Posted tagged ‘Iran’

The Time for Meaningful Action Has Come

July 1, 2014

The Time for Meaningful Action Has ComeThere is only one sensible response to the abduction and murder of Israeli citizens.

via PJ Media » The Time for Meaningful Action Has Come.

July 1, 2014 – 12:00 am

The response to the murder of the three abducted Israeli teens, Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel, has been predictable in its call for restraint and moderation. Left-wing organizations like the Israeli political party Meretz, the New Israel Fund, and J Street, wedded to nebulous and self-serving concepts like “social justice,” ramble on about calm, measure, reconciliation, and the larger interests of communal peace — as if avowedly vicious and homicidal entities like Hamas and its offshoots will feel humbled and ashamed of their murderous practices and will experience a benign change of heart.

In fact, they are busy celebrating what they regard as a revanchist victory — indeed, candies were handed out to mark the abduction and the ambulance ferrying the bodies of the slain teens was pelted with stones and spray-painted by Palestinian villagers — and will not be deterred from carrying out further atrocities in the future if they are allowed to get away with them. Perhaps the principals of our conciliatory organizations would feel differently if their own children had been kidnapped, tortured, and killed. But one thing is certain: for all their “prayers for the suffering families” and “calls for peace,” they are incapable of imagining what their own people endure and are barren of genuine feeling, while full of empathy and concern for their assailants, who wish only for their speedy death and the subsequent extinction of the Jewish state. There is only one word for such flaccid, self-righteous and ultimately self-immolating appeasers: idiots.

As for the Israeli leadership, it’s a mixed bag. Outgoing president Shimon Peres is a grande fromage who over the years has grown gamy and rancid, with a soft European rind. Benjamin Netanyahu should be cut a little slack given the intense pressures, domestic and international, that he labors under — but he is not his father, who was cut in the mold of the pragmatic and unyielding patriot Ze’ev Jabotinsky. (See Benzion Netanyahu, The Founding Fathers of Zionism.)

With only a few exceptions, like Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, the Israeli leadership comprises a motley crew best left to their often lucrative but generally undistinguished careers, prone to log-rolling and corruption, devoid of segulah (Hebrew for virtue or inner treasure), more preoccupied with their American holdings and European vacations than with the security of their beleaguered nation.

The theory, of course, that presumably governs their behavior is that diplomacy and treating with perennial enemies or political adversaries — e.g. acceding to American bullying, glad-handing Turkey, subsidizing the PA, victualing Gaza, engaging in outrageously disproportionate prisoner swaps, giving a hostile and often traitorous Israeli media and academy a free pass, etc. — is a way of ensuring the ultimate security of the country. On the contrary, Israeli citizens are rendered increasingly unsafe by the prosecution of such measures.

When it comes to Israel’s Muslim belligerents, anyone with more than an ounce of common sense knows that working with murderers and ideological maniacs is counter-productive. As Caroline Glick has pointed out, exchanging one kidnapped soldier for over a thousand Muslim terrorists is the height of folly. “In every instance, these terrorist releases have led to the murder and abduction of other Israelis.” The result is that Israeli policies “have placed targets [on] the backs of every citizen of Israel.” How, then, should Israel have responded to Hamas, the abductors of Gilad Shalit? The terrorist organization should have been given three days to return its captive, or risk its total destruction, which Israel has the power to accomplish. There is, really, no other effective way of dealing with a musteline pack of jihadist predators and barbarians than to credibly threaten it with extinction. Gilad Shalit would have been back home in record time, and the three Israeli teens would not have been abducted and killed. The thousands of Israeli citizens murdered and maimed in the various intifadas would still be alive and hale.

The time for temporizing, fruitless negotiations, so-called realist politics, and tolerance of an active and toxic fifth column that diligently and indefatigably strives to undermine the safety of Israeli citizens and the security of the state, is demonstrably over.

The heinous events that have just occurred should be change accelerators in Israeli thinking to redeem the political and moral parvitude too many of its leaders have exhibited for so many years. If the IDF doesn’t smash utterly the terrorist infestations that have wrought so much harm on the country and will continue to do so, then there is no forgiving, international opinion and diplomatic pressures notwithstanding. At the same time, every left-wing media outlet and treasonous university department in the country should be rigorously monitored and in some cases, if necessary, shut down. Much of the Shomron must be annexed. Now may be the time for the imposition of martial law in order to evade the insidious complicities of the Supreme Court. Without these determined initiatives, such events as we have just witnessed will inevitably keep happening — rocket attacks, abductions, killings, the disruption of ordinary life, the whole ball of filthy wax. For such a sensible if aggressive policy of vigorous, comprehensive, and meaningful retaliation, rather than tit-for-tat reprisals, is nothing less than a kind of mitzvah with social, ethical, and national implications.

After Syria bombs Iraq, growing fears of regional conflict

June 26, 2014

After Syria bombs Iraq, growing fears of regional conflictJordan,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all said to be bolstering recon flights inside their airspace;
Kerry warns against exacerbating tensions

By Hamza Hendawi and Lara Jakes June 26, 2014, 2:11 pm

via After Syria bombs Iraq, growing fears of regional conflict | The Times of Israel.

 

Fleeing Iraqi citizens from Mosul and other northern towns sit on a truck as they cross to secure areas at a Kurdish security forces checkpoint, in the Khazer area between the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Kurdish city of Irbil, northern Iraq, Wednesday June 25, 2014. (photo credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
 

BAGHDAD (AP) — Syrian warplanes bombed Sunni militants’ positions inside Iraq, military officials confirmed Wednesday, deepening the concerns that the extremist insurgency that spans the two neighboring countries could morph into an even wider regional conflict. US Secretary of State John Kerry warned against the threat and said other nations should stay out.

Meanwhile, a new insurgent artillery offensive against Christian villages in the north of Iraq sent thousands of Christians fleeing from their homes, seeking sanctuary in Kurdish-controlled territory, Associated Press reporters who witnessed the scene said.

The United States government and a senior Iraqi military official confirmed that Syrian warplanes bombed militants’ positions Tuesday in and near the border crossing in the town of Qaim. Iraq’s other neighbors — Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were all bolstering flights just inside their airspace to monitor the situation, said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

American officials said the target was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Sunni extremist group that has seized large swaths of Iraq and seeks to carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.

“We’ve made it clear to everyone in the region that we don’t need anything to take place that might exacerbate the sectarian divisions that are already at a heightened level of tension,” Kerry said, speaking in Brussels at a meeting of diplomats from NATO nations. “It’s already important that nothing take place that contributes to the extremism or could act as a flash point with respect to the sectarian divide.”

Meanwhile, two US officials said Iran has been flying surveillance drones in Iraq, controlling them from an airfield in Baghdad. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said they believe the drones are surveillance aircraft only, but they could not rule out that they may be armed.

A top Iraqi intelligence official said Iran was secretly supplying the Iraqi security forces with weapons, including rockets, heavy machine guns and multiple rocket launchers. “Iraq is in a grave crisis and the sword is on its neck, so is it even conceivable that we turn down the hand outstretched to us?” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The intelligence-gathering and arms supplies come on the heels of a visit to Baghdad this month by one of Iran’s most powerful generals, Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, to help bolster the defenses of the Iraqi military and the Shiite militias that he has armed and trained.

The involvement of Syria and Iran in Iraq suggests a growing cooperation among the three Shiite-led governments in response to the raging Sunni insurgency. And in an unusual twist, the U.S., Iran and Syria now find themselves with an overlapping interest in stabilizing Iraq’s government.

None-Arab and mostly Shiite, Iran has been playing the role of guarantor of Shiites in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It has maintained close ties with successive Shiite-led governments since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who oppressed the Shiites, and is also the main backer of Syria’s Assad, a follower of Shiism’s Alawite sect.

In a reflection of how intertwined the Syria and Iraq conflicts have become, thousands of Shiite Iraqi militiamen helping President Bashar Assad crush the Sunni-led uprising against him are returning home, putting a strain on the overstretched Syrian military as it struggles to retain territory recaptured in recent months from rebels.

Anthony Cordesman, a prominent foreign policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that with Syria’s apparent willingness to now take on the Islamic State directly, “the real problem is how will Iran, the Iraqi Shiites and the Alawites in Syria coordinate their overall pressure on the Sunni forces?”

Qaim, where the Syrian airstrikes took place Tuesday, is located in vast and mostly Sunni Anbar province. Its provincial government spokesman, Dhari al-Rishawi, said 17 people were killed in an air raid there.

Reports that the Sunni militants have captured advanced weapons, tanks and Humvees from the Iraq military that have made their way into Syria, and that fighters are crossing freely from one side to the other have alarmed the Syrian government, which fears the developments could shift the balance of power in the largely stalemated fight between Assad’s forces and the Sunni rebels fighting to topple him.

Bilal Saab, a senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, said Assad’s immediate priority is to fight the rebels inside his own country.

“His army is already overstretched and every bullet that doesn’t hit enemy targets at home can be a bullet wasted,” he said. “Going after ISIL along border areas could serve tactical goals but is more a luxury than anything else.”

In Brussels, Kerry said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appears to be standing by his commitment to start building a new government that fully represents its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.

However, al-Maliki, in his first public statement since President Barack Obama challenged him last week to create a more inclusive leadership or risk a sectarian civil war, rejected calls for an interim “national salvation government .”

Al-Maliki has faced pressure, including from his onetime Shiite allies, to step down and form an interim government that could provide leadership until a more permanent solution can be found.

Al-Maliki, however, insisted the political process must be allowed to proceed following April elections in which his bloc won the largest share of parliament seats.

“The call to form a national salvation government represents a coup against the constitution and the political process,” he said. He added that “rebels against the constitution” — a thinly veiled reference to Sunni rivals — posed a more serious danger to Iraq than the militants.

Al-Maliki’s coalition, the State of the Law, won 92 seats in the 328-member parliament in the election, but he needs the support of a simple majority to hold on to the job for another four-year term. The legislature is expected to meet before the end of the month, when it will elect a speaker. It has 30 days to elect a new president, who in turn will select the leader of the majority bloc in parliament to form the next government.

More of Iraq’s sectarian tensions boiled over into violence on Wednesday, with Sunni militants shelling a Christian village 45 miles (75 kilometers) from the frontier of the self-ruled Kurdish region, which has so far escaped the deadly turmoil unscathed.

The shelling of the village of Hamdaniya sparked a flight by thousands of Christians from it and other nearby villages toward the Kurdish region. Hundreds of cars, many with crucifixes swinging from their rear-view mirrors, waited to cross into the relatively safe northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.

Others were forced to walk, including 28-year-old Rasha, who was nine months pregnant and carried her 3-year-old son on her hip. After her husband’s car broke down, the woman, who would give only her first name for fear of militant reprisals, and her mother-in-law walked for miles toward the checkpoint, fearful she would give birth before reaching safety.

Like most others, the women said they had nowhere to go, but hoped strangers would take them in in the Christian-dominated area.

“Otherwise we will sleep in a park,” Rasha said, shrugging.

Meanwhile, pro-government forces battled Sunni militants, threatening a major military air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, military officials said. The militants had advanced into the nearby town of Yathrib, just five kilometers (three miles) from the former U.S. base, which was known as Camp Anaconda. The officials insisted the base was not in immediate danger of falling into the hands of the militants.

PM fears US hatching bad deal with Iran, summons his DC envoy, calls Putin

June 26, 2014

PM fears US hatching bad deal with Iran, summons his DC envoy, calls Putin
Netanyahu also to dispatch top officials to try to prevent accord that would turn Tehran into a threshold nuclear power

By Times of Israel staff June 26, 2014, 2:31 am

via PM fears US hatching bad deal with Iran, summons his DC envoy, calls Putin | The Times of Israel.

 

US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, March 3, 2014 (photo credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
 

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday summoned home his ambassador to the US for emergency consultations, spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and prepared to dispatch a delegation of top officials in a bid to thwart what he reportedly fears is a dangerous deal being prepared by US-led negotiators over Iran’s rogue nuclear program.“There is growing concern in Jerusalem that a deal is being hatched,” Israel’s Channel 2 news reported.Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States and one of Netanyahu’s closest advisers, who was on hand in DC Wednesday to greet the visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres, was called home later in the day for two days of urgent consultations with the prime minister, the TV report said.Netanyahu also selected a team of officials, led by his Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz, and his National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen, who are set to leave Israel on Sunday for urgent talks with representatives of the P5+1 nations negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Those negotiations are set to resume next Wednesday.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin at Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem on June 25, 2012. (Photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/FLASH90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin at Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on June 25, 2012. (Photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/FLASH90)

 

In Netanyahu’s phone conversation with Putin, the TV report said, the message conveyed was that any deal with Iran must leave it years away from a potential breakout to the bomb. Netanyahu’s concern is that the deal being hatched would turn Iran into a threshold nuclear state, capable of breaking out to the bomb in a matter of months.

The White House is well aware of Israel’s worries, the TV report said, but evidently does not share them.

Last November, taken by surprise as the P5+1 negotiators reached an interim agreement with Iran, Netanyahu publicly slammed it as a “historic mistake” and urged the US in vain not to approve it.

 

President Barack Obama greets President Shimon Peres at the White House on June 25 (photo credit: Kobi Gidon/GPO)

President Barack Obama greets President Shimon Peres at the White House on June 25 (photo credit: Kobi Gidon/GPO)
 

During their talks at the White House on Wednesday, President Barack Obama told Peres — who steps down as president next month — that the US would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Netanyahu, however, has been demanding that Iran be denied the capacity to build nuclear weapons — which would entail the dismantling of Iran’s entire “military nuclear program,” the prime minister says, notably including its uranium enrichment capabilities. Obama has indicated that Iran could retain an enrichment capacity, if subject to intrusive inspections.

Obama told Peres that there were still gaps between the sides in the P5+1 talks with Iran, which are being held in the hopes of reaching a permanent agreement with Tehran by July 20 to curb its nuclear program. Briefing Peres on the current state of the negotiations, Obama promised that the US position would not change on Iran’s breakout potential or on key aspects of its technological development, and said that the US will not compromise on Israel’s security.

After the meeting, Peres told journalists that he hoped the final agreement with Iran would be similar to the agreement by which Syria was forced to part with its entire chemical weapons stockpile and the dismantling of its related infrastructure earlier this year. With such a deal in place, Peres said, Israel would consider supporting the removal of some of the sanctions against Tehran.

Peres also underlined that no deal with Tehran would be better than a bad deal that turned Iran into a threshold state.