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Hizballah presses elite Radwan Force for conquering Galilee into saving stalled Zabadani battle

August 1, 2015

Hizballah presses elite Radwan Force for conquering Galilee into saving stalled Zabadani battle, DEBKAfile, August 1,2015

New_ninja_uniforms_of_Hezbollahs_elite_forcesNew “ninja” uniforms for Hizballah’s Radwan Force

Hizballah’s elite Radwan Force was originally designed to push in from Lebanon and conquer the Israeli Galilee. DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources report that on Thursday, July 30 Hassan Nasralla saw he had no option but to press this high-value contingent into service, to extricate the combined Hizballah-Syrian armies from their month-long failure to recapture the key town of Zabadani – or even breach the defenses set up by the Al-Qaeda affiliated rebel Nusra Front.

This standoff with heavy casualties over the key town, which commands the main Damascus-Beirut highway, has become a symbolic make-or-break duel between the Iran-backed Shiite Hizballah and Al Qaeda’s Sunni Nusra Front. Nasrallah loses it at the cost of his organization’s credibility as a formidable fighting force.

Defeat would make western Damascus and eastern Lebanon more vulnerable to attack. And for Iran’s Lebanese proxy, it would leave an embarrassing question hanging in the air: If Hizballah under Iranian command combined with Syrian troops and backed by heavy artillery fire and air strikes can’t win a relatively small battle against no more than 1,200 rebel fighters across a nine-km square battleground, how much are its leaders’ boasts worth when they claim unbeatable prowess for winning major battles, including a war on Israel?

To save face in this landmark showdown, Hizballah decided to press into battle its most prestigious unit, named for Al-Hajj Radwan, the nom de guerre of Hizballah’s renowned military chief Imad Mughniye, whom Israel took out in February 2008.

Eight months ago, the Radwan Force lost its senior commanders. An Israeli air strike on Jan. 18 targeted a group of high Iranian and Hizballah officers on a visit to Quneitra on the Syrian Golan. They were surveying the terrain before relocating this elite unit to confront IDF positions on the Israeli Golan border. Iranian Gen. Ali Reza al-Tabatabai and the Hizballah district commander Jihad Mughniye (son of Imad) lost their lives in the Israeli raid and the plan was provisionally set aside.

If the Radwan Force manages to haul Hizballah out of its impasse in Zabadani, it may next be assigned to take up battle positions on the Golan.

But for now, its mission in the battle for Zabadani has three dimensions:

1.  To disarm the enemy by commando raids, a tactic to be borrowed from the rebels defending the town. On the night of July 24, the rebels preemptively struck Hizballah and Syrian army positions around the town and captured some of them. The decision to deploy Radwan appears to have come in response to that painful setback.

2.  To pull off a quick battlefield success at Zabadani, in view of intelligence reports that the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Syria were preparing together to open a second front in Lebanon, in order to relieve the rebel force pinned down in Zabadani.

The two groups plan to cross into Lebanon and start attacking pro-Hizballah Shiite populations in the Beqaa Valley and the North. They propose to cut through the Bequaa Valley and head up to the important northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast.

3.  Syrian President Bashar Asad is under extreme pressure for a battlefield success after admitting in a public speech last week to the loss of strategic territory to rebel forces and shrinking military manpower. He has earmarked a Zabadani victory – both as a turning-point for his flagging fortunes and for holding back the constant draining of his army by desertions and defections.

Our military sources reveal that, after Assad leaned hard on the Lebanese government and army to round up Syrian troops who went AWOL, Lebanese security forces went into action. They are picking up Syrian army deserters and putting them on buses driving in armored convoys into Syria. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up the fate of these unwilling returnees.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Assad, Defense of Israel, Golan, Hezbollah, IDF, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Nasrallah, Nursa Front, P5+1, Syria, Syria war
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Obama goes nuclear on Iran deal opponents

July 31, 2015

Obama goes nuclear on Iran deal opponents, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 31, 2015

(Please see also, Obama tells liberals: I can’t carry Iran deal on my own and The Iran Nuke Documents Obama Doesn’t Want You to See.– DM)

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Obama will do anything to protect his legacy. And the fight has only begun.

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Obama has decided that two wildly unpopular policies, one foreign and one domestic, will be the final legacy of his wildly unpopular administration. The domestic policy is gun control. The foreign policy is Iranian nukes. While Americans will be disarmed, Iran will be getting ready for its ballistic missiles.

Ramming through wildly unpopular policies is what this administration does best. More than anything else, this administration will be remembered for the mix of bullying, smears, pop culture distractions, outright lies, bureaucratic sabotage and blatant lawbreaking with which it achieved its policy goals.

Iran is no different.

The sales pitch is going badly. John Kerry has probably managed to dissuade more senators by testifying than he would have if he had taken the fifth. A viral video featuring the Iran lobby’s Thomas Pickering lecturing failed movie star Jack Black on the importance of the deal earned all the wrong kind of laughs.

Too many Democrats are still sitting on the fence. Some have come out against the deal. So the White House is looking for weak points in a potential coalition against the deal.

Its opening move is a classical “Divide and Conquer” strategy that tries to split pro-Israel Democrats from Republicans. The Democrats are being told that a rejection of the deal means war with Iran. If they don’t back the deal, they will be warmongers. Those who oppose the deal with Iran will face the same anti-war coalition that targeted those Democrats who supported Bush’s overthrow of Saddam.

The deal is too unappealing to be sold on its merits, so it is instead being presented as the only alternative to a war. Obama and Kerry love nuance when it comes to finding all the positive sides to making deals with Iran or the Taliban, but quickly abandon it at home in favor of a polarized argument in which opponents of their latest terrorist appeasement are warmongers and traitors.

Jewish Democrats, in particular, are being told that Israel and Jews will be blamed for such a war.

John Kerry has already come out and said that Israel will be blamed. That’s nothing new for the Democratic Party. It wasn’t that long ago when Senator Hollings was claiming that Bush had invaded Iraq and passed tax cuts for the “Jewish vote”. To Jon Stewart, Obama referenced the Iraq War and suggested that the people against the deal “are not going to be making sacrifices” if there is a war.

That type of rhetoric sounded better coming from politicians who had served in the military, instead of a career community organizer who refers to a “Corpse-man” and uses Marines as umbrella stands.

Jewish Democrats who oppose the deal will be “Senator Lieberman-ed”, primaried by the left, smeared and added to the list of neo-con warmongers. Non-Jewish Democrats may be allowed a place at the table, like Kerry or Hillary, but only after they serve a penal term of appeasement as Secretary of State.

The Pollard release meanwhile begins the process of splitting Republicans from a pro-Israel coalition. The leverage is once again accusations of treason. Obama’s supporters showed where their argument was bound to end up when they spread the #47Traitors hashtag targeting Senators opposed to the deal.

Israel certainly hadn’t arranged for Pollard’s release. The administration isn’t being accommodating or trying to win over anyone. It’s calculatedly turning a former spy into a talking point during a debate involving Israel to add weight to the treason talking point.

Democrats who oppose the deal will be smeared as warmongers. Republicans who oppose it will be tarred as traitors.

Pollard’s shelf life as a talking point will be limited, but it won’t be hard to manufacture further scandals. An official here or there will be investigated for inappropriate contacts with Israeli officials or pro-Israel groups. The charges will fall apart on any real scrutiny, but the story will have achieved its results.

The last time the left wanted to kneecap pro-Israel opposition to Iran, it manufactured the Rosen-Weissman case targeting two AIPAC officials heavily involved in lobbying for sanctions on Iran. The case fell apart, but not before AIPAC offices had been raided and the media had written up a spy drama. But the real goal had been to link AIPAC to Feith, Wolfowitz and other Republican enemies of the left.

Now that the left controls the White House, it has even more leeway for its political witch hunts.

Reviving the Pollard case sends Republicans the message that national security and pro-Israel policies are a contradiction in terms. It also intimidates Jewish critics of the deal on both sides of the aisle. This is an administration that has used the IRS against its political opponents, including pro-Israel opponents like Z Street, and will not hesitate to use every arm of government against its domestic political enemies.

While the “Israel Lobby” is an incessant topic, the Iran lobby which, until Hagel’s resignation, controlled the offices of the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense is a black topic. Just about every critic is passed off as a pawn of an Israeli or Jewish organization, but mentioning that Secretary of State John Kerry has an Iranian son-in-law with reported connections to Iran’s Foreign Minister is off limits.

Obama welcomed in people like Charles W. Freeman, a Chinese state oil company board member and apologists for PRC atrocities from Tiananmen Square to Tibet, and Hamas fan Robert Malley, who wouldn’t have passed a security check to be dogcatchers in a dogless town. But now suddenly everyone else will be held to standards that Obama’s people don’t recognize or abide by for themselves.

The White House and its allies define any opposition as treason. Unwilling to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program, they are instead going nuclear on opponents of the deal. If they can split up the burgeoning coalition in Congress against the deal with accusations of treason, their own treasonous efforts to let Iran go nuclear and force the United States out of the Middle East will succeed.

And even if the tactic alone doesn’t win the day, it’s still an effective distraction.

ObamaCare was even more unpopular than the Iran deal, but Obama and his media allies kept up a barrage of distractions, attacks, smears and publicity stunts. Pollard is another way to swallow up airtime with a counter-topic while keeping opponents off balance. If Obama can’t sell the deal on its merits, he can always keep shifting the conversation to keep opponents on the defensive.

Selling the Iran deal on its merits has failed. It’s now being sold as the only alternative to war. Obama and Kerry had insisted, “No deal is better than a bad deal”, but now argue that their bad deal is better than no deal. And they demand that critics of their deal take responsibility for the alternative.

The entire line of argument is an admission that the deal is indefensible. The only possible defense of it is an attack on critics. Some of these attacks are crude. Others are subtle. Some attack directly, while others induce doubt, apathy and division.

Right now the biggest threat to Obama is the possibility that enough Democrats will join Republicans in shutting the deal down. If that happens, one of Obama’s sunset policy agendas will die. Coming off a defeat on Iran will leave him in poor shape for a fight over gun control. It will hand him a major defeat and finish off his unilateral foreign policy of signing treaties and starting wars without Congress.

Obama will do anything to protect his legacy. And the fight has only begun.

Categories: Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress
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Column One: Obama strikes again

July 31, 2015

Column One: Obama strikes again, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, July 30, 2015

ShowImage (5)US President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden. (photo credit:OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA)

Most of the antiquities that ISIS plunders in Iraq and Syria make their way to the world market through Turkey. So, too, most of the oil that ISIS produces in Syria and Iraq is smuggled out through Turkey. According to the US Treasury, ISIS has made $1 million-$4m. a day from oil revenue.

Instead of maintaining its current practice of balancing its support for Turkey with its support for the Kurds, under the agreement, the West ditches its support for the Kurds and transfers its support to Turkey exclusively.

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While Israel and much of oficial Washington remain focused on the deal President Barack Obama just cut with the ayatollahs that gives them $150 billion and a guaranteed nuclear arsenal within a decade, Obama has already moved on – to Syria.

Obama’s first hope was to reach a deal with his Iranian friends that would leave the Assad regime in place. But the Iranians blew him off.

They know they don’t need a deal with Obama to secure their interests. Obama will continue to help them to maintain their power base in Syria though Hezbollah and the remains of the Assad regime without a deal.

Iran’s cold shoulder didn’t stop Obama. He moved on to his Sunni friend Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Like the Iranians, since the war broke out, Erdogan has played a central role in transforming what started out as a local uprising into a regional conflict between Sunni and Shiite jihadists.

With Obama’s full support, by late 2012 Erdogan had built an opposition dominated by his totalitarian allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

By mid-2013, Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood- led coalition was eclipsed by al-Qaida spinoffs. They also enjoyed Turkish support.

And when last summer ISIS supplanted al-Qaida as the dominant Sunni jihadist force in Syria, it did so with Erdogan’s full backing. For the past 18 months, Turkey has been ISIS’s logistical, political and economic base.

According to Brett McGurk, the State Department’s point man on ISIS, about 25,000 foreign fighters have joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq. All of them transited through Turkey.

Most of the antiquities that ISIS plunders in Iraq and Syria make their way to the world market through Turkey. So, too, most of the oil that ISIS produces in Syria and Iraq is smuggled out through Turkey. According to the US Treasury, ISIS has made $1 million-$4m. a day from oil revenue.

In May, US commandos in Syria assassinated Abu Sayyaf, ISIS’s chief money manager, and arrested his wife and seized numerous computers and flash drives from his home. According to a report in The Guardian published last week, the drives provided hard evidence of official Turkish economic collusion with ISIS.

Due to Turkish support, ISIS has become a self-financing terrorist group. With its revenue stream it is able to maintain a welfare state regime, attracting recruits from abroad and securing the loyalty of local Sunni militias and former Ba’athist forces.

Some Western officials believed that after finding hard evidence of Turkish regime support for ISIS, NATO would finally change its relationship with Turkey. To a degree they were correct.

Last week, Obama cut a deal with Erdogan that changes the West’s relationship with Erdogan.

Instead of maintaining its current practice of balancing its support for Turkey with its support for the Kurds, under the agreement, the West ditches its support for the Kurds and transfers its support to Turkey exclusively.

The Kurdish peshmerga militias operating today in Iraq and Syria are the only military outfits making sustained progress in the war against ISIS. Since last October, the Kurds in Syria have liberated ISIS-controlled and -threatened areas along the Turkish border.

The YPG, the peshmerga militia in Syria, won its first major victory in January, when after a protracted, bloody battle, with US air support, it freed the Kurdish border town of Kobani from ISIS’s assault.

In June, the YPG scored a strategic victory against ISIS by taking control of Tal Abyad. Tal Abyad controls the road connecting ISIS’s capital of Raqqa with Turkey. By capturing Tal Abyad, the Kurds cut Raqqa’s supply lines.

Last month, Time magazine reported that the Turks reacted with hysteria to Tal Abyad’s capture.

Not only did the operation endanger Raqqa, it gave the Kurds territorial contiguity in Syria.

The YPG’s victories enhanced the Kurds’ standing among Western nations. Indeed, some British and American officials were quoted openly discussing the possibility of removing the PKK, the YPG’s Iraqi counterpart, from their official lists of terrorist organizations.

The YPG’s victories similarly enhanced the Kurds’ standing inside Turkey itself. In the June elections to the Turkish parliament, the Kurdish HDP party won 12 percent of the vote nationally, and so blocked Erdogan’s AKP party from winning a parliamentary majority.

Without that majority Erdogan’s plan of reforming the constitution to transform Turkey into a presidential republic and secure his dictatorship for the long run has been jeopardized.

As far as Erdogan was concerned, by the middle of July the Kurdish threat to his power had reached unacceptable levels.

Then two weeks ago the deck was miraculously reshuffled.

On July 20, young Kurdish activists convened in Suduc, a Kurdish town on the Turkish side of the border, 6 kilometers from Kobani. A suicide bomber walked up to them, and detonated, massacring 32 people.

Turkish officials claim that the bomber was a Turkish Kurd, and a member of ISIS. But the Kurds didn’t buy that line. Last week, HDP lawmakers accused the regime of complicity with the bomber. And two days after the attack, militants from the PKK killed two Turkish policemen in a neighboring village, claiming that they collaborated with ISIS.

At that point, Erdogan sprang into action.

After refusing for months to work with NATO forces in their anti-ISIS operations, Erdogan announced he was entering the fray. He would begin targeting “terrorists” and allow the US air force to use two Turkish air bases for its anti-ISIS operations. In exchange, the US agreed to set up a “safe zone” in Syria along the Turkish border.

Turkish officials were quick to explain that in targeting “terrorists,” the Turks would not distinguish between Kurdish terrorists and ISIS terrorists just because the former are fighting ISIS. Both, they insisted, are legitimate targets.

Erdogan closed his deal in a telephone call with Obama. And he immediately went into action.

Turkish forces began bombing terrorist targets and rounding up terrorist suspects. Although a few of the Turkish bombing runs have been directly against ISIS, the vast majority have targeted Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria.

Moreover, for every suspected ISIS terrorist arrested by Turkish security forces, at least eight Kurds have been taken into custody.

Then, too, Erdogan has called on AKP lawmakers to begin criminalizing their counterparts from the HDP. Kurdish lawmakers, he urged them, must be stripped of their parliamentary immunity to enable their arrests.

As Erdogan apparently sees things, by going to war against the Kurds, he will be able to reestablish the AKP’s parliamentary majority. Within a few weeks, if the AKP fails to form a governing coalition – and it will – then new elections will be held. The nationalists, who abandoned the AKP in June, will return to the party to reward Erdogan for fighting the Kurds.

As for that “safe area” in northern Syria, as the Kurds see it, Erdogan will use it to destroy Kurdish autonomy. He will flood the zone with Syrian Arab refugees who fled to Turkey, to dilute the Kurdish majority. And he will secure coalition support for the Sunni Arab militias – including those still affiliated with al-Qaida – which will be permitted by NATO to operate openly in the safe area.

Already the Kurds are reporting that the US has stopped providing air support for their forces fighting ISIS in the border town of Jarablus. Those forces were bombed this week by Turkish F-16s.

For their part, despite Erdogan’s pledge to fight ISIS, his forces seem remarkable uninterested in rolling back ISIS achievements. The Turks have no plan for removing ISIS from its strongholds in Raqqa or Haskiyah.

The Obama administration is presenting the deal with Turkey as yet another great achievement.

In an interview with Charlie Rose on Tuesday, McGurk explained that the deal was a long time in the making. It began with a phone conversation between Obama and Erdogan last October and it ended with their phone call last week.

In October, Obama convinced Erdogan not to oppose US air support for the Kurds in Kobani and to enable the US to resupply YPG fighters in Kobani through Turkey. In the second, Obama agreed not to oppose Erdogan’s offensive against the Kurds.

Two years ago, in August 2013, the world held its breath awaiting US action in Syria. That month, after prolonged equivocation amidst mountains of evidence, the Obama administration was forced to acknowledge that Iran’s Syrian puppet Bashar Assad had crossed Obama’s self-declared redline and used chemical weapons against regime opponents, including civilians.

US forces assembled for battle. Everything looked ready to go, until just hours before US jets were scheduled to begin bombing regime targets, Obama canceled the operation. In so doing, he lost all deterrent power against Iran. He also lost all strategic credibility among America’s regional allies.

To save face, Obama agreed to a Russian proposal to have international monitors remove Syria’s chemical weapons from the country.

Last summer, the administration proudly announced that the mission had been completed.

UN chemical weapons monitors had removed Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal from the country, they proclaimed. It didn’t matter to either Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry that by that point Assad had resumed chemical assaults with chlorine-based bombs. Chlorine bombs weren’t chemical weapons, the Americans idiotically proclaimed.

Then last week, the lie fell apart. The Wall Street Journal reported that according to US intelligence agencies, Assad not surrendered his chemical arsenal.

Rather, he hid much of his chemical weaponry from the UN inspectors. He had even managed to retain the capacity to make chemical weapons – like chlorine-based bombs – after agreeing to part with his chemical arsenal.

Assad was able to cheat, because just as the administration’s nuclear deal with the Iranians gives Iran control over which nuclear sites will be open to UN inspectors, and which will be off limits, so the chemical deal gave Assad control over what the inspectors would and would not be allowed to see. So, they saw only what he showed them.

Obama has gone full circle in concluding his deal with Erdogan. Since entering office, Obama has sought to cut deals with both the Sunni jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood ilk and the Shi’ite jihadists of the Iranian ilk.

His chemical deal with Assad and his nuclear deal with the ayatollahs accomplished the latter goal, and did so at the expense of America’s Sunni Arab allies and Israel.

His deal last week with Erdogan accomplishes the former goal, to the benefit of ISIS, and on the backs of America’s Kurdish allies.

So that takes care of the Middle East. With 17 months left to go till Obama leave office, the time has apparently come for the British to begin to worry.

Categories: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran - Syria war, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Peshmerga, Rogue nations, Shiite, Sunni, Syria - chemical weapons, Terrorists, Turkey
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Know Comment: American-Iranian fairy tales

July 31, 2015

Know Comment: American-Iranian fairy tales, Jerusalem Post, David M. Weinberg, July 30, 2015

ShowImage (4)iran. (photo credit:REUTERS)

An updated list of the fictions peddled by the Obama administration in support of its pact with Iran.

Here is an updated scorecard of the misrepresentations advanced by the Obama administration in defense of its concordat with Iran. The list grows every day.

1. Iran will be motivated to keep the agreement.

False. Iran already may be plotting its escape from the agreement. Dr. Emily Landau of the Institute for National Security Studies points out that Iran has twice bolted – in 2004 and again in 2005 – when it felt that the agreements it concluded with the EU-3 were no longer serving its interests.

Lo and behold, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has an explicit defection clause, which allows Tehran to exit the deal without any deliberations or warning if it feels that any of the P5+1 countries is reintroducing any form or degree of sanction against Iran.

So, Iran will pocket hundreds of billions of dollars in (almost-immediate and unconditional) sanctions relief, then sign hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and business partnership deals with the major French and German companies that are now in on the gold rush to Iran. Then it can accuse Congress or the next US president of being nasty and use that as the pretext for its “nuclear snapback.”

2. In case of Iranian violations, America can “snapback” sanctions.

The opposite is true. The agreement intentionally embeds the US in a web of time-consuming and complex multilateral processes that place significant and perhaps insuperable obstacles to both a snapback of economic sanctions and resort to an American military strike. Prof. Jeffrey Herf of the University of Maryland has detailed how the deal places sky-high barriers in the way of American enforcement in the event of Iranian violations.

Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has shown that the nitty-gritty of the so-called sanction snapback provisions actually provide disincentives for the US and its partners to confront Iran in the event that Iran does cheat (which it has a long record of doing, and has done even during the recent nuclear talks). Moreover, Iran is supposed to get Western help and technology for defense against nuclear sabotage. So the US is essentially deterring itself from ever acting against Iran, no matter what. Which apparently is exactly what President Obama was after.

3. The deal will moderate or contain Iran’s aggressive ambitions in the Middle East.

Not at all. The nuclear deal seems to be just the first act in a longer drama of American retreat, retrenchment and accommodation as Obama hands the keys to the Persian Gulf and beyond to his new Shia friends.

Obama says that he “hopes” that “we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative, to operate the way we expect nations in the international community to behave.” But, he adds, “We’re not counting on it. So this deal is not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.”

What a damning self-indictment. Is it believable that “conversations” are going to change or contain Iran? What is really needed, instead, says Prof. Walter Russell Mead of the New America Foundation, is a tough regional strategy to counter Iran’s rush for hegemony; an aggressive, anti- IRGC, anti-Assad, anti-Hezbollah policy.

But the White House never intended to contain Iran, says Dr. Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute. It has consistently displayed an aversion to countering Iran. America’s allies in the Middle East (and this list of allies supposedly still includes Israel) “have time and again begged the president to help them curtail Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and time and again Obama has refused.”

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies expands on this in an-depth study published on Thursday.

Under cover of this accord, Iran is likely to greatly strengthen its grip on the Middle East, he writes. It will solidify its control of Yemen, including developing the capacity to block the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the Red Sea and thus threaten global trade and the Suez Canal, Egypt’s lifeline. It will take complete control of Lebanon.

With the help of other countries (perhaps even including the US) it will “save” the region by fighting ISIS, to become the true ruler of Iraq and of what would remain of Alawite Syria. Hezbollah will be given thousands of precise missiles, while enjoying Iranian backing and silent American approval.

Amidror: “There is little chance that America will follow through on its promise that after signing the agreement it will be more determined in its efforts to contain Iran. This claim is unrealistic and illogical, since once a rival state becomes a partner to an agreement, one does not increase efforts taken against it in other realms. It is the nature of agreements that cover a certain area of relations that they prevent pressure being applied in other areas, rather than increasing pressure. No one in the West will now be interested in jeopardizing either the agreement or trade relations with Iran. It is therefore likely that, despite the messages of reassurance coming from Washington, Iran will become much stronger over the next 15 years, internally, regionally, economically and militarily, with no opposition from the US.”

4. There was no better deal, and the alternative to this deal is war.

Both assertions are absolutely fallacious. More coercive diplomacy could have delivered a better deal. However, Obama refused to put maximum pressure on Iran. He was not willing to impose additional sanctions on Iran (as Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested and Congress wanted), or to threaten the use of military force. When you are in talks with a genocidal, terrorism-sponsoring regime and claim that you have no viable military option, you are not negotiating.

You are begging.

Prof. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute points out that there is a historical precedent for tougher diplomacy that works. The US Senate refused to ratify SALT II, ending the SALT process, but war between the US and the Soviet Union did not ensue. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan instead increased the pressure on the Soviet Union dramatically. The lesson is that walking away from bad deals does not inevitably lead either to war or to the end of negotiations.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Kerry, Khamenei, Lies, Middle East, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, P5+1
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Palestinian Summer Camps Preach Jihad and Train Youth to Become Terrorists

July 30, 2015

Palestinian Summer Camps Preach Jihad and Train Youth to Become Terrorists, Investigative Project on Terrorism, July 30, 2015

(In Gaza and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem: raising a new generation of Palestinian children yearning to be free kill Jews for Allah, virgins, their parents and Palestine.  — DM)

Hamas hopes to provide 25,000 children and teenagers with military training to seed future terrorist operations against Israel. Similar to the Al-Aqsa camp, the Hamas camp heavily emphasizes religious indoctrination and radical jihadist brainwashing, according to a news report translated by MEMRI.

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Palestinian summer camps in Jerusalem and Gaza are actively indoctrinating young children with radical jihadist ideology and preparing them for martyrdom (suicide) operations, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports.

In an Islamic summer camp at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, little children are subjected to a radical sheikh’s lecture on the virtues of martyrdom.

 

 

“The martyr is absolved with the first drop of his blood…the martyr also gets to vouch for seventy family members (on Judgment Day)… the martyr gets two virgins of Paradise, but the murabit [someone guarding Islam against the infidel] gets 70 – 35 times more than the martyr,” preached radical cleric Khaled Al-Maghrabi.

The children generally appear like most children their age – fidgeting, looking around, some playing with toys, seemingly disinterested in the lecture. Al-Magrabi still appears determined to impart jihadist indoctrination into the next generation of Palestinians at a very early age.

A Palestinian bystander even confronts Al-Maghrabi and tells him his message isn’t appropriate for children.

“Listen, sheik, they do not understand what you are saying. They are children…you are talking to them about ribat, martyrdom, and the virgins of Paradise. Shame on you. You can teach these lessons to (adults) like us, not to them,” said the Palestinian man.

Unfortunately, Palestinians standing up against radicalization is all too rare of an occurrence. Al-Maghrabi carried on after the distraction, leading the children in chanting, “We shall sacrifice our souls and our blood for you, Al-Aqsa!” the children chant.

In a second video illustrating Palestinian indoctrination of its young people with hate, viewers are taken inside a Hamas summer camp called “Vanguard of Liberation.” Hamas hopes to provide 25,000 children and teenagers with military training to seed future terrorist operations against Israel. Similar to the Al-Aqsa camp, the Hamas camp heavily emphasizes religious indoctrination and radical jihadist brainwashing, according to a news report translated by MEMRI.

“The goal of the camps is to instil the spirit of Jihad and of fighting in these cubs, these youth, so that they will become the next generation of liberation,” says a masked Hamas operative and camp counselor.

 

 

 

“Liberation” in this context means taking over all of Israel since Hamas is openly dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state in any form.

The video features the youth running through military style courses, weapons training, and even shows a junior version of a Hamas naval commando unit dedicated to infiltrating Israel and conducting terrorist attacks.

Categories: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Child soldiers, Gaza, Hamas, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Palestinians, Religion of Peace, Rules of war, Two state solution
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Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran will Use its Nukes on Israel

July 28, 2015

Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran will Use its Nukes on Israel, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, July 28, 2015

(The very notion that Iran wants to send the Jews of Israel to the ovens is ridiculous. Iran just wants to send the ovens to the Jews of Israel. Since they won’t even have to be transported and shoved in, why make a big deal of it? Hmmmm. — DM)

At first, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless it was finalized.  Then, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless we read it all – and simply didn’t disclose all of his side-deals.  Now, he says Mike Huckabee’s comparison of shipping the Jews of Israel to the new ovens of the Iranian Auschwitz-Nuke is “ridiculous.”

Perhaps Obama wants to wait until Iran nukes Israel for it to be politically correct to call Iran’s wiping Israel off the map a “Holocaust.”  But, make no mistake, Obama knows full well that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the map with its Obama-blessed Nukes.

Come on, does anyone (except the American left-wing cool-aid drinking Jews) really believe that Iran will abide by their “voluntary” protocols under the Vienna announcement?  Of course not!  Are Obama or any of the European Unionleaders so rank stupid and naïve that they think Iran won’t build a bomb just like North Korea?  Does anyone not know that one of Iran’s first targets will be to annihilate Israel?

Of course Obama knows Iran will seek to annihilate Israel, so that must be what Obama wants.

Obviously, Obama doesn’t care if he enables the murder of another 6 million Jews through a Palestinian State’s chemical Sarin-tipped Katyusha rockets, or an Iranian Nuke.  It’s simple: Obama wants Israel and its Jews offed.  What is so difficult to understand about that?  Every move Obama has made from the very first moment of his presidency has been to irreparably harm Israel and Saudi Arabia, and irrevocably empower Iran.  It doesn’t matter what Obama’s specific motivation is.  Obama may believe in Farrakhan’s and Rev. Wright’s virulent Chicago anti-Semitism; Obama may be merely steeped in anti-British anti-Colonialism; or both.  All that matters is Obama is acting in ways that will allow others to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. If Obama walks like a Jew-hater, arms Iran like a Jew-hater, and creates a PA “West Bank” State like a Jew-hater, he’s a Jew-hater.

But, now here come the American Leftist Jewish “Holocaust” speech-police like Debbie Wasserman-Schulz who say one isn’t allowed to invoke the “Holocaust” or “Auschwitz” into a political debate when it is Iran’s highest leaders who have repeatedly, openly, and notoriously injected into the political debate that they intend to wipe Israel off the map.  And, in plain sight, Obama is crowning Iran, the greatest openly Holocaust-threatening, terror-state in the world, the nuclear hegemon-state of the Middle East because Iran is “stable.” I guess Obama forgot he helped quash a popular uprising there  as his first foreign policy debacle.

And, let’s also not forget that Iran’s “stability” in Syria has murdered over 250,000 Syrian Sunnis. The Hiroshima “Little Boy” Uranium Gun-type Nuke killed about 150,000 Japanese, and the Nagasaki “Fat Man” Plutonium Implosion Nuke killed about 40,000 Japanese. So, Iran has already killed 2 Hiroshima’s worth of Syrian Sunnis or 6 Nagasaki’s worth of Syrian Sunnis.  So, the 150 Billion Dollars Obama is giving Iran is actually a weapon of mass destruction in itself.  All of the additional hundreds of thousands of dead Sunnis spilt by Iran’s malign use of the 150 Billion dollars is on the hands of Obama, Susan Rice, John Kerry and Samantha Power.

What Is so loathsome, is that every word, every sentence Obama says  is a lie tainted with a patina of truth, Take for example Obama’s statement that Iran had enough enriched Uranium for 10 nukes, but it will be cut down under the supposed deal.  When exactly did Iran enrich 10 nukes worth of Uranium?  Iran enriched the uranium solely in the last 6 years because the CIA’s published declassified number had virtually zero enriched Uranium when Obama became President.  And, Iran’s method to cut down its enrichment is a chemical process that can easily be reversed by a chemical process.

And you have to love Obama’s “If Iran’s ‘stable’ give them nukes” foreign policy.  Under Obama’s “Stability” theory, Obama would have also armed Hitler with an arsenal of nukes because Hitler’s Nazi Germany was very stable.

In short, Obama knows full well that Iran is building an Auschwitz-Nuke that it wants to use to annihilate Israel; and, Obama is doing everything he can to ensure that it can do so.

Don’t let Jew-haters like Obama and Wasserman-Schultz turn “Never again,” into “Too Late.

Categories: Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian economy, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Jews, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Theocracy
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Obama’s Gamble with Iran’s Theocratic Regime

July 28, 2015

Obama’s Gamble with Iran’s Theocratic Regime, The Gatestone Institute, Robert D. Onley, July 28, 2015

[T]he gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi’a Islamism.

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  • Obama’s Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President’s fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
  • Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.
  • The gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi’a Islamism.
  • A total reversal of the Iranian regime’s behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program. An end to Iran’s financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
  • There is still time for a better deal that can be had.

As President Obama and Secretary Kerry dominated the airwaves with rounds of media interviews to defend the Iran deal last week, German Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel flew straight to Tehran for the first of what are certain to be countless meetings by P5+1 leaders to capitalize on new business opportunities in Iran.

In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.

But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.

Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House’s defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.

Obama’s Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President’s fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.

Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria’s Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia’s Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.

Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran’s massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress’s opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.

There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House’s blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.

Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to “war.” This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents’ fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran’s weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to “close” the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.

Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran’s vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran’s uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime’s finances.

Third, the gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi’a Islamism.

This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State — a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi’a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.

The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran’s rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.

In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that “the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure.” Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?

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President Obama’s willingness to concede Iran’s new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.

It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.

Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.

By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.

If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world’s deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.

As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.

To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime’s behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department’s SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.

Next, while Iran’s regional malignancy may run deep in the regime’s veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran’s financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.

Third, those who argue that Iran’s human rights record was not “on the table” in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West’s moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.

At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?

In defense of Obama’s approach, the deal’s supporters point out that the Iranians are a “proud, nationalistic people,” which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany’s Third Reich.

The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Theocracy, U.S. Congress, United Nations
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To gratify Tehran and Moscow, new US-Turkish anti-ISIS war campaign in Syria skirts Assad’s forces

July 26, 2015

To gratify Tehran and Moscow, new US-Turkish anti-ISIS war campaign in Syria skirts Assad’s forces, DEBKAfile, July 25, 2015

Tanks_face_IS_at_Syria_25.7.15

Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.

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After the second successive night of Turkish cross-border bombing attacks on the Islamic State in northern Syria, Ankara and Washington agreed Saturday, July 25, to name the “security zone” covered by a “partial no fly zone” they had declared in northern Syria the “Islamic State free zone.” Click HERE for full-size map!

This name represents a significant US-Turkish concession to Iran of immunity for its allies, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah, in order to gain Tehran’s cooperation in the campaign Turkey launched against ISIS Friday. Integral to the deal is also a promise to abstain from using the campaign to grant anti-Assad rebel groups any advantages.

This immunity did not extend to the Kurdish Workers Movement (PKK), which were targeted in the course of Turkish air and ground action in and over the new “security zone.” Those warplanes also flew missions Friday night over the PKK bases and logistical facilities in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. The PKK responded Saturday with an announcement that their armistice with Ankara was over. Turkey may consequently expect a recurrence of Kurdish terrorist violence in its cities,DEBKAfile notes.

High-placed sources in Ankara disclosed details of the US-Turkish deal with Iran. US warplanes will have the use of Turkish air bases, and not just the big Incirlik facility, for staging air strikes against ISIS, so long as Syrian targets are avoided. Washington agreed to Ankara using its air and ground operations against ISIS in Syria to drive into the new “security zone” and push toward the east to continue those attacks – eve if they run up against Kurdish forces which are also fighting ISIS.

The security zone’s area covered by a no-fly zone is 90 km wide and 40km deep, running between Mere, a small town 25  km north o Aleppo in the west, to the northwestern town of Jarabulus, which is situated on the west bank of the Euphrates.

Not exactly by chance, the security zone bisects Kurdish territory and holds back Kurdish forces in their assaults on ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a glance at the map betrays an all-out US-Turkish effort not put up backs in Tehran by interfering with Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian militia operations in critical northern Syrian war zones such as Aleppo or give the Syrian rebels a helping hand in the Idlib province.

The combined US-Turkish action moreover greatly supports the Assad-Hizballah war against ISIS gains in Syria and enhances Iranian and Russian influence in Damascus.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, in Irbil Friday, July 24, assured leaders of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq. “We are trying to build a force through the territory of Iraq, and someday in Syria, that can do what the peshmerga have achieved.”

At the same time, in Syria, the Kurds and their national aspirations look like losing out dramatically in the fallout from the complex US-Turkish partnership for beating ISIS back.

Categories: Assad, Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, No fly zone, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Syria war, Turkey, U.S. allies, U.S. Military
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Op-Ed The consequences of a bad deal with Iran

July 26, 2015

Op-Ed The consequences of a bad deal with Iran, LA Times, John Bolton, July 26, 2015

American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.

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President Obama has made an art form of attacking his opponents rather than substantively defending his own policies, most recently regarding the Vienna agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Essentially, Obama argues that we must either accept his wretched deal or go to war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As is typical, Obama posits the wrong choice, apparently to distract from the unpleasant reality that the agreement won’t work. It will not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. So the real choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military action or the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Neither is palatable, but the latter is far worse. If the real objective is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, preemptive military action is now inescapable.

This rock-and-hard-place outcome has long been foreseeable. Iran’s dogged determination to become a nuclear-weapons state was fiercer and stronger than the West’s frail response. Assuming Iran scrupulously complies with every provision agreed to in Vienna — an absurdly unlikely scenario given the ayatollahs’ objectives and history — its ambitions for nuclear weapons will simply have been delayed eight to 10 years.

In all likelihood, the ayatollahs are already at work violating the accords. After all, Iran has systematically breached its voluntarily-assumed obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than 30 years. Now the president’s deal will allow Iran to keep the fruits of its violations. Yes, the deal includes restrictions on uranium enrichment, but Tehran can retain its enrichment program, with guaranteed international assistance in improving it. These concessions are fatal mistakes.

Moreover, Iran’s ballistic missile efforts — its development of the means to deliver nuclear weapons all over the world — will barely be touched. Nor does the deal in any way address Iran’s clandestine weaponization efforts, which it has denied and hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency with great skill.

Last week, the news that the administration has not even seen the texts of two agreements between the energy agency and Iran, both crucial to implementation of the Vienna accords, only raises further doubts. President Obama must provide the texts of these “side deals” to Congress before any serious consideration of the overall agreement is possible.

Some critics of Obama’s plan advocate scuttling the deal and increasing economic sanctions against Iran instead. They are dreaming. Iran and the United States’ negotiating partners have already signed the accords and are straining at their leashes to implement them. There will be no other “better deal.” Arguments about what Obama squandered or surrendered along the way are therefore fruitless. As for sanctions, they were already too weak to prevent Iran’s progress toward the bomb, and they will not be reset now. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, “These sanctions are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”

Patrick Clawson, the director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, provided the most recent thumbs-down assessment of sanctions: “Iran has muddled through the shock of the sanctions imposed in 2012, and its structural [economic] problems are not particularly severe compared to those of other countries.” He estimates Iran’s nuclear and terrorism-support programs to cost only about $10 billion annually. No wonder administration officials have testified that sanctions (including those imposed piecemeal before 2012) did not slow Iran’s nuclear efforts.

Nor will the deal’s “snapback” mechanism (intended to coerce Iran back into compliance if it breaches its obligations) change that reality. Tehran’s belligerent response is expressly stated in the agreement’s text: “If sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments … in whole or in part.” Tehran does risk losing some future economic benefits should sanctions snap back, but by then it will have already cashed in the assets the deal unfreezes and signed new lucrative trade and investment contracts.

Once those benefits begin flowing all around, the pressure on world governments will only increase to ignore Iranian violations, or to treat them as minor or inadvertent, certainly not warranting the reimposition of major sanctions. The ayatollahs have dusted off Lenin’s barb that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” and applied it to the age of nuclear proliferation.

If diplomacy and sanctions have failed to stop Iran, diplomacy alone will fail worse. Like it or not, we now face this unpleasant reality: Iran probably will violate the deal; it may not be detected doing so and if detected, it will not be deterred by “snapback” sanctions. So we return to the hard question: Are we prepared to do what will be necessary to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons?

Obama most certainly is not, which means the spotlight today is on Israel.

If Israel strikes, there will be no general Middle East war, despite fears to the contrary. We know this because no general war broke out when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981, or when it attacked the North Korean-built Syrian reactor in 2007. Neither Saudi Arabia nor other oil-producing monarchies wanted those regimes to have nuclear weapons, and they certainly do not want Iran to have them today.

However, Iran may well retaliate. At that point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still be able to effectively counter Tehran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be its vehicles for retaliation. The United States must also provide muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its inherent right of self-defense. Whatever Obama’s view, public and congressional support for Israel will be overwhelming.

American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Europe, Foreign policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, IAEA, IDF, Iran - secret deal, Iran / Israel War, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian economy, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, John Bolton, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
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Springtime for America’s Enemies

July 22, 2015

Springtime for America’s Enemies, The Daily Beast, Garry Kasparov, July 22, 2015

(This is from The Daily Pest Beast. — DM)

Dangerous and short-sighted U.S. diplomacy has empowered no one except state sponsors of terrorism and fascistic regimes.

There has never been a better time in history to be an enemy of the United States of America. While America’s traditional allies in Europe and the Middle East express confusion and frustration, Obama’s White House delivers compliments and concessions to some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. In the span of a single week, the U.S. has restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, pressured Ukraine to accept Vladimir Putin’s butchering of its eastern region, and brokered a deal to liberate Iran from sanctions.

These actions would represent a tremendous series of diplomatic triumphs if they improved human rights in these repressed nations, saved lives in conflict regions, or improved global security. That is, in fact, what the White House says these deals will do, despite copious evidence to the contrary. These negotiations represent willful ignorance of the fundamental nature of the regimes in question, especially those of Iran and Russia. Cuba is a political hotspot in the U.S. and remains a potent symbol of totalitarianism, but despite its regional meddling, especially in Venezuela, it isn’t on the scale of the global threats represented by Iran’s terrorism and nuclear ambitions and Putin’s nuclear-backed expansionism. Regardless of the wishes of the Iranian and Russian people, their leaders have no interest in peace, although they are very interested in never-ending peace negotiations that provide them with cover as they continue to spread violence and hatred.

The vocabulary of negotiation is a pleasant and comforting one, especially to a war-weary America. It’s difficult to argue against civilized concepts like diplomacy and engagement, and the Obama administration and the pundits who support it have made good use of this rhetorical advantage. In contrast, deterrence and isolation are harsh, negative themes that evoke the dark time of the Cold War and its constant shadow of nuclear confrontation. No one would like less a return to those days than me or anyone else born and raised behind the Iron Curtain. The question is how best to avoid such a return.

The favorite straw man of the “peacemongers” is that the only alternative to appeasement is war, which makes no sense when there is already an escalating war in progress. The alternative to diplomacy isn’t war when it prolongs or worsens existing conflicts and gives the real warmongers a free hand. Deterrence is the alternative to appeasement. Isolation is the alternative to years of engagement that has only fueled more aggression.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a Communist country that I cannot so casually ignore the suffering of the people being left behind as these treaties are signed. Ronald Reagan was called a warmonger by the same crowd that is praising Obama to the skies today and yet Reagan is the one who freed hundreds of millions of people from the Communist yoke, not the “peacemakers” Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.

Diplomacy takes two while capitulation is unilateral. Diplomacy can fail and there is real damage, and real casualties, when it does. Putin’s dictatorship was immeasurably strengthened by the catastrophe known as “the reset,” an Obama/Hillary Clinton policy that gave Putin a fresh start as an equal on the world stage just months after he invaded Georgia. Years that could have been spent deterring Putin’s crackdowns and centralization of power while he still needed foreign engagement were instead spent cultivating a partnership that never really existed. Time that could have been used to establish alternate sources of gas and oil were squandered, leaving Europe vulnerable to energy blackmail.

By 2014, Putin had consolidated power at home completely and, with no significant domestic enemies left and sure he would face little international opposition, he was confident enough to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea. The thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Ukraine are Putin’s victims, of course, but they must also weigh on the conscience of the bureaucrats, diplomats, and leaders whose cowardice—well-intentioned or not—emboldened Putin to that point.

As recent days and past decades past have shown us, it is easy to paint the critics of nearly any diplomatic process as warmongers. Again, the language of peace and diplomacy is soothing and positive. If we just talk a little longer, if we just delay a little more, if we just concede a little more… To make the peacemonger position even more unassailable, every outbreak of violence large or small can be blamed on the failure of the diplomats to talk, delay, and concede more. And sometimes, to be fair, acceptable compromises are reached and, if not win-win, mutually satisfactory lose-lose agreements can defuse conflicts and avoid bloodshed. Diplomacy is supposed to be the modern way, the civilized way, and it should always be considered first—and second.

But diplomacy also requires a measure of good faith by all parties. It assumes that one side (or both) isn’t lying and cheating. It assumes that there is sufficient coercion and/or self-interest for the deal to hold. A peace treaty assumes that both sides actually want peace; a ceasefire assumes that both sides will cease firing. When these things cannot be assumed, any deal is a likely to be a bad deal. At best it will be meaningless and the regimes operating in bad faith will be quick to exploit the delays and concessions. By signing agreements with regimes that have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted and have no interest in peace or ceasefires, the Obama administration has turned the great game of diplomacy into Russian roulette.

Keeping a firm grip on power is the only thing that matters in a dictatorship. The consequences of losing power in an authoritarian regime rarely involve peaceful retirement and a long life. (Gorbachev is a notable exception, mostly due to his cleverly taking credit for the Soviet collapse he fought so hard to avoid, as well as to the shameful lack of appetite in Russia and the international community for holding Communist leaders accountable.) Both Khamenei and Putin have brutally cracked down on their own people to remove any challenges to their authority. Both rely on vicious propaganda to drum up nationalism and hatred for foreign enemies and “traitors” at home, i.e. anyone who opposes or criticizes the regime. Both wage war and terror on their borders and beyond. Both hold sham elections to provide a distraction for their citizens and fodder for the global press to blather on about the potential for liberalization. And this week, both Putin and Khamenei have been rewarded by President Obama with negotiations that will aid them in causing further suffering to their people and in making the world far less safe. Obama gets his “peace for our time” fanfare and the dictatorships continue with business as usual.

A remark made by Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Dayan is much repeated by the peacemongers in times like these. In a 1977 interview the renowned military man said that “if you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends.” This is both clever and true, but what has been forgotten is that Dayan continued, “But the question is whom do we want to make peace with—not just who are our enemies.” It’s delusional to think you can make peace with an unrepentant state sponsor of terror like Iran or a Russian regime that is sending tanks across a European border and adopting fascist propaganda.

It is clear that the Obama administration thinks it should and can make peace with anyone, whether they like it or not, and whether or not they actually change their odious behavior. These terrible deals with Cuba, Russia, and Iran—it’s like the old joke about the businessman who sells each unit at a loss but says he’ll make it up in volume. Cuba continues to jail journalists and dissidents. Putin’s forces are still illegally occupying Crimea and waging war in Eastern Ukraine while Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bullies the Ukrainian government into the concessions that Putin demanded in the latest Minsk ceasefire accord (which his troops ignore, of course).

Iran will dramatically upgrade its ability to support the military wings of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen it has been supplying with weapons for years. There is little doubt Iran will also continue its attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, and even if it fails it is sure to spark a nuclear arms race in the region. Iran’s hardliners have been cemented in power by escaping sanctions while giving up nothing. Calling all of this a triumph for diplomacy is perverse. By the time Obama is polishing his Nobel Peace Prize in his presidential library, the next president will be left facing two aggressive despotic regimes that are stronger and more confident of their invincibility than ever.

Expansionist dictatorships never transform quietly. They most often end in collapse or violent revolution. Comparisons of the Iran agreement to the opening of China in the 1970s are absurd. China would have starved had they not abandoned Mao’s catastrophic plans and built an export economy, something that required formal relations with the free world. In contrast, petro-dictatorships like Iran don’t need their people or to be on good terms with the West—especially not now that the economic sanctions will be lifted.

The casualties that have resulted from weakness masked as diplomacy far outnumber those stemming from being too hasty to confront and deter aggression. The peacemongers should keep that in mind as Iran uses some of its $100 billion in newly unfrozen assets to arm its terror proxies. Before applauding the next ceasefire in Ukraine as progress they should recall what Putin did during the last two. More than anything, before Obama again praises the tyrannical leaders of Cuba, Iran, and Russia for their cooperation, he should remember that some enemies are worth having.

Categories: Cuba, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Kerry, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1
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