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North Korean Nukes, South Korea, Japan, China and Obama

September 10, 2016

North Korean Nukes, South Korea, Japan, China and Obama, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 10, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

On September 9th, North Korea conducted its fifth nuke test, of its most powerful nuke thus far. Can Obama get China to help make North Korea stop developing and testing nukes? Nope. China sees Obama, not as the representative of the world’s greatest power, but as a joke. He has no clout internationally and is a national embarrassment.

China and North Korea – a very short history

Here’s a link to an article I posted on June 25, 2013 about the Korean conflict. To summarize, China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) have a long history of acting together. China views the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which borders North Korea to the south and is an American ally, as a threat. She does not want reunification of the Korean peninsula under a government favorable to America.

When, on June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea with Russian aircraft, weaponry, training and other substantial support, China did not assist North Korea. North Korean forces pushed the South Korean government, as well as the few American military advisers (then under the command of the Department of State), south to the Pusan perimeter. Following General MacArthur’s unexpected and successful Inchon invasion which began on September 15th, American and other United Nations forces pushed the North Korean forces back north: MacArthur sent his by then greatly augmented forces east to Wonson and eventually managed to push North Korean forces to the northern side of the Yalu River. However, Chinese forces struck back en masse and MacArthur’s forces were driven back to Seoul.

Ever since bringing to an end MacArthur’s successes in the Korean Conflict, China has supported North Korea. She has opposed, and has then declined to enforce, significant sanctions responsive to North Korean nuclear and missile development and testing. While China may acquiesce in weak UN resolutions condemning North Korean provocations, she rarely goes beyond that.

China, Japan and the two Koreas

China has a long memory and still resents, bitterly, the lengthy period prior to and during World War II when Japan occupied significant parts of China. Ditto South Korea, all of which was under Japanese occupation for a lengthy period prior to and during World War II. Although China has substantial trade with both South Korea and Japan, she is more hostile to Japan than is South Korea; the latter two have substantial mutual interests transcending trade.

Perhaps the most important current dispute between China on the one hand, and Japan-South Korea-America on the other, involves the plans of Japan and South Korea to defend against North Korean missiles by the installation of THAAD anti-missile weapons provided by America. China’s stated reason for opposition to the THAAD system is that it could be used against Chinese, as well as North Korean, missiles. Why does China assert this objection unless she hopes to fire missiles at one or both of them? If China fires missiles at Japan and/or South Korea, they have every right to destroy her missiles and to respond in kind with U.S. assistance if requested.

President Obama

condemned Pyongyang’s fifth nuclear test today in the “strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability” as outraged lawmakers from both parties called for tougher action to stop North Korea’s nuclear program. [Emphasis added.]

That may well be all that Obama does — despite the warnings of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, that

we have to make it absolutely clear that if they engage in any military activity, they will be destroyed. We have to have a credible deterrent. That seems to be the only thing that will stop North Korea from engaging in military action… We have sanctioned them, and we should keep sanctioning them, but it’s not going to stop them from developing the nuclear weapons.” [Emphasis added.]

Obama won’t do that:

In a statement Friday, President Obama vowed to “take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.”

Obama did not suggest what He might have in mind, beyond historically ineffective sanctions and condemnations “in the strongest possible terms,” to let North Korea know that there will be “consequences.”

A September 9th article at the New York Times provides an unpleasant analysis of the options Obama now has, and which His successor will have, in dealing with North Korea.

A hard embargo, in which Washington and its allies block all shipping into and out of North Korea and seek to paralyze its finances, risks confrontations that allies in Asia fear could quickly escalate into war. But restarting talks on the North’s terms would reward the defiance of its young leader, Kim Jong-un, with no guarantee that he will dismantle the nuclear program irrevocably.

For more than seven years, President Obama has sought to find a middle ground, adopting a policy of gradually escalating sanctions that the White House once called “strategic patience.” But the test on Friday — the North’s fifth and most powerful blast yet, perhaps with nearly twice the strength of its last one — eliminates any doubt that that approach has failed and that the North has mastered the basics of detonating a nuclear weapon.

Despite sanctions and technological backwardness, North Korea appears to have enjoyed a burst of progress in its missile program over the last decade, with experts warning that it is speeding toward a day when it will be able to threaten the West Coast of the United States and perhaps the entire country. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Mr. Obama has refused to negotiate with the North unless it agrees first that the ultimate objective of any talks would be a Korean Peninsula without nuclear arms. But Mr. Kim has demonstrated, at least for now, that time is on his side. And as he gets closer to an ability to threaten the United States with a nuclear attack, and stakes the credibility of his government on it, it may be even more difficult to persuade him to give up the program.

 In a statement Friday, Mr. Obama condemned the North’s test and said it “follows an unprecedented campaign of ballistic missile launches, which North Korea claims are intended to serve as delivery vehicles intended to target the United States and our allies.”

“To be clear, the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state,” he said.

Many experts who have dealt with North Korea say the United States may have no choice but to do so. [Emphasis added.]

“It’s too late on the nuclear weapons program — that is not going to be reversed,” William Perry, the defense secretary under President Bill Clinton during the 1994 nuclear crisis with North Korea, said in August at a presentation in Kent, Conn. The only choice now, he argued, is to focus on limiting the missile program. [Emphasis added.]

Obama has taken no significant steps to limit Iran’s continuing missile development and testing program. How can He limit that of North Korea without Chinese cooperation?

Yet the latest effort to do that, an agreement between the United States and South Korea to deploy an advanced missile defense system in the South, has inflamed China, which argues the system is also aimed at its weapons. While American officials deny that, the issue has divided Washington and Beijing so sharply that it will be even more difficult now for them to come up with a joint strategy for dealing with the North. [Emphasis added.]

China has been so vocal with its displeasure over the deployment of the American system that Mr. Kim may have concluded he could afford to upset Beijing by conducting Friday’s test. [Emphasis added.]

Fueling that perception were reports that a North Korean envoy visited Beijing earlier this week.

“North Korea almost certainly sees this as an opportunity to take steps to enhance its nuclear and missile capabilities with little risk that China will do anything in response,” Evans J.R. Revere, a former State Department official and North Korea specialist, said in a speech in Seoul on Friday. [Emphasis added.]

The breach between China and the United States was evident during Mr. Obama’s meeting with President Xi Jinping last week. “I indicated to him that if the Thaad bothered him, particularly since it has no purpose other than defensive and does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China, that they need to work with us more effectively to change Pyongyang’s behavior,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, as the advanced missile defense project is known. [Emphasis added.]

North Korea and Iran

Iran and North Korea have a long history of cooperation in developing nukes and missiles with which to deliver them. In the past, Iranian scientists have been present at North Korean nuke tests, and vice versa. They have also assisted each other in the development of nukes and missiles.

Iran and North Korea have substantial reasons to cooperate: by virtue of the Iran scam, Iran now has lots of money but is at least minimally restricted in its nuke development. North Korea has little usable currency, needs whatever it can get, and no attempts to halt or even to limit its nuke development have worked.

A missile fired recently by North Korea bore a striking resemblance to an Iranian missile.

Photos released by North Korea of its launch of long-range ballistic missiles are the latest proof of the close military cooperation between Pyongyang and Tehran, an Israeli expert in the field told the news site IsraelDefense on Tuesday.

According to Tal Inbar — head of Space and UAV Research Centre at the Fisher Institute for Air & Space Strategic Studies — what was new in the photos was the shape of the warheads attached to the Nodong missiles, known in Iran as the Shahab-3.

Until now, such warheads — first detected by Inbar in Iran in 2010 — have not been seen in North Korea. At the time, Inbar dubbed them NRVs (or, “new entry vehicles”), which became their nickname among missile experts around the world. [Emphasis added.]

Inbar told IsraelDefense: “The configuration that we saw [on Tuesday] is identical to what we saw in Iran six years ago. In principle, its penetrating body (warhead) is identical to that of Scud missiles, but is mounted on the Shahab-3, and creates a more stable entity than other Shahab/Nodong warheads.”

Inbar said this was the third time that something of this nature had appeared in Iran before it did in North Korea. “But we must remember that the two countries engage in close cooperation where military and space-directed missiles are concerned,” he said. “It is thus possible that both plans and technology are being transferred regularly from one to the other.” [Emphasis added.]

Are North Korea and Iran rational? According to this New York Times analysis, North Korea is.

North Korea’s actions abroad and at home, while abhorrent, appear well within its rational self-interest, according to a 2003 study by David C. Kang, a political scientist now at the University of Southern California. At home and abroad, he found, North Korean leaders shrewdly determined their interests and acted on them. (In an email, he said his conclusions still applied.) [Emphasis added.]

“All the evidence points to their ability to make sophisticated decisions and to manage palace, domestic and international politics with extreme precision,” Mr. Kang wrote. “It is not possible to argue these were irrational leaders, unable to make means-ends calculations.” [Emphasis added.]

Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served as the Asian affairs director on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, has repeatedly argued that North Korea’s leadership is rational.

I submit that the same analysis, applied to Iran, produces the same result. Iran’s leaders know what they want, and are sufficiently rational to achieve it; they did. Obama, not the leader of a dictatorial theocracy, is sufficiently irrational to believe that what he wants for the Islamic Republic of Iran is what America needs it to have. It is not.

Obama and Iran

Obama’s Iran scam would be farcical were it not potentially deadly. He did not do what would have been best for America and the free world in general — increase sanctions until Iran complied fully with UN resolutions on missile testing, ceased Uranium enrichment and disposed of the means to do it, ceased all nuke research as well as all nuke cooperation with North Korea and ceased supporting all terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Instead, perhaps considering Himself above such trivia, Obama sought little more than what He considered His greatest achievement — His legacy:

iranian-navy-copy-1

Conclusions

If Obama were viewed internationally as the powerful leader of the world’s most powerful nation, He might be able to get China to clamp down, severely and successfully, on North Korea’s nuke and missile development. Were China to reject His overtures, He could arrange for it to wish that it had acceded. That’s not who Obama is, as demonstrated by, among His other actions, entering into the Iran Scam deal with Iran.

Perhaps Kim Jong-un needs to dress like an Iranian mullah to convince Obama to give him a “deal” similar to the one He gave to Iran. He had better hurry: that won’t work with President Trump.

Categories: Axis of evil, China, Contempt for America, Foreign policy, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran and North Korea, Iran scam, Iranian missile warheads, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Japan, North Korea, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama and China, Obama and Iran, Obama and North Korea, South Korea
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Putin-Erdogan deal deadlocks Aleppo, Manjib frays

August 13, 2016

Putin-Erdogan deal deadlocks Aleppo, Manjib frays. DEBKAfile, August 13, 2016

n syria flashpoints

This hopeless standoff is the result of Moscow’s refusal to provide the Syrian army and its allies with enough air support to pull ahead, in the wake of President Vladimir Putin talks with Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan in St. Petersburg Tuesday, Aug. 9.

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

All day Friday and Saturday, Aug.11-12, fighters of Hizballah’s elite Radwan Force – 3,000 in all – streamed to the pivotal Aleppo battlefield from all parts of Lebanon and Syria. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources disclose that they were following the orders of their leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was warned by Tehran that the pro-Assad army fighting for Syria’s second city was flagging in the face of rebel assaults.

The Radwan Force was called in as the only military capable of saving the day for Assad and his allies. This step had been carefully avoided by Nasrallah was required in view of the heavy losses his organization had already suffered for backing the Syrian army – some 1,500 dead in three years – and intense fallout at home.

He has now been forced to sacrifice his last remaining military asset to fight in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in recent times in the Middle East, even though it promises a swelling procession of Hizballah coffins returning to Lebanon.

According to our military sources, the battle to wrest Aleppo from rebel control, now in its second month, has claimed some 2,000 war dead and 4,000 injured on both sides – not counting the masses of civilians.

Some units have lost more than a quarter of their combatants and dropped out.

Nasrallah knows exactly what is happening in this critical arena. He also understands that a unit which loses 30 percent of its combatants is deemed in military terms unfit to continue fighting and that the battle for Aleppo will be drawn out and bloody. Yet he is willing to commit his entire deck of military resources to keep Bashar Assad’s fighting in Aleppo.

There is no hope of an early resolution in Aleppo, because stalemate between the combatants is exceptionally complicated and thankless. Whenever one side captures terrain, it quickly discovers it was drawn into a trap and under siege.

This hopeless standoff is the result of Moscow’s refusal to provide the Syrian army and its allies with enough air support to pull ahead, in the wake of President Vladimir Putin talks with Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan in St. Petersburg Tuesday, Aug. 9.

Aleppo_Rebels_ATGM-firings

Erdogan explained that if Assad’s army, along with Hizballah and Iran, defeated the Turkish-backed rebel forces holding Aleppo, he would suffer a serious knock to his prestige and setback for Syrian policy. This was more than he could sustain in the troubled atmosphere in Turkey in the wake of the failed coup against him.

He therefore asked the Russian president to abandon his Bashar Assad, Iran and Hizballah to their fate in Aleppo.

Erdogan was backed up in his request to Putin by a large Turkish military and intelligence delegation which arrived in St. Petersburg the next day to work with their Russian counterparts on setting up a joint military control center in Turkey.

DEBKAfile’s sources disclose the first two tasks assigned the new war room:

1. Russian aerial bombardments over Aleppo would not go beyond keeping the rebels from defeating Syrian and allied forces in Aleppo, but would refrain from supporting offensive action by the latter for routing the former.

2. Turkish air and ground forces would remain in a state of preparedness to ensure that rebel Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Kurdish YPG militia never moved out of the town of Manjib, from most parts of which they ousted ISIS, to the town of Jarabulus on the Turkish border.I

ISIS had used Manjib as its primary way station for supplies from Turkey 30km to the north. (See attached map). But to drive the jihadists completely out of the Syrian-Turkish border region, the combined rebel forcesmust advance on Jarabulus and expel ISIS from there too.

However, Turkish officers in the joint command center with Russia made it clear that any Kurdish forces allowed to reach that border would come under Turkish army attack.

The Russian president complied with Erdogan’s wishes on the Manjib-Jarabulus front as well as Alepp

Categories: Air support, Aleppo Syria, Erdogan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian military, Iranian proxies, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Syrian rebels, Turkey - Syria war
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Officials In Lebanese, Gazan Terror Organizations Confirm: Iran Funds Our Activity

August 11, 2016

Officials In Lebanese, Gazan Terror Organizations Confirm: Iran Funds Our Activity, MEMRI, August 11, 2016

Arab media have recently published statements by officials in the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Gazan Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, and by their supporters, confirming what has long been known – namely that these Lebanese and Gazan terror organizations receive substantial financial and military assistance from Iran. These statements join many reports, especially in the anti-Iranian media, regarding Iran’s funding of various terrorist organizations across the Arab world. According to these reports, the assistance comes mainly from the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The following are some examples of these statements and reports from the last two months:

Hizbullah Secretary-General Nasrallah: Hizbullah’s Entire Budget Is Provided By Iran

In a speech he delivered on June 24, 2016, marking 40 days after the killing of Mustafa Badr Al-Din, who was considered to be Hizbullah’s chief operations officer, and following the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Hizbullah that threaten its financial infrastructure and income, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah clarified: “Hizbullah’s budget – its salaries and expenditures, [the money that pays for] its food and drink, weapons and missiles – [all come from] Iran. Is that clear?… As long as Iran has money we have money. Do you require greater transparency than that[?] The funds earmarked for us do not reach us through the banks. We receive them the same way we receive our missiles, with which we threaten Israel.”[1]

Hamas Official Abu Marzouq: Iran’s Assistance To Hamas Is “Not Comparable” To Any Other Assistance

The deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouq, tweeted on June 15, 2016: “The aid extended by Iran to the Palestinian resistance, in provisions, training and funds, is not comparable [to any other aid], and most other countries cannot match it.”[2]

29502Abu Marzouq’s tweet

Former Lebanese Minister Wiam Wahhab: Iran Has Funded Resistance In Palestine

On June 25, 2016, in response to a remark by former Lebanese prime minister Sa’d Al-Hariri that Iran funds fitna(internecine strife) in the Arab world,[3] former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab, a known supporter of Hizbullah and the resistance axis, tweeted: “O Sheikh Sa’d [Al-Hariri], Iran has funded resistance in Palestine to restore Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa and the Church of the Sepulcher [to Palestinian hands, whereas] Saudi Arabia paid to destroy Syria, Iraq and Yemen.” In another tweet he wrote: ” O Sheikh Sa’d, Iran funded resistance in the Arab homeland rather than fitna, [whereas] your kingdom [Saudi Arabia, who supports Al-Hariri and his faction in Lebanon,] sponsors and funds terrorism. The funds of all the terrorist [organizations] in the world are Wahhabi [i.e., Saudi] funds.”[4]

29503Wiam Wahhab’s tweets

Saudi Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: Hizbullah’s Weapons Come Directly From IRGC; Iran Has Renewed Regular Aid To Islamic Jihad Organization

The anti-Iranian press, such as the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, also reported on Iran’s funding of terrorist organizations in Lebanon and Gaza. On June 29, 2016, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat confirmed Nasrallah’s statements regarding the Iranian funding. The report stated that Hizbullah’s funds came from the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while its weapons are provided by the IRGC. It quoted the director of the Umam Research and Documentation center in Lebanon, Luqman Salim, a Shi’ite known for his opposition to Hizbullah, as saying that between 70% and 80% of Hizbullah’s funds come from Iran. According to Salim, Iran also invests about $400 million of the IRGC’s budget in the Islamic Radio and Television Union, a group of stations which includes the Iranian Al-Alam but also Hizbullah’s Al-Manar and Al-Mayadin and the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds (all of which broadcast from Lebanon) and Hamas’s Al-Aqsa station, which broadcasts from Gaza.

The daily also cited a “knowledgeable source” as saying that until 2005 Iran transferred to Hizbullah between $200 million and $250 million annually, but since then the allocation has increased: After the 2006 Lebanon War it rose to $850 million, and since Hizbullah entered the Syria war its budget has become unlimited, because it has become part of Tehran’s war effort there.[5]

On May 25, 2016, the daily reported, citing sources close to the Islamic Jihad organization in Gaza, that Iran had renewed its regular financial aid to the organization after the two sides agreed to renew their mutual relations.[6] According to these sources, an Islamic Jihad delegation headed by the organization’s secretary-general Ramadan Shalah visited Iran in April 2016, and during this visit Tehran renewed its sponsorship of the organization after the latter accepted its terms. In meetings held by the delegation during this visit, including with IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari and Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran clarified its vision of Islamic Jihad’s course in the coming years. The sources claimed further that Soleimani decided, in coordination with the organization’s military and political bureaus, to grant $70 million a year out of the IRGC budget to Islamic Jihad’s military wing, Saraya Al-Quds, and to reorganize this body and appoint Khaled Mansour, who is close to Tehran, as its commander.[7]

Endnotes:

[1] Alahednews.com.lb, June 24, 2016.

[2] Twitter.com/mosa_abumarzook, June 15, 2016.

[3] Al-Mustaqbal (Lebanon), June 26, 2016; Al-Hariri’s remark was a response to Nasrallah’s  statement one day earlier that Hizbullah’s entire budget comes from Iran.

[4] Twitter.com/wiamwahhab, June 25, 2016.

[5] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (Lebanon), June 29, 2016.

[6] Reports in the Arab media in the passing year indicated that Iran had suspended its assistance to Islamic Jihad following disagreements between them on the crisis in Yemen. According to these reports, the Islamic Jihad refused Iran’s demand to declare its opposition to the Arab Coalition’s activities in Yemen. See for example Aljazeera.net, May 26, 2016, Janoubia.com, April 3, 2016.

[7] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 25, 2016.

Categories: Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Israel, Iranian proxies, Lebanon, Syria war
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Iran-Backed Rebels Use Hospitals as Human Shields

August 10, 2016

Iran-Backed Rebels Use Hospitals as Human Shields, Gatestone Institute, Con Coughlin, August 10, 2016

The revelation that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are deliberately using civilian institutions for their war effort inevitably will draw comparisons with the tactics used by other radical Islamist groups such Hamas, which regularly uses institutions such as hospitals to launch attacks against Israel.

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♦ “While the West urges the Saudi-led coalition to use all means possible to avoid civilian casualties, we must also be aware of the tactics the Iranian-backed rebels are using as part of a deliberate policy to discredit the coalition war effort.” — Senior Western official.

♦ Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are using hospitals as military command posts, thereby deliberately putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk, according to a new report into Yemen’s long-running civil war.

Hostilities in the Yemeni conflict resumed at the weekend following the collapse of peace talks in Kuwait. The talks came after Houthi fighters, who are backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, rejected a U.N.-sponsored peace plan and announced the establishment of a 10-member governing body to run the country.

Within hours of the peace talks ending, the Saudi-led military coalition, which is backed by both the U.S. and Britain, had resumed air strikes against Houthi rebel positions in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. Initial reports said that at least 21 people, the majority of them civilians, had been killed, including a number of workers in a potato chip factory in Sana’a. In addition, the international airport at Sana’a was shut down by the airstrikes after Saudi coalition officials notified airlines that incoming flights would be barred for 72 hours.

1774A factory in Sana’a, Yemen, burns after an airstrike on August 9, 2016. (Image source: Al Jazeera video screenshot)

It is the first time in five months that Sana’a has been bombed by warplanes from the coalition, which also includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan and other Middle East countries.

Human rights groups, which have repeatedly raised concerns about the high number of civilian casualties, will be particularly concerned by the resumption of hostilities. The U.S.-backed Saudi coalition is seeking to restore the democratically-elected government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was forced to flee Sana’a in February by Houthi rebels. The Houthis are being supported by elite units from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). More than 6,000 people have been killed in the civil war, including around 3,000 civilians.

Both sides in the conflict have been accused of causing unnecessary civilian casualties, with the Saudis, who have suffered significant casualties of their own, being singled out for particular censure over the way they have conducted coalition air strikes.

But an investigation conducted by coalition officials into claims that Saudi warplanes have directly targeted civilians found that the air strikes had been justified, because the Iranian-backed rebels had been using civilian institutions, such as hospitals, as command posts to launch attacks against coalition forces and their allies.

A report issued earlier this week by the coalition’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) refuted earlier claims by the French-based charity, Doctors Without Borders, that the Saudi coalition had deliberately caused civilian deaths by bombing Haiden Hospital in Yemen’s Saada province. Instead, investigators found that at the time of the attack, Houthi rebels were occupying the hospital, making it a legitimate target.

In all, JIAT investigated eight high-profile bombings where the UN or humanitarian organisations have accused the coalition of killing civilians or bombing hospitals and humanitarian structures. In each case, it concluded that all “safety procedures implemented by coalition forces adhered to international humanitarian law.”

The revelation that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are deliberately using civilian institutions for their war effort inevitably will draw comparisons with the tactics used by other radical Islamist groups such Hamas, which regularly uses institutions such as hospitals to launch attacks against Israel.

“It is clear that the tactics used by the Houthis, where they are using places like hospitals for their military campaign, has contributed significantly to the heavy civilian death toll,” said a senior Western official. “While the West urges the Saudi-led coalition to use all means possible to avoid civilian casualties, we must also be aware of the tactics the Iranian-backed rebels are using as part of a deliberate policy to discredit the coalition war effort.”

Categories: civilian casualties, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies
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Connecting the Nuclear Dots

August 5, 2016

Connecting the Nuclear Dots, Gatestone Institute, Peter Huessy, August 5, 2016

♦ Iran seeks to do us grave harm, potentially with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The threat warnings are clear and we have strong evidence — Iran has attacked us repeatedly over the past 30 years.

♦ Instead of heeding the nuclear missile “dots” that are emerging all around us, we are busy promoting trade with Iran, downplaying its violations of the nuclear deal, simply ignoring its ballistic missile developments and dismissing the growing evidence of its terrorist past.

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, Congress, the Bush administration, and terrorist experts complained that the country had simply not “connected the dots” provided by prior terrorist threats.

The 9/11 Commission also concluded that the attacks “should not have come as a surprise,” as “Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers.”

The Commission then listed 10 Islamic terror plots against the US prior to 9/11:

“In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb.

“Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks …

“In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down US helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73…

“In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific.

“In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the US program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others.

“In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US servicemen and wounding hundreds.

“In August 1998, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more.

“In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists…

“…US Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the US-Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.

“In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.”

Despite the overwhelming indications that an attack like 9/11 was around the corner, as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the country in her April 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission, “The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America’s response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient.”

Are we now better equipped to “connect the terrorist-threats by dots” than we were prior to 9/11? Certainly we are not still echoing the testimony of Richard Clarke when he told the Emerging Threats Subcommittee in the summer of 2000 that the administration “had not yet” determined how to spend homeland security funds even some eight years after the first World Trade Center bombing of February 1993.

Unfortunately, not only are we not connecting the terrorist dots, we are actively downplaying their significance. Nowhere else is this more apparent than in the virtually complete failure, on the part of the US, to hold Iran responsible for the terror attacks that have killed and maimed thousands of Americans since 1979. This failure is all the more disturbing after the numerous court decisions that have found Iran accountable for nearly $60 billion in damages owed to the victims and survivors of these attacks, including the 9/11 attacks.

The outstanding news analyst and author Melanie Phillips wrote nearly a year ago that Iran had been “…perpetrating acts of war against Western interests for more than three decades — including playing a key role in the 9/11 attacks on America.” Phillips noted that a Revolutionary Guard-Iranian Intelligence (MOIS) task force

“designed contingency plans for unconventional warfare against the US… aimed at breaking the American economy, crippling or disheartening the US, and disrupting the American social, military and political order — all without the risk of a head-to-head confrontation which Iran knew it would lose.”

She explained that the court testimony from former Iranian agents illustrates that Iran “…devised a scheme to crash hijacked Boeing 747s into the World Trade Center, the White House and the Pentagon. … The plan’s code name was ‘Shaitan dar Atash’ (‘Satan in flames’).” Further, the court evidence revealed that Iran obtained “a Boeing 757-767-777 flight simulator which it hid at a secret site where the 9/11 terrorists were trained.”

In December 2011, Judge George B. Daniels found that Iran, with the participation of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was directly and heavily involved in the 9/11 atrocities. Khamenei instructed intelligence operatives that while expanding collaboration between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, they must restrict communications to existing contacts with al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al Zawahiri and Imad Mughniyeh — Hezbollah’s then terrorism chief and agent of Iran.

1081Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (center), is shown meeting in May 2014 with Iran’s military chief of staff and the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. (Image source: IRNA)

While the 9/11 Commission found solid evidence Iran aided the 9/11 hijackers in their travels from Iran, the “Extensive cooperation in major global terrorist activities,” between Iran, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, including the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia and the 1998 East Africa US embassy bombings, escaped the 9/11 Commission’s detailed attention. Notably, as long ago as in 2000, a US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst was alerting the government to a web of connections between al-Qaeda, the Iranian intelligence agencies controlled by Khamenei, and other terrorist groups.

Many press reports and analysts, cognizant of Iran’s terrorist history and aware that Iran has been designated by the US Department of State as the world’s premier state sponsor of terror, choose to believe the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal should not be derailed over concern of Iran’s possible future terrorist plans. Especially when it is often assumed these plans are aimed primarily at Israel and groups in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and thus not of real concern to the United States.

Is the nuclear deal with Iran thus a good trade? We get to slow Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, but any serious sanctions or military effort to stop Iran’s terror agenda are off the table. Let’s connect the new nuclear-related Iran dots.

First, the world’s expert on Iran ballistic missiles, Uzi Rubin, revealed on July 15 that Iran has five new missile capabilities: they can strike the middle of Europe, including Berlin; they can target with GPS accuracy military facilities in Saudi Arabia; they can launch missiles from underground secret tunnels and caves without warning; they have missiles that are ready to fire 24/7; and they have developed other accurate missiles whose mission is to strike targets throughout Gulf region.

Second, the Associated Press revealed that a side agreement under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear “deal” actually allows Iran to break out of the agreement in year 11, not 15, at which point Iran will not even be six months away from having sufficient nuclear fuel to arm a nuclear warhead, and Iran will be able to install nuclear centrifuges five times more efficient than the ones they have today.

Third, according to German intelligence reports, Iran has, a few dozen times since the July 2015 nuclear agreement, sought to purchase nuclear ballistic missile technology, a violation of previous UN resolutions.

As Americans wonder who will be behind the next terrorist attacks on our country — “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by social media from Islamist groups; organized cells of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah; states such as Iran and Syria; or a combination of all three — we would do well to be reminded of the long-term use of terrorism by the former Soviet Union as one of their trademark elements of “statecraft.”

Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons has not been stopped and at best has been delayed. Add to that Iran’s enhanced ballistic missile capability, its growing partnership with North Korea and its history of terrorist attacks on the United States, and connecting the dots reveals a stark reality — nuclear terrorism by missile may be on its way.

During the spring and summer of 2001, US intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that Al Qaeda was determined to strike. The specific information pointed to threats from overseas. The Bush administration began developing a strategy in early 2001 to eliminate Al Qaeda in three years. The 9/11 attacks happened “too soon.”

Iran seeks to do us grave harm, potentially with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The threat warnings are clear and we have strong evidence — Iran has attacked us repeatedly over the past 30 years

But instead of heeding the nuclear missile “dots” that are emerging all around us, we are busy promoting trade with Iran, downplaying its violations of the nuclear deal, simply ignoring its ballistic missile developments and dismissing the growing evidence of its terrorist past.

In short, we are not connecting these dots; we are erasing them.

Categories: Iran and 9/11, Iran and terror, Iran scam, Iranian military, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies
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Al Qaeda in Iran

July 25, 2016

Al Qaeda in Iran, Weekly Standard August 1, 2016 issue, Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn

Last week, President Barack Obama’s administration dismissed reports of Iranian support for al Qaeda as the product of fevered minds. Claims of collaboration between the Islamic regime and the terrorist organization are little more than “baseless conspiracy theories,” an Obama administration official told The Weekly Standard. “Anyone who thinks Iran was or is in bed with al Qaeda doesn’t know much about either.”

That group of ignoramuses apparently includes the Obama administration’s top official on terror financing. Adam J. Szubin, the Treasury Department’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, this week designated three senior al Qaeda officials operating in Iran. A statement explaining the designations says Treasury “took action to disrupt the operations, fundraising, and support networks that help al-Qaida move money and operatives from South Asia and across the Middle East by imposing sanctions on three al-Qaida senior members located in Iran.”

One of the three operatives is part of a “new generation” of al Qaeda leaders, replenishing the ranks of those who have been killed by the United States and its allies. Treasury identifies that man, Faisal Jassim Mohammed al-Amri al-Khalidi, as the chief of al Qaeda’s Military Commission and a key operative in al Qaeda’s global network, responsible for weapons acquisition and a liaison between al Qaeda leaders and associated groups.

There is considerably more evidence of Iran’s support for al Qaeda in the collection of documents captured during the raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound on Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. Senior U.S. intelligence officials have told The Weekly Standard that the document collection includes letters describing the nature of the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda and specific ways in which Iran has aided al Qaeda’s network and operations. The Obama administration has refused to release the documents to the public and fought to keep them hidden during the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal.

The Weekly Standard contacted the Obama administration official who last week dismissed Iran-al Qaeda cooperation to see if the new designations changed his view that claims of Iranian support for al Qaeda are “baseless conspiracy theories.” He replied: “Al Qaeda has long used Iran as a transit and facilitation point between South Asia and the Middle East, sometimes with the knowledge of some Iranian authorities. At the same time, the Iranian government has imprisoned some al Qaeda operatives, and we believe today’s action provides another opportunity for Iran to take action against al Qaeda.”

Think about that for a moment. The Obama administration accuses Iran of harboring senior al Qaeda operatives and sanctions those operatives in an effort to prevent them from hurting America and its interests. But rather than scold Iran for continuing to provide safe haven to terrorists devoted to killing Americans, the administration spins the move as an “opportunity” for Iran.

An opportunity? Why would the Iranian regime need the U.S. government to provide an “opportunity” to take action against the very terrorists it has been supporting for more than a decade? This is illogical, insulting, and dangerous. But it is consistent with the kind of irresponsible whitewashing of the radical regime that has become a trademark of the Obama administration’s approach to Iran.

And now the Obama administration pretends that another public accusation of Iran’s complicity in al Qaeda’s terror is just an “opportunity” for the terror-sponsoring regime to stop doing what it is committed to doing?

Iran’s support for al Qaeda is not a “baseless conspiracy theory.” It’s a dangerous reality.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Iran and al-Qaeda, Iranian proxies, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Iran, Obama and Islamic terrorism
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Hezbollah’s Massive Arms Build-up in Lebanese Civilian Areas

July 19, 2016

Hezbollah’s Massive Arms Build-up in Lebanese Civilian Areas, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, July 19, 2016

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Every calendar quarter the United Nations Security Council holds an extensive debate on the Israeli-Palestinian “situation.” The Israeli and Palestinian UN representatives make speeches following the Secretary General’s report on the current status, which are normally predictable restatements of their respective positions. This time, however, Israel’s ambassador Danny Danon, addressing the Security Council at its July 12th meeting, presented new graphic evidence of Hezbollah’s alarming arsenal of rockets and missiles located in civilian areas of southern Lebanon.

Ten years ago, when Security Council Resolution 1701 was adopted, ending the war that had broken out between Israel and Hezbollah, the terrorist group was estimated to have had about 7000 rockets. The resolution called for Hezbollah and other armed groups not officially a part of the Lebanese government’s armed forces to relinquish their weapons. Instead, precisely the opposite has happened. Hezbollah never stopped its arms build-up, which has been funded and supplied principally from the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, Iran.

Hezbollah now has approximately 120,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israeli civilian population centers.  By way of comparison, Ambassador Danon said that “more missiles are hidden underground in 10,000 square kilometers [of Lebanon] than the above-ground 4 million square kilometers” of the European North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries.

Referring to aerial satellite imagery, based on the latest Israeli intelligence, Ambassador Danon demonstrated to the members of the Security Council the location of rocket launchers and arms depots that Hezbollah had placed in civilian areas. “The village of Shaqra has been turned into a Hezbollah stronghold with one out of three buildings used for terror activities, including rocket launchers and arms depots,” Ambassador Danon said.  “Hezbollah has placed these positions next to schools and other public institutions putting innocent civilians in great danger.”

Hezbollah, aided and abetted by Iran, was “committing double war crimes,” the Israeli ambassador charged. “They are attacking civilians, and using Lebanese civilians as human shields,” he said. “We demand the removal of Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon.”

Not surprisingly, Ambassador Danon’s presentation of irrefutable evidence of Hezbollah’s clear and present danger to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, and his demand for Security Council action, fell on deaf ears. In her own statement that followed Ambassador Danon’s remarks, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said not a word about what was just presented regarding Hezbollah. Instead, she stuck to her canned talking points that continue to draw a moral equivalence between acts of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense. “In recent months, there’s been a steady stream of violence on both sides of the conflict,” she said. Then Ambassador Power proceeded to criticize the building of Israeli settlements, as if again to draw a moral equivalence between housing construction and terrorism. She assailed what she called Israel’s “systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.” All that Ambassador Power said about Lebanon was to decry the political stalemate in electing a new president and to state that “the United States is helping the Lebanese armed forces build the capabilities necessary to counter violent extremism and protect the Lebanese people.”  If the Obama administration were truly interested in countering “violent extremism” in Lebanon and protecting the Lebanese people, it would start by doing everything possible to eliminate the violent extremist threat posed by Hezbollah’s massive rearmament. That, in turn, would require the Obama administration to reverse its appeasement course towards Iran and tighten, not loosen, the financial screws on the regime.

There is no doubt where the bulk of Hezbollah’s funding and arms is coming from. Even Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged last January Iran’s leading role in arming Hezbollah.

The terrorist organization’s chief Hasan Nasrallah boasted last month about Iran’s bankrolling its operations:

“We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Nasrallah was quoted by Hezbollah’s official Al Ahed newspaper as saying.  “As long as Iran has money we will have money. Hezbollah gets its money and arms from Iran, as long as Iran has money, so does Hezbollah. We extend gratitude to the Leader Imam, [His Eminence] Sayyed Khamenei, and to the leadership of the Islamic Republic and its government, president, scholars and people for their generous support which has never stopped.”

To add insult to injury, Nasrallah made his remarks while honoring the “martyrdom” of a top Hezbollah terrorist killed in Syria whom has been linked to the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon. That attack took the lives of 241 Americans. Now, Hezbollah is stronger than ever, with Iran’s “generous support.”

Iran continues to fund global terrorism, with its treasury being replenished thanks to the Obama administration’s largesse.

Categories: Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran and Israel, Iranian proxies, Israel, Lebanon, Obama and Iran, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, UN Security Council
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How Hilary’s foreign policy ‘succeeded’ for Iran

June 4, 2016

How Hilary’s foreign policy ‘succeeded’ for Iran, DEBKAfile, June 4, 2016

6Hardline Ayatolla Ahmad Janati

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, declared Thursday June 2 in a major foreign policy address: ‘We are now safer than we were before this agreement (the International-Iran nuclear deal).”

A short while before her speech, the State Department, published its yearly report on world terror, and determined, as in past years, that Iran remains “the leading state sponsor of terrorism, on account of its support for designated terrorist groups and proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.”

Three days earlier, on May 31, scientists at the Institute for Science and International Security, published an extensive analysis of the second report of the IAEA in Vienna, whose job it is to monitor the Iranian nuclear program and establish whether Tehran’s is complying with its commitments.

Their report is titled: IAEA’s Second JCPOA Report: Key Information Still Missing.

The American scientists found oversights in the international watchdog’s report, suggesting collaboration between the Obama administration and the IAEA to conceal Iranian violations.

The scientists offered some examples of these omissions:

Data is lacking on the number of centrifuges, including advanced models, operating in Natanz enrichment facilities as well as the Fordo underground plant. There is no information on what happened to the 20 percent-enriched uranium still remaining in Iran.

Another example is the lack of information on the Iran’s heavy water which is provisionally stored in Oman. Who does it belong to and who oversees it?

These are just a few examples of the blanks in the promised oversight over Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention Iran’s banned ballistic missile program which is geared to design missiles able to reach the US.

The Obama administration had based his detente with Tehran, capped by the nuclear deal, on producing a breakthrough in US-Iran relations. It was intended to strengthen the moderate, reformist and liberal political elements in Iran. ButDEBKAfile sources and Iranian experts report that the exact opposite happened, as is evident in two important elections held in Iran in the past two weeks.

In the elections to the Assembly of Experts, the body which chooses Iran’s top leader, the 91-year-old Ayatollah Ahmad Janati was elected. He is one of the most extreme hardliners in Iran.

A few days later, Ali Larijani was re-elected as Speaker of the Iranian Parliament. Larijani is close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He won by a land slide over the reformist candidate put forward by President Hassan Rouhani.

Five months ago, when the first results of the Iranian elections to the Majlis and to the Assembly of Experts came in, there were cries of joys in the Obama administration. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Jawad Zarif proclaimed it at the time a victory for the moderates.

Where did these ‘moderates’ disappear in the interim and how did they become supporters of the extremists?

On Friday, June 3, less than 24 hours after Clinton’s foreign policy speech, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei celebrated his victory over American policy saying: Iran has many small and big enemies, but foremost among them are America and Britain. “Any cooperation with the US,” he stressed, “is an act against Iran’s independence.”

Categories: Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, IAEA, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran - secret deal, Iran and terror, Iran centrifuges, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iran's heavy water, Iranian "moderates", Iranian hardliners, Iranian proxies, Iranian reformers
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Iran’s Chess Board

June 3, 2016

Iran’s Chess Board, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, June 3, 2016

official_photo_of_hassan_rouhani_7th_president_of_iran_august_2013

Even if Obama’s successor disavows his actions, by the time Obama leaves office, America’s options will be more limited than ever before. Without war, his successor will likely be unable to stem Iran’s rise on the ruins of the Arab state system.

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Reprinted from jpost.com.

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.

But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.

So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.

To understand why, consider two events of the past week.

Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.

On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.

That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

There is nothing new about Iranian efforts to raise and run fronts against Israel within its territory and along its borders. Iran poses a strategic threat to Israel through its Hezbollah surrogate in Lebanon, which now reportedly controls the Lebanese Armed Forces.

In Gaza, Iran controls a vast assortment of terrorist groups, including Hamas.

In Judea and Samaria, seemingly on a weekly basis we hear about another Iranian cell whose members were arrested by the Shin Bet or the IDF.

But while we are well aware of the efforts Iran is making along our borders and even within them to threaten Israel, we have not connected these efforts to Iran’s actions in Iraq and Syria. Only when we connect Iran’s actions here with its actions in those theaters do we understand what is now happening, and how it will influence Israel’s long-term strategic environment.

The big question today is what will replace the Arab state system.

Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya no longer exist. On their detritus we see the fight whose results will likely determine the fates of the surviving Arab states, as well as of much of Europe and the rest of the world.

Israel’s strategic environment will be determined in great part by the results of Iran’s actions in Iraq and Syria. While Israel can do little to affect the shape of events in these areas, it must understand what they mean for us. Only by doing so, will we be able to develop the tools to secure our future in this new strategic arena.

Until 2003, Saddam Hussein was the chief obstacle to Iran’s rise as the regional hegemon.

US forces in Iraq replaced Hussein until they left the country in 2011. In the meantime, by installing a Shi’ite government in Baghdad, the US set the conditions for the rise of Islamic State in the Sunni heartland of Anbar province on the one hand, and for Iran’s control over Iraq’s Shi’ite-controlled government and armed forces on the other.

Today, ISIS is the only thing checking Iran’s westward advance. Ironically, the monstrous group also facilitates it. ISIS is so demonic that for Americans and other Westerners, empowering Iranian-controlled forces that fight ISIS seems a small price to pay to rid the world of the fanatical scourge.

As former US naval intelligence analyst J.E. Dyer explained this week in an alarming analysis of Iran’s recent moves in Iraq published on the Liberty Unyielding website, once Iranian- controlled forces defeat ISIS in Anbar province, they will be well placed to threaten Jordan and Israel from the east. This is particularly the case given that ISIS is serving inadvertently as an advance guard for Iran.

In Syria, Iran already controls wide swaths of the country directly and through its surrogates, the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias it has fielded in the country.

Since the start of the war in Syria, Israel has repeatedly taken action to block those forces from gaining and holding control over the border zone on the Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprising recent announcement that Israel will never relinquish control over the Golan came in response to his concern that in exchange for a cease-fire in Syria, the US would place that control on the international diplomatic chopping block.

A week and a half ago, Iran began its move on Anbar province.

On May 22, Iraqi forces trained by the US military led Iraq’s offensive to wrest control over Fallujah and Mosul from ISIS, which has controlled the Sunni cities since 2014. Despite the fact that the lead forces are US-trained, the main forces involved in the offensive are trained, equipped and directed by Iran.

As Iraqi forces surrounded Fallujah in the weeks before the offensive began, Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds forces, paid a public visit to the troops to demonstrate Iran’s dominant role.

The battle for Fallujah is a clear indication that Iran, rather than the US, is calling the shots in Iraq. According to media reports, the Pentagon wanted and expected for the forces to be concentrated in Mosul. But at the last minute, due to Soleimani’s intervention, the Iraqi government decided to make Fallujah the offensive’s center of gravity.

The Americans had no choice but to go along with the Iranian plan because, as Dyer noted, Iran is increasingly outflanking the US in Iraq. If things follow their current course, in the near future, Iran is liable to be in a position to force the US to choose between going to war or ceasing all air operations in Iraq.

On May 7, Asharq al-Awsat reported that the Revolutionary Guards is building a missile base in Suleimaniyah province, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

A senior IRGC general has made repeated visits to the area in recent weeks, signaling that the regime views this as an important project. The report further stated that Iran is renewing tunnel networks in the region, built during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

Dyer warned that depending on the type of missiles Iran deploys – or has deployed – to the base, it may threaten all US air operations in Iraq. And the US has no easy means to block Iran’s actions.

To date, commentators have more or less agreed that US operations in Iraq and Syria make no sense. They are significant enough to endanger US forces, but they aren’t significant enough to determine the outcome of the war in either territory.

But there may be logic to this seemingly irrational deployment that is concealed from view. A close reading of David Samuels’s profile of President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes published last month in The New York Times, points to such a conclusion.

Samuels described Rhodes as second only to Obama in his influence over US foreign and defense policy. Rhodes boasted to Samuels that Obama’s moves toward Iran were determined by a strategic course he embraced before he entered office.

A fiction writer by training, Rhodes’s first “national security” job was as the chief note taker for the Iraq Study Group.

Then-president George W. Bush appointed the group, jointly chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, in 2006, to advise him on how to extricate the US from the war in Iraq.

In late 2006, the ISG published its recommendations.

Among other things, the ISG recommended withdrawing US forces from Iraq as quickly as possible. The retreat was to be enacted in cooperation with Iran and Syria – the principle sponsors of the insurgency.

The ISG argued that if given the proper incentives, Syria and Iran would fight al-Qaida in Iraq in place of the US. For such action, the ISG recommended that the US end its attempts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Responsibility for handling the threat, the ISG recommended, should be transferred to the US Security Council.

So, too, the ISG recommended that Bush pressure Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in the framework of a “peace process.”

Such action too would serve to convince Iran and Syria that they could trust the US and agree to serve as its heirs in Iraq.

Bush of course, rejected the ISG’s recommendations.

He decided instead to sue for victory in Iraq. Bush announced the surge in US forces shortly after the ISG published its report.

But now we see, that through Rhodes the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation became the blueprint for a new US strategy of retreat and Iranian ascendance in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

The chief components of that strategy have already been implemented. The US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 left Iran as the new power broker in the country. The nuclear pact with Iran facilitated Iran’s transformation into the regional hegemon.

Against this strategic shift, the US’s minimalist campaigns in Iraq and Syria against ISIS make sense.

The US forces aren’t there to defeat ISIS, but to conceal Iran’s rise.

When ISIS is defeated in Anbar and in Raqqa in Syria, its forces are liable to turn west, to Jordan.

The US is currently helping Jordan to complete a border fence along its border with Iraq. But then ISIS is already active in Jordan.

And if events in Iraq and Syria are any guide, where ISIS leads, Iran will follow.

Iran’s strategic game, as well as America’s, requires Israel to become a strategic player.

We must recognize that what is happening in Iraq is connected to what is happening here.

We need to understand the implications of the working alliance Obama has built with Iran.

Even if Obama’s successor disavows his actions, by the time Obama leaves office, America’s options will be more limited than ever before. Without war, his successor will likely be unable to stem Iran’s rise on the ruins of the Arab state system.

In this new strategic environment, Israel must stop viewing Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and Lebanon as standalone battlefields. We must not be taken in by “regional peace plans” that would curtail our maneuver room. And we must bear in mind these new conditions as we negotiate a new US military assistance package.

The name of the game today is chess. The entire Middle East is one great board. When a pawn moves in Gaza, it affects the queen in Tehran.

And when a knight moves in Fallujah, it threatens the queen in Jerusalem.

Categories: Arab nations, Foreign policy, Golan, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Middle East, Iran - Syria war, Iranian military, Iranian proxies, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Iraq war, Islamic State, Israel, Israel borders, Israeli security, Jordan, Obama and Iran, Obama and Iraq, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Syria, Syria war, U.S. Military
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John Kerry, The Islamic Republic’s New Lobbyist

June 2, 2016

John Kerry, The Islamic Republic’s New Lobbyist, Front Page Magazine, Ari Lieberman, June 2, 2016

(Please see also, Is Obama’s Iran Deal a ‘Dhimmi’ Contract? — DM)

john_kerry_senator_from_ma-2 (2)

Iran, the nation that has built a well-deserved reputation as the world’s premier state-sponsor of terrorism has a new lobbyist and he is none other than U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Since the Obama administration inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in January, Kerry has been busying himself with ensuring that European banks start doing business with the Iranians. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only has the United States and its European allies agreed to lift sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the administration is now encouraging the private banking sector to do the same. It appears however, that their intense lobbying efforts are being received with a healthy dose of skepticism.

HSBC’s chief legal officer, Stuart Levey confirmed that Kerry had requested that HSBC start opening its banking doors to the Iranians and transact business with them. Levey criticized Kerry’s misguided initiative noting that the U.S. still maintains other non-nuclear related sanctions against the Islamic Republic and that doing business with Iran runs the risk of running afoul of those sanctions. HSBC has had prior negative experience with the U.S. Treasury and Justice departments. In 2012, the bank was forced to fork over $1.9 billion to U.S. authorities to settle allegations involving money laundering for Mexican drug barons.

Levey also noted that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls large swaths of the Iranian economy, has been slapped with sanctions by both the U.S. and Europe because of the central role it plays in illicit regional and international activities. Doing business with Iran will almost certainly result in facilitating IRGC operations. Adding to the uncertainty, Iran has over the years developed a penchant for hiding money, engaging in shady deals and money laundering thus making it difficult, if not impossible for banking institutions to engage the Iranians in legitimate business transactions without being complicit in their illegal dealings.

Kerry has assured the banks that they have nothing to fear if they perform their due diligence but banking representatives have expressed other legitimate concerns. Iran is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet and ranks poorly in the categories of transparency and ease of doing business. Banking institutions and large businesses are naturally reluctant to deal with such an opaque entity.

Practical matters and banking concerns aside, it is disturbing to witness the zeal in which Kerry is conducting his lobbying campaign on behalf of an enemy country whose national pastime involves chants of “Death to America” and “Down, Down U.S.A.” Even more disturbing is the fact that despite signing the JCPOA, Iran continues to act in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 which calls on Iran to cease all research and testing activities relating to its ballistic missile program.

Since the conclusion of the Iran deal, the Islamic Republic has test-fired eight ballistic missiles. The Iranians boasted that some of their missiles were capable of reaching targets 1,200 miles away. Israel is only 1,000 miles away from Iran placing it well within the target radius. Emblazoned on the side of at least one test-fired missile was an ominous threat; “Israel must be wiped out from the face of the earth.”

The Iranians are continuously attempting to increase the range and accuracy of their ballistic missiles. Iran’s illicit ballistic missile program has only one aim, to deliver weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). That apocalyptic prospect does not seem to worry Kerry who seems more interested in propping up the Islamic Republic rather than ensuring that it lives up to its international obligations and stops behaving like a pariah state. Indeed, in an effort to prevent derailment of the JCPOA, the administration asked the Iranians not to publicize their launches. Iran’s illicit ballistic missile program doesn’t seem to bother the Obama administration so long as the Iranians keep their activities below the radar.

Iran’s nefarious undertakings extend far beyond its illicit ballistic missile program. The IRGC, the group that runs Iran in partnership with the ayatollahs, represents the life-blood of Hezbollah. Both Hezbollah and the IRGC are engaged in a full-fledged operation to destabilize the region. From Syria to Yemen, Iranian and Hezbollah operatives are fomenting chaos and bloodshed with the aim of establishing a Shiite arc extending from Iran through Syria and Lebanon as well as securing control of two of the region’s most important chokepoints, the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Hezbollah’s main source of funding comes from Iran, which trains, arms and pays the salaries of its operatives. Its other sources, though minor in comparison to Iranian assistance, include drug trafficking and extortion. Last week, Adam Szubin, the acting Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, noted that Hezbollah was “in its worst financial shape in decades.” It’s hard to take that near-comical boast seriously in light of the $150 billion cash infusion the Obama administration injected into the anemic Iranian economy. It’s hard to imagine that Iran will spend any of that money on improving the quality of life of its citizens and promoting human rights. Iran will almost certainly channel a large portion of those funds to its proxy stooges in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.

Kerry’s lobbying efforts on behalf of Iran in connection with the banking industry will make Iran’s ability to transfer funds to these terrorist groups less difficult. The lengths to which the Obama administration will go to indulge the Iranians is beyond shocking, it’s frightening. But we should expect no more from an administration that expressed gratitude to the Islamic Republic after its naval pirates kidnapped and humiliated 10 American sailors when their craft encountered mechanical difficulties in the Arabian Gulf. Sadly, the Obama administration continues to lose the trust of its allies, while emboldening its enemies and has given new meaning to the term appeasement.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran - human rights, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, IRGC, Kerry, Middle East, Obama and Iran
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