directly to Kurds to fight Islamic State

July 2, 2015

US blocks attempts by Arab allies to fly heavy weapons directly to Kurds to fight Islamic State, The Telegraph (UK), Defence Editor, July 1, 2015

Barack-Obama-_3361379bPresident Barack Obama pauses speaks at Taylor Stratton Elementary School in Nashville Photo: AP

The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, The Telegraph has learnt.

Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades.

They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad.

High level officials from Gulf and other states have told this newspaper that all attempts to persuade Mr Obama of the need to arm the Kurds directly as part of more vigorous plans to take on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have failed. The Senate voted down one attempt by supporters of the Kurdish cause last month.

The officials say they are looking at new ways to take the fight to Isil without seeking US approval.

“If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything serious about defeating Isil, then we will have to find new ways of dealing with the threat,” said a senior Arab government official. “With Isil making ground all the time we simply cannot afford to wait for Washington to wake up to the enormity of the threat we face.”

Kurdish-weapons_3361377bKurdish Peshmerga fighters train on a weapon during a training session with British military advisers

The Peshmerga have been successfully fighting Isil, driving them back from the gates of Erbil and, with the support of Kurds from neighbouring Syria, re-establishing control over parts of Iraq’s north-west.

But they are doing so with a makeshift armoury. Millions of pounds-worth of weapons have been bought by a number of European countries to arm the Kurds, but American commanders, who are overseeing all military operations against Isil, are blocking the arms transfers.

One of the core complaints of the Kurds is that the Iraqi army has abandoned so many weapons in the face of Isil attack, the Peshmerga are fighting modern American weaponry with out-of-date Soviet equipment.

At least one Arab state is understood to be considering arming the Peshmerga directly, despite US opposition.

The US has also infuriated its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states, by what they perceive to be a lack of clear purpose and vacillation in how they conduct the bombing campaign. Other members of the coalition say they have identified clear Isil targets but then been blocked by US veto from firing at them.

“There is simply no strategic approach,” one senior Gulf official said. “There is a lack of coordination in selecting targets, and there is no overall plan for defeating Isil.”

Western leaders increasingly accept that the “war on Isil” has not gone well, from the moment last year Mr Obama called the group a “JV [junior varsity] team” of jihadists compared with al-Qaeda. At that point, Isil had seized Fallujah, which US forces took in a bloody battle in 2004. It went on to take much of western Iraq and large areas of Syria, and in May took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

Britain is moving closer to expanding its role in the war. The Government on Wednesday gave its strongest indication yet that MPs will be given a new vote on whether to bomb Isil in Syria.

Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said it was “illogical” that British planes were able to hit extremists in Iraq but not across the border.

Any decision to bomb in Syria would have to be approved by MPs. In 2013, the Prime Minister lost a vote for British military action in Syria. However, Mr Fallon said: “It is a new Parliament and I think new Members of Parliament will want to think very carefully about how we best deal with Isil, and the illogicality of Isil not respecting the borderlines.”

Mr Fallon suggested that a bombing campaign could be mounted in revenge for the terror attacks in Tunisia if a link could be proved between the killer and Isil in Libya. Britain would only take military action in Libya “where we think there is an imminent threat, a very direct to British lives or, for example, to British hostages”, he said.

Senior Whitehall sources did not distance themselves from Mr Fallon’s comments but insisted there was no immediate prospect of military action.

The Telegraph understands that Mr Cameron is concerned that Labour might force the Government into another defeat over Syria.

Obama Won’t Enforce Anti-BDS Provision Language in Trade Bill he just Signed

July 1, 2015

Obama Won’t Enforce Anti-BDS Provision Language in Trade Bill he just Signed, The Jewish PressLori Lowenthal Marcus, July 1, 2015

(To enforce the anti-BDS provisions of the legislation Obama just signed would be Islamophobic. Or something. — DM)

Obama (1)U.S. President Barack Obama Photo Credit: WhiteHouse.Gov screen capture

This week the United States officially put on notice its trade partners that it will not countenance boycotts or other economic warfare against Israel.

After signing the relevant trade legislation into law, however, the White House signaled to all its trade partners that they are still free to boycott goods made in the disputed territories, despite the clear language of the legislation the president signed.

This week the Trade Promotion Authority bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The TPA is primarily focused on international trade between the U.S. and Europe. It also included a section which addresses trade between the U.S. and Israel.

That part of the legislation, the U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, bans boycotts and other means of economic warfare against Israel or the “Israeli-controlled territories.” This amendment, introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill-6) with bi-partisan co-sponsorship, was unanimously adopted into the PTA in April.

The passage of the TPA, including the anti-BDS section, should sound a death knell for the BDS (Boycott of, Divestment from and Sanctions against Israel) Movement. It should.

However, as pro-Israel Americans and Israelis learned only a few weeks ago in the Jerusalem passport case (Zivotofsky v. Kerry), there are certain spheres of international decision making over which the president has exclusive, or at least primary and controlling, control. Obama claims that international trade is one of those areas, even though Article 1, Section 8, clause 3, expressly gives Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce.

So even though the TPA is intended to act as a strong deterrent to European and other countries to pass and enforce boycotts of Israeli products, the White House has already signaled that it will not extend its protection to any goods produced in the disputed territories.

The anti boycott of Israel language in the TPA is: “actions by states, nonmember states of the United Nations, international organizations or affiliated agencies of international organizations that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories.” [emphasis added.]

In a statement which Matt Lee of the Associated Press attributed to State Dept. spokesperson John Kirby, the administration made clear that despite signing the TPA, the position of the White House remains, as it has been, that the U.S. opposes boycotts of the State of Israel, but it also opposes the presence of Jews in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.

In the statement the administration argues that by “conflating Israel and ‘Israeli-controlled territories’ a provision of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation runs counter to longstanding U.S. policy towards the occupied territories, including with regard to settlement activity,” and says that every U.S. administration has opposed “settlement activity.”

It goes on to point out that the “U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them and, by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them.”

The U.S. administration announced that it will not jeopardize the holy grail of the two-state solution by enforcing the U.S. law as written and which its leader signed. In the statement it claims that “both parties have long recognized that settlement activity and efforts to change facts on the ground undermine the goal of a two-state solution to the conflict and only make it harder to negotiate a sustainable and equitable peace deal in good faith.” It is on this basis, ostensibly to promote a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that this administration

Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Northwestern University School of Law analyzes several other provisions of the U.S-Israel trade aspect of the TPA which have been largely overlooked. In particular, Kontorovich points out, U.S. courts cannot recognize or enforce the judgment of any foreign court “that doing business in or being based in the West Bank or Golan Heights violates international law or particular European rules.”

Giant new Obama lie: I’m prepared to abandon these Iran nuke negotiations if we can’t get a good deal

July 1, 2015

Giant new Obama lie: I’m prepared to abandon these Iran nuke negotiations if we can’t get a good deal, Hot Air, Allahpundit, June 30, 2015

This may be the single most brazen lie he’s told since the glory days of “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” In fact, I might go one better than that. For sheer lack of believability, this may be the most transparent garbage he’s pushed at the public since he assured voters in 2008 that he had no choice as a deeply religious man but to oppose gay marriage because “God’s in the mix.” No one took him seriously then. No one’s taking him seriously on this either.

And by “no one,” I include former Obama administration staffers in that. Even Team Hopenchange is now worried about a gigantic Obama/Kerry sellout to Iran.

Over his 30-year political career, Kerry has long been knocked for delivering more talk than results. Achieving a nuclear deal he first began pursuing even before he became secretary of state could redefine his place in history.

And that, Republican critics, foreign officials, and even some ex-administration officials say, is a big problem. Kerry’s eagerness for a deal, they argue, risks that the Iranians will seduce him into a bad one.

“I don’t know how anyone who has observed Kerry over the past two years would think differently,” says a former administration official who worked on Iran issues.

He can’t stop Putin, he can’t get Israelis and Palestinians to the table, but he’s going to make rapprochement with Iran work one painstaking sellout at a time. Go read Stephen Hayes’s compendium at the Weekly Standard of how far the goalposts have moved, inch by inch, since the Obama White House first began laying down terms for a nuclear settlement with Iran several years ago. If they make a deal on nukes, it’s a fait accompli that Kerry will start prodding his new friend Javad Zarif to see what the terms of a “grand bargain” with Iran that formally restores diplomatic relations between the two countries might look like. (“Do it now or you’ll never have a chance under a Republican president,” Kerry might tell him.) Frankly, a nuclear sellout in which sanctions are lifted immediately and Iran gets to keep its military sites away from UN inspectors makes more sense with a grand bargain than without. If you’re going to bless the idea of Shiite fanatics having nuclear weapons, you’d better make nice with them.

Anyway, I hope O enjoys the little job approval bounce he’s getting this week while it lasts.

Exit question: If Obama’s prepared to walk away, why did he and Kerry extend the deadline for talks from today to July 7? Iran’s had month upon month to come around to our terms knowing full well that the deadline for a final deal was (supposedly) June 30. They refused to concede. So we’re giving them another chance. Why? You know why. A bad deal is better than no deal.

 

Israeli border troops, US Mid East forces on alert after massive ISIS assault on Egyptian forces in Sinai

July 1, 2015

Israeli border troops, US Mid East forces on alert after massive ISIS assault on Egyptian forces in Sinai, DEBKAfile, July 1, 2015

Sinai_Attack_1.7.15ISIS attacks Egyptian Sinai positions

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant moved ominously close to Israel’s borders Wednesday, July 1 – not as predicted in the north, but in the south, from the Sinai Peninsula. There, ISIS followed up on its Ramadan terror outrages in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and Kobani, with a massive assault on Egyptian forces in the northern Sinai region of Sheikh Zuwaid close to the Israeli and Gaza Strip borders.

Not just a terrorist attack, ISIS launched a full-scale military assault, starting with mortar fire and suicide bombings against five Egyptian military checkpoints.

Using a tactic similar to that employed in the capture of the Iraqi town of Ramadi last month, ISIS gunmen followed this initial assault by riding in on minivans, backed by heavy mortar fire, to storm the positions held by stunned Egyptian troops. Altogether some 20 Egyptian army positions were attacked in and around Sheikh Zuwaid.

Egyptian troop reinforcements setting out from El Arish to the northeast to aid the beleaguered force, went up on mine and bomb traps secretly planted around their camps and police stations. Egyptian Apache assault helicopters striking the ISIS force themselves faced ground fire from shoulder-borne anti-air missiles.

Egyptian forces are reported to have sustained heavy casualties, at least 64 dead and many more wounded. The Islamists are additionally said to have taken Egyptian prisoners as hostages.

As the fighting grew fierce during Wednesday, Israel to shut its border crossings with Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and sent reinforcements south in case the jihadis launched an attack on Israel from northern Sinai.

Our military sources also report that US Middle East forces located in Jordan and at Sharm el-Sheikh are on the ready in case the Islamic State decides to attack the US officers and men at the Multinational Force facility in Sinai, which is located near the Sheikh Zuwaid battlefield.

The ISIS Sinai offensive is part and parcel of the reign of terror launched last Friday by Yassin Sahli when he beheaded his French boss, and Seifeddine Rezgui, who murdered 39 holidaymakers on a Tunisian beach. Standing ready for the Islamist offensive in Sinai were the jihadis of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which recently declared Sinai a province of the Islamic State and took an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

ISIS draws on two additional major sources for its fighting manpower: the infrastructure it established in turbulent Libya for training and arming jihadis to cross the Egyptian border into Sinai; and the fatal attraction its radicalizing ideology holds for young Muslims who are taught that the brutal murder of Islam’s foes is a cleansing and purifying act.

Humor| A real Grand Unification Theory: Christianity, Islam and Paganism

July 1, 2015

A real Grand Unification Theory: Christianity, Islam and Paganism, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 30,2015

(I refuse to acknowledge that the views expressed in this article are or are not mine. However, they do not necessarily reflect the views of Warsclerotic or any of its (other) editors. — DM)

Einstein tried but failed to develop a Grand Unification Theory. Perhaps he should have selected a name without the acronym GUT. Hope remains, and I developed one in less than an hour. It explains life, the universe and everything.

Einstein

I. posits:

1. An infinite number of universes exist, all of which have infinite numbers of galaxies.

2. Some universes and some galaxies are Christian (whatever that may mean there), some are Islamic (whatever that may mean there) and some are Pagan (whatever that may mean there). Pagan refers to all religions other than Christianity and Islam.

3. The allegedly Christian, Islamic and Pagan galaxies generally, but with exceptions, despise each other and, in some cases, themselves.

4. Each of the universes, and accordingly each of the galaxies, is controlled by a god of its own religion.

5. The multiple gods are, in reality, high-level laboratory technicians who enjoy damaging each other’s lab experiments.

II. Proofs:

1. The Islamic gods forbid alcohol, while the Christian and Pagan gods relish it.

2. Not many years ago, Haiti had developed the best rum in any universe — a fifteen year old nectar of the Christian and Pagan gods. Horrified, the Islamic gods conspired to ruin it and Haiti as well. To that end, they dispatched

a. Earthquakes,

b. Droughts,

c. United Nations peace keeping forces to spread disease, death, instability, poverty and

d. Clinton charities to take whatever Haiti still had.

e. In consequence, Haitian rum ceased to be palatable.

3. Since Dear Leader Osama Obama took office, the Islamic gods have encouraged The Islamic Republic of Iran to increase its nuclear energy weaponization program while pretending not to. By inducing Obama to ignore their efforts and to pretend that the Islamic Republic is as peaceful as He pretends the rest of Islam is, the Islamic gods inspired Him to give the Islamic Republic everything it wants and more. The Islamic gods also promised Him a great foreign policy legacy, akin to nothing ever accomplished by any former or future (if any) president.

Shaken by their defeat on alcohol, the Christian and Pagan gods abstained from interfering with the Islamic gods’ efforts. Some may even have converted to Islam, just to be on the winning side. Conversion — which no Islamic god would even consider — may have caused Christian gods little difficulty.

In the fourteenth century Pope Pius II, having given up on starting another crusade against the Islamist Turks because he could garner little support, wrote a letter to the Turkish ruler, Mehmed. It was distributed throughout Christendom. He

proposed not only to recognize Mehmed’s claim to be the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire but also to transfer to him the imperium of the West, just as six and a half centuries earlier his predecessor Leo III, by the coronation of Charlemagne, had transferred (or “translated,” to use the technical term) it from the Greeks to the Franks. All the sultan had to do was to convert to Christianity. What, after all, asked the pope in somewhat unpapal terms, were “a few drops of baptismal water” in exchange for the right to rule over the entire Roman world?  It was an empty gesture, as he must have known. [Emphasis added,]

Some Christian and Pagan gods may be more amenable to conversion to Islam than Islamic gods are to Christianity.

Dedication

This otherwise incomparably short essay is dedicated to our Supreme Leader, Barack Humble Osama Obama who, by virtue of His equally incomparable empathy, insight, humility and intellect, has managed to come up even shorter.

barack-bicycle

I am not insane

If I were insane, that’s exactly what I would write. Go figure.

Oren blasts Iran nuclear deal: It’s not linked to changed Iranian behavior

June 30, 2015

Oren blasts Iran nuclear deal: It’s not linked to changed Iranian behavior, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, June 29, 2015

 

The Iranian negotiations that never end

June 29, 2015

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

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

yh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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