Iran instructed Hezbollah not to respond to reported Israeli Air Force strikes last week because it wants to focus on finalizing the nuclear deal with world powers, a Saudi newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Tehran does not want an escalation now that could risk the release of funds that will flow in from frozen assets as sanctions relief kicks in as the deal is finalized, sources told Al-Watan.
The unconfirmed report could well be false and part of the ongoing media battle going on between Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia and the Iran Shi’ite axis.
Iran will get access to over $100 billion of assets frozen abroad, US officials say, equivalent to a quarter of its annual output. The inflow may start around the end of this year, after Tehran is certified in compliance with the deal.
The alleged Israel Air Force drone attack last week struck a vehicle on the outskirts of the Druse village of Hader, near the Golan Heights. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that five people were killed in the attack – two members of Hezbollah and three from the Syrian National Defense Forces, a pro-government militia.
The observatory added that the cell was led and supervised by Kuntar, who was traded by Israel in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli reservists killed by Hezbollah in 2006.
A second strike targeted a Lebanese military installation near the Syrian border, wounding six, according to Arab media reports.
Other sources told the Saudi paper that the Shi’ite group aims to cover up its inability to protect its fighters in Syria and particularly from Israeli attacks.
In January, Israel carried out a helicopter attack in Quneitra province that killed a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard general and several Hezbollah members including the son of the group’s late military commander, Jihad Mughniyeh.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah recently arrested a Lebanese engineer who was allegedly an Israeli spy and turned him over to Lebanese authorities, a security force told the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper in a report on Wednesday.
He was recruited and trained in Europe by Israelis, according to the source,
US Secretary of State John Kerry in Singapore, August 4, 2015. (AFP/POOL/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday expressed doubt that Iran really wants to annihilate Israel, arguing that while Tehran has “a fundamental ideological confrontation” with the Jewish state, it has not implemented “active steps” to “wipe it off the map.”
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic on Wednesday, Kerry said that the proposed nuclear deal with Iran is as “pro-Israel” as it gets, and that should Congress block the agreement it would only reaffirm the Iranian leadership’s mistrust of America.
Regarding Iran’s open animosity to Israel, Kerry said that while “they have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment” that doesn’t necessarily mean “that translates into active steps” and pointed out that Iran has not ordered Hezbollah to use its arsenal of 80,000 missiles in Lebanon against Israel.
The discussion about Iran’s hostility toward Israel in connection with the nuclear deal is “a waste of time here,” opined Kerry.
The secretary of state also defended comments he made last Friday in which he warned that should Congress vote against the Iranian nuclear deal signed last month in Vienna, Israel could find itself more isolated in the international arena and “more blamed.”
It was, he explained, more of a head’s up to Israel than a threat.
“If you’ve ever played golf, you know that you yell ‘fore’ off the tee,” he said. “You’re not threatening somebody, you’re warning them: ‘Look, don’t get hit by the ball, it’s coming.’”
Kerry insisted the deal, which has been vehemently criticized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not going far enough to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, is the best that Israel could have hoped for.
“I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets,” Kerry said. “And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.”
The top US envoy, who led the American team in negotiations with Iran alongside diplomats from the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany, cautioned that if Congress votes to block the deal it will only serve to play on the doubts and mistrust held by Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said and warned that congressional intervention to stop the deal “will be the ultimate screwing.”
On the other hand, Kerry revealed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had personally assured him that “If we get this finished, I [Zarif] am now empowered to work with and talk to you about regional issues.”
However, if Congress stops progress on the deal they would “shut that down, shut off that conversation, set this back, and set in motion a series of inevitables about what would happen with respect to Iranian behavior,” Kerry said.
As for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the secretary of state, who sponsored that last round of talks that failed in 2014 after nine months of negotiations, still offered some hope of a solution.
“Doable,” he said. “But not unless somebody wants to do it.”
The US Congress is expected to vote on the Iran deal by September 17. Congress can pass a motion of disapproval, which US President Barack Obama has already said that he would veto. An override of the veto requires two-thirds approval in both the House and Senate.
US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks in Singapore. (photo credit:STATE DEPARTMENT)
The secretary rejected Israel’s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying that the deal “is as pro-Israel” as it gets.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told The Atlantic on Wednesday that if Congress were to shoot down the Iran nuclear agreement, it would be “the ultimate screwing” of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The secretary rejected Israel’s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying that the deal “is as pro-Israel” as it gets.
Reneging on the nuclear agreement, which has the support of the major world powers, would constitute a setback for Washington and justify anti-American animus in Iran.
“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said. “[Having Congress vote down the nuclear pact] will be the ultimate screwing.”
“The United States Congress will prove the ayatollah’s suspicion, and there’s no way he’s ever coming back. He will not come back to negotiate. Out of dignity, out of a suspicion that you can’t trust America. America is not going to negotiate in good faith. It didn’t negotiate in good faith now, would be his point.”
Kerry also commented on the vociferous opposition to the deal expressed by Israel, which the secretary referred to as “visceral” and “emotional.” He was adamant that the agreement was positive for Israel’s geopolitical standing.
“I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets,” Kerry said. “And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.”
Kerry said that he was “sensitive” to Israeli concerns over Iran’s long-term aims, but he rejected arguments made by Jerusalem that the Islamic Republic was planning its annihilation.
“I haven’t seen anything that says to me [that Iran will implement its vow of wiping Israel off the map],” the secretary said. “They’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.”
“I operate on the presumption that Iran is a fundamental danger, that they are engaged in negative activities throughout the region, that they’re destabilizing places, and that they consider Israel a fundamental enemy at this moment in time,” Kerry said. “Everything we have done here [with the nuclear agreement] is not to overlook anything or to diminish any of that; it is to build a bulwark, build an antidote.”
The secretary said that the nuclear deal is even more imperative if Israel’s fears that Iran is plotting its destruction are true, since the agreement neutralizes Tehran’s nuclear program.
(Another interesting question would be, does Obama agree with any of Khamenei’s statements and, if so, which? — DM)
The Khamenei Palestine book is important not in and of itself but because the regime’s obsession with Israel is a key to its foreign policy. . . . But as much as Iran is focused on regional hegemony in which Sunni states would be brought to heel, as Khamenei’s Palestine illustrates, it is the fixation on Israel and Zionism that really animates their expansionism and aid for terror groups.
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It turns out President Obama isn’t the only world leader who writes books. His counterpart in Iran – Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has also just published a new book. But while it may not be as introspective as Obama’s Dreams From My Father, it does tell us at least as much about the vision of the person in charge in Tehran (as opposed to Hassan Rouhani, the faux moderate who serves as its president) as the president’s best-selling memoir. As Amir Taheri reports in the New York Post,Palestine is a 416-page diatribe against the existence of the state of Israel and a call to arms for it to be destroyed. Supporters of the nuclear deal the president has struck with Khamenei’s regime may dismiss this book as merely one more example of the Supreme Leader’s unfortunate ideology that must be overlooked. But as the New York Times noted last week, the administration’s real goal here isn’t so much in delaying Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon (which is the most that can be claimed for the agreement) as it is fostering détente with it. Seen in that light, the latest evidence of the malevolence of the Islamist regime should be regarded as yet another inarguable reason for Congress to vote the deal down.
In his interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on May 21, President Obama was asked directly about the significance of Iran’s anti-Semitism and its commitment to destroying Israel. The president said the anti-Semitism of the Iranian leadership did not mean they weren’t also “interested in survival” or being “rational.” As far as he was concerned, the ideology of the regime was not something that would influence its decisions.
But everything Khamenei says and, even more importantly, everything the regime does, by funding terrorist groups at war with Israel such as Hamas and Hezbollah or by embarking on a ruinously expensive nuclear project that placed it in conflict with the West, speaks to its commitment to policies that Obama may think are irrational but which are completely in synch with what he called its “organizing principle.” Why would a nation so rich in oil need to risk international isolation or war seek nuclear power if not to help Khamenei fulfill his pledge to “liberate” what is now Israel for Muslims?
The president told Goldberg that the American military option would be a sufficient deterrent to ensure that Iran didn’t violate the nuclear pact or behave in an irrational manner. But since the president has ruled out the use of force in a categorical manner, it’s hard to see why the Iranians would fear it once the U.S. and Europe are doing business with them. Even if it was a matter of snapping back sanctions, assuming that such a concept is even possible? Once the restrictions are unraveled, it’s fair to ask why would they work then when the president repeatedly tells us additional sanctions won’t work now and require us to accept the current deal that doesn’t achieve the objectives that the administration set for the negotiations when they began.
The Khamenei Palestine book is important not in and of itself but because the regime’s obsession with Israel is a key to its foreign policy. Iran constitutes a grave threat to Neighboring Arab countries that are at least as angry about the president’s embrace of Tehran as the Israelis since their nuclear status would undermine their security. But as much as Iran is focused on regional hegemony in which Sunni states would be brought to heel, as Khamenei’s Palestine illustrates, it is the fixation on Israel and Zionism that really animates their expansionism and aid for terror groups.
As Taheri notes in his article on the book, Khamenei distinguishes his idée fixe about destroying Israel from European anti-Semitism. Rather, he insists, that his policy derives from “well established Islamic principles.” Chief among them is the idea that any land that was once ruled by Muslims cannot be conceded to non-believers no matter who lives there now. While the Muslim world seems to understand that they’re not getting Spain back, the territory that constitutes the state of Israel is something else. Its central location in the middle of the Muslim and Arab worlds and the fact that Jews, a despised minority people, now rule it makes its existence particularly objectionable to Islamists like Khamenei.
Khamenei’s book shows that not only is he serious about wanting to destroy Israel and uproot its Jewish population, he regards this project as a practical rather than a theoretical idea. The administration ignores this because it wants to believe that Iran is a nation that wants to, as the president put it, “get right with the world.” But what it wants is to do business with the world while pursuing its ideological goals. The nuclear deal is a means to an end for the regime and that end does not involve good relations with the West or cooperation with other states in the region, let alone coexisting peacefully with Israel.
What is curious is that this is the same administration that regarded the announcement of a housing project in Jerusalem by low-level Israeli officials as an “insult” to Vice President Biden. But it chooses to regard the “death to America” chants led by regime functionaries in Iran as well as a book by the country’s leader indicating that Obama’s ideas about its character are fallacious as non-events. The only explanation for this remarkable lack of interest in Iranian behavior is an ideological fixation on détente with Tehran that is every bit as hardcore as any utterances that emanate from the mouth or the pen of the Supreme Leader.
Taken out of the context of a vision of friendship with the Iranian regime, the nuclear deal makes no sense. Yet squaring that vision with Khamenei’s literary effort is impossible. Members of the House and Senate must take note of this conundrum and vote accordingly.
[W]e should conclude that any deal that leads, now or in the near future, to an Iranian bomb is unacceptable to Israel — a nation that will likely soon have no choice but to consider the unthinkable in order to prevent the unimaginable.
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Will Israel do the unthinkable to stop the unimaginable?
The Obama administration seems peeved that almost everyone in Israel, left and right, has no use for the present Iranian–American deal to thwart Iran’s efforts to get the bomb. Indeed, at times John Kerry has hinted darkly that Israel’s opposition to the pact might incur American wrath should the deal be tabled — even though Kerry knows that the polls show a clear majority of Americans being against the proposed agreement while remaining quite supportive of the Jewish state. President Obama, from time to time, suggests that his agreement is being sabotaged by nefarious lobbying groups, big-time check writers, and neoconservative supporters of the Iraq war — all shorthand, apparently, for pushy Jewish groups.
Obama and his negotiators seem surprised that Israelis take quite seriously Iranian leaders’ taunts over the past 35 years that they would like to liquidate the Jewish state and everyone in it. The Israelis, for some reason, remember that well before Hitler came to power, he had bragged about the idea of killing Jews en masse in his sloppily composed autobiographical Mein Kampf. Few in Germany or abroad had taken the raving young Hitler too seriously. Even in the late 1930s, when German Jews were being rounded up and haphazardly killed on German streets by state-sanctioned thugs, most observers considered such activities merely periodic excesses or outbursts from non-governmental Black- and Brownshirts.
The Obama administration, with vast oceans between Tehran and the United States, tsk-tsks over Iranian threats as revolutionary hyperbole served up for domestic consumption. The Israelis, with less than a thousand miles between themselves and Tehran, do not — and cannot. Given the 20th century’s history, Israel has good reason not to trust either the United States or Europe to ensure the security of the Jewish state. Israel has learned from the despicable anti-Semitism now prevalent at the U.N. and from the increasing thuggery directed at Jews in Europe that the world at large would shed crocodile tears over the passing of Israel on the day of its destruction, but, the next day, sigh and get right back to business in a “that was then, this is now” style.
In 1981 the Israelis took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor — sold to Saddam Hussein by France. They were ritually blasted as state terrorists and worse by major U.S. newspapers and at the United Nations — though not by Khomeini’s Iran, which earlier had failed in a preemptive bombing strike to do much damage to the Osirak reactor. Today, in retrospect, most nations are privately glad that the Israelis removed the reactor from a country that had hundreds of years’ worth of natural-gas and oil supplies and no need for nuclear power — and that is now under assault from ISIS.
In 2007, when the Israelis preempted once more, and destroyed the al-Kibar nuclear facility that was under construction in Syria, the world, after initial silence, again in Pavlovian fashion became outraged at such preemptive bombing. The global chorus claimed that there was no intelligence confirming that the North Koreans had helped to launch a Syrian uranium-enrichment plant.
Yet eight years later, most observers abroad once again privately shrug that Bashar Assad most certainly had hired the Koreans to build a nuclear processing plant — and are quietly satisfied that the Israelis took care of it. Note that the al-Kibar site lies in territory now controlled by ISIS. One can imagine a variety of terrifying contemporary scenarios had the Israelis not preempted. Most of those who condemned Israel’s attack would now be worrying about an ISIS improvised explosive device, packed with dirty uranium, that might go off in a major Western city.
In all these cases, the Israelis assumed that Western intelligence about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was unreliable. They took for granted that Westerners automatically would blame Israelis for any preemptive attack against an Islamic nuclear site. And they likewise concluded that, privately and belatedly, Westerners would eventually be happy that the Israelis had belled the would-be nuclear cat.
But in a larger sense, the Israelis also recall the sad story of the West and the Holocaust less than 75 years ago — a horror central to the birthing of a “never again” Jewish state. By 1943, the outlines of the Nazis’ Final Solution were well known in both Washington and London; Jews were already being gassed at German death camps in Poland in an effort to kill every Jew from the Atlantic Ocean to the Volga River.
It was also a matter of record that the major Western democracies — America, Britain, and prewar France — had refused sanctuary to millions of Jewish refugees who had been stripped of their property by the Third Reich and told to leave Germany and its occupied territories. In some notorious cases, shiploads of Jews were turned away after docking in Western ports and were sent back to Nazi-occupied Europe, where the passengers were disembarked and soon afterward gassed. Moreover, Israelis understand that Hitler’s Final Solution would have been far more difficult to implement without the active participation of sympathetic anti-Semites in occupied European nations, who volunteered to round up their own Jews and send them on German trains eastward to the death camps.
In the case of the United States, anti-Semitic or indifferent officials high up in the State Department and elsewhere within the Roosevelt administration went out of their way to hide data about the plight of Jewish refugees, and circumvented protocol in order to refuse entry into the United States to the vast majority of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. The British were nearly as exclusionary, and also did their best to stop Jewish refugees from fleeing to Palestine to escape the death camps.
As it happens, Fascist and Nazi-allied Japan was sometimes more sympathetic to Jews desperate to leave Europe than were the Allies. Indeed, Hitler and his Nazi top echelon constantly bragged about the fact that neither the Allied powers nor occupied European nations wanted to take Jews off Berlin’s hands — proof, in Nazi eyes, of a supportive wink-and-nod attitude to the Holocaust. Each time the Allies published a threat to the Nazi leadership that there would be an accounting and war-crime trials after the war, Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler remembered that none of these outraged governments wanted to accept Jews themselves, and thus they must secretly still have remained indifferent to their fate. Thus the threats rang hollow to the Nazis, and the crematoria burned on.
By mid-1943 at the latest, American authorities had comprehensive knowledge — from firsthand reports by camp escapees, from photo reconnaissance, and from brave Germans who passed on detailed inside information through the neutral Swiss — of the vast scope of the Holocaust. They were constantly beseeched by international Jewish advocates to at least bomb the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz, which were within range of the Allies’ four-engine heavy bombers. Indeed, an Allied bombing mission would on occasion hit one of the key German factories that surrounded Auschwitz itself — to the delight of the doomed inmates of the death camps.
Given that eventually over 10,000 Jews per day were being gassed and cremated at Auschwitz, almost every Jewish leader advocated bombing the camps to destroy the rail links, the intricate camp machinery, and the SS guards so essential to the perpetration of the Holocaust. Again, such pleas were met with both indifference and lies, once more offered up by heralded American statesmen like U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long and well-connected consigliere and future “wise man” John McCloy of the War Department. The latter falsely argued at times that the camps were not really in reach of Allied bombers, or that the numbers of Jews being slaughtered were exaggerated, or that the diversion of even one or two missions from the strategic bombing of Germany would hamper the entire Allied war effort.
After the war, with rising Cold War tensions and a need to ensure that the West German public remained firmly in the new NATO alliance, many Nazi war criminals either were let out of prison early, had their sentences commuted, or were never charged at all. For all the Western empathy about the horrific Final Solution, Jews remembered (1) that it would once have been possible to save many fleeing Jews, if only the democracies had just allowed in political refugees; (2) that many of the death camps could have been leveled by Allied bombers in their last year or two of full-bore operation, saving perhaps 2 to 3 million of the doomed; and (3) that the political expediency of the postwar Western alliance had trumped bringing Nazi war criminals to a full accounting for their horrendous acts.
The Israelis have taken to heart lots of lessons over the last 70 years. They have concluded that often the world quietly wants Israel to deal with existential threats emanating from the Middle East while loudly damning it when it does. They have learned from the experience of the Holocaust that, for good or evil, Jews are on their own and can never again trust in the world’s professed humanity to prevent another Holocaust. And they are convinced that they can also never again err on the side of the probability that national leaders, with deadly weapons in their grasp, do not really mean all the unhinged things they shout and scream about killing Jews.
Given all that, we should conclude that any deal that leads, now or in the near future, to an Iranian bomb is unacceptable to Israel — a nation that will likely soon have no choice but to consider the unthinkable in order to prevent the unimaginable.
A majority of House lawmakers now support a resolution to reject the recently signed nuclear agreement with Iran, marking another blow to the White House’s aggressive push to convince Congress to back the deal, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
At least 218 Republican lawmakers have signed on to support a resolution expressing “firm disapproval” of the nuclear deal, which would provide Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief while enabling it to continue work on ballistic missiles and other nuclear research.
The measure, which is being led by Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill) and was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, comes as Congress takes 60 days to review the deal before voting on it.
Many lawmakers, including a growing number of Democrats, have come out against the deal, citing concerns it does not do enough to limit Iran’s nuclear program.
Critics remain most concerned about portions of the deal that will ban U.S. inspectors from Iran’s nuclear sites and remove restrictions on the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program.
The Obama administration has launched an aggressive push to sell the deal, both on Capitol Hill and among the public. President Barack Obama and other senior administration officials have been holding conference calls with liberal groups to sell the deal and put pressure on Congress.
Support for the resolution rejecting the deal is a sign that many lawmakers have made up their minds well before the congressional review period expires.
At least three members of the House leadership, as well as 18 of 22 House committee chairmen and 23 of the 25 GOP members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have already signed on to back the resolution, according to figures provided by congressional sources.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Republican Study Committee Chair Bill Flores (R., Texas) also back the measure.
More and more lawmakers are deciding to oppose the deal on a daily basis, Roskam told the Free Beacon.
“Time is not the friend of this deal. The more time Members spend evaluating this agreement, the more they realize it’s an historic mistake,” Roskam said. “While the administration continues to flaunt a false choice between this deal and war, Secretary [John] Kerry said repeatedly over the course of the negotiations that he would walk away from a bad deal.”
However, “if that was the case, then surely there was an alternative besides this dangerous agreement and war,” Roskam said. “Congress and the American people believe a better agreement is still achievable, and we can start by walking away from this one. This is why a majority of the House is already prepared to vote against this deal.”
Congress will “do everything in our power to shut down an accord that so utterly fails to shut down Iran’s nuclear program,” he said.
The resolution explicitly states that Congress disapproves of the nuclear deal and reiterates support to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
The resolution also rejects key portions of the deal, including ones that provide Iran billions of dollars in assets and approve the Islamic Republic’s right to construct ballistic missiles and freely purchase arms.
In addition, it highlights that the deal “allows key restraints on Iran’s nuclear program to expire within 10 to 15 years, including those on Iran’s domestic uranium enrichment program and heavy-water reactor at Arak.”
“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] fails to address Iran’s egregious human rights record, Iran’s role as the world’s leading state sponsor of international terrorism, and Iran’s unjust imprisonment of innocent United States citizens,” the resolution states.
Roskam has spoken to colleagues about the resolution since spearheading it several weeks ago, according to sources familiar with the situation. The lawmaker spent most of last week on the floor wrangling support for the resolution.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas), chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee, became the 218th co-sponsor of the resolution on Friday, when he called Roskam to lend his support, sources said.
Thornberry had been withholding judgment of the deal until he was able to grill senior Obama administration officials about it during a hearing last week.
Roskam will speak to House Democrats about the measure over the August recess to secure a veto-proof majority, sources said.
A senior congressional aide familiar with the effort said the administration is failing to convince lawmakers to back the deal.
“It appears the administration’s sales pitch for this deal is falling on deaf ears. Closed-door briefings and public hearings have apparently left Members with more questions than answers, and the administration’s decision to circumvent Congress by first bringing the deal to the UN infuriated key Democrats who are otherwise loyal to the president,” the source said.
“This level of opposition so early in the review period indicates that Congress really has a chance of killing the agreement. What Congressman Roskam has done—securing 218 commitments from Members vote against the deal in just two weeks—is a rather remarkable feat. He still has more work to do, but this is an impressive start,” the source added.
In the weeks since the deal was signed, critics have warned that it will only embolden Tehran’s intransigence, including its illicit nuclear relationship with North Korea.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials have downplayed comments by the Obama administration maintaining that the deal shuts down Iran’s pathway to the bomb while imposing a strict inspections regime.
Hamid Baeidinejad, an official in the Iranian foreign ministry and one of the country’s nuclear negotiators, claimed in an interview that “the remarks by the western officials are ambiguous comments which are merely uttered for domestic use and therefore we should say that there is no ambiguity in this [nuclear] agreement.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, Security Adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Photo Credit: Screenshot from Al Jazeera / MEMRI TV
The Iranian security adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explained in a broadcast interview last week that United Nations nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would not be given access to Tehran’s sensitive military nuclear sites.
Ali Akbar Velayati made the statement in a broadcast interview with Aljazeera on July 31, 2015 (clip# 5026) that was monitored and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
“First, allow me to emphasize that the issue of the missiles and of Iran’s defensive capabilities were not part of the negotiations to begin with,” Velayati said.
“No matter what pressure is exerted, Iran never has negotiated and never will negotiate with others – America, Europe, or any other country – about the nature and quality of missiles it should manufacture or possess, or about the defensive military equipment that it needs. This is out of the question.
“We in Iran will independently determine what military equipment we need in order to defend our land, the regime of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people, and the interest of our country.
“Therefore, we will not hesitate to obtain these weapons, with the exception of nuclear weapons or WMD, such as chemical weapons, which are internationally prohibited.
“Therefore, the missile issue is not a part of the nuclear agreement with the P5+1.
“Any different statement about this is baseless.
“Regardless of how the P5+1 countries interpret the nuclear agreement, their entry into our military sites is absolutely forbidden. The entry of any foreigner, including IAEA inspectors or any other inspector, to the sensitive military sites of the Islamic Republic is forbidden, no matter what,” Velayati stated firmly. (italics added)
The interviewer asked: “That’s final?”
“Yes,” Velayati replied. “Final.”
He went on to say, “Israel does not dare to attack Iran. The moment it initiates such a thing, important Israeli cities will be razed to the ground.
“The U.S. accuses us of supporting terrorism and terrorists in the region. We ask the Americans: ‘Who are those terrorists?’ Their answer boils down to Hezbollah.
“Is Lebanese Hezbollah a terrorist party? We are proud of Hezbollah. It defends its existence and the existence of the Muslims, the Arabs and the Lebanese. Hezbollah was the first to deal Israel a real defeat.
“We are proud to be supporting Hezbollah, while America deems this support to constitute support of terrorism.
“First of all, we should sit down and define what terrorism is and who is a terrorist. We believe that if you defend your land you are not a terrorist.
“We are committed to the Vienna agreement,” he reiterated.
“How do you view the recent Security Council resolution?” asked the interviewer.
“We are not necessarily required to accept everything decided by the Security Council,” replied Velayati. “Let me give you an example that is important to us and to you.
“The Security Council might make resolutions in favor of Israel. We would not accept or recognize these resolutions. This is what the Arab and Islamic countries would do. They would not recognize these resolutions.
“There were quite a few UN Security Council resolutions which ran counter to the interests of some countries that did not recognize them.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not succumb to any international resolution that contradicts our strategic interests and our sovereignty.
“However, with regard to the Vienna agreement, if it wins the support of the legal authorities in Iran, Iran will be completely committed to it.”
(The views expressed in this rant — some of which are off-topic — are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
This is a partially updated version of Fixing the Creator’s worst mistakes, published on December 29, 2012. It deals mainly with Islam, Iran, the nuke “deal,” illegal immigration and Obama’s usurpation of power.
Islam and other religions
Obama is “our” Imam in Chief and in that capacity continues to preach that Islam is the religion of peace; there is neither Islamic violence nor any Islamic desire for it. Since the Islamic State is violent it is not Islamic.
Coptic Christians beheaded. So what? They weren’t other Muslims.
In Obama’s apparent view, Palestinians want the true peace of Islam. They abhor violence and want nothing more than to live in peace and harmony in Israel with their Jewish friends and neighbors. Their only obstacles are those senselessly thrown in their path by wicked, apartheid Israel at every turn.
That’s a lie.
The nuke “deal” with Iran
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran is also peaceful, it is Islamic and hence deserves nukes (which it claims neither to have nor to want) along with increased funding to support its hegemonic efforts to bring “stability” to the Middle East with the help of its many proxies.
It’s not MY fault.
Here’s lots more ObamaMoney. Have fun with your virgins!
Obama conceals critical details of His Iran “deal” from members of Congress and from the people, while sending His minions forth to obfuscate and lie about it. Even Iran now claims that the Obama administration has been lying about the “deal.”
“Any time, anywhere” inspections to discover the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program are a farce and have been at least since November of 2013. We were recently advised that under one or more side deals between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran, the IAEA will neither inspect sites such as the Parchin military facility nor collect samples there; Iran will collect the samples and provide them (or perhaps samples taken elsewhere) to the IAEA.
Why is Obama doing this? Mr. Fleitz, the interviewee in the above video, suggests that Obama sees Iran as having been too long victimized by the West and in need of freedom from Western oppression.
Illegal immigration
Obama’s fundamental transformation of America in His image continues to accelerate. Illegal immigrants are already overwhelming the country and He demands more of them.
to screw America even more
I am the greatest expert on the Declaration of Dependence
All power to the People Obama
Obama has also accelerated Congress’ partially self-imposed rush to impotence. States’ rights have become a sad joke and the United Nations has become even more powerful, wrongheaded and intrusive. Our military is more focused on climate change and “social justice” than on fighting our worst enemy, which cannot even be named.
Obama confers with His chief military adviser
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By His Supreme Excellency, Barack Humble Hussein Obama
The first paragraph of the Declaration of Dependence refers to “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” However, according to the second paragraph of the Declaration,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Emphasis added.)
This raises what some may see as an important question: just who is that Creator fella, anyway? Is it Nature, Nature’s God or its earthly manifestation, Government? We need not answer directly due to the partisan overtones of the question. Suffice it to say that fairness and justice dictate that the Government over which I rule — as I had long been destined to do — has an obligation to correct the worst error of judgment and implementation made by that fella, whomever it may be. By correcting that error, I intend no disrespect to it or to anyone else. With few exceptions, everyone makes mistakes and when they are made it is My duty as your President to correct them.
Are all men are created equal?
No they are not, and it is the job of My Government to transform the nation, as I deem appropriate, to make everyone as nearly equal as is feasible consistent with providing the best governance possible. That is a daunting task, but since I won two presidential elections overwhelmingly I have a mandate to do it. I can and shall do it, so help Me — Allah everyone! You have nothing to lose but the chains in which you have long been unfairly bound by unnecessary and unjust freedoms.
Our Black and Brown Brothers and Sisters, whether from My America or from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, no less than invaders immigrants from Islamic nations, deserve to come to a truly welcoming America. Travel and resettlement are costly for them and they deserve the very best subsidies I can provide to afford them the leisure they want and hence deserve. That will enable them to evaluate all political candidates and to decide who will best serve My their interests. To that end, My Executive Decree is now being written to require that all promotional materials of a political nature be in Ebonics and Spanish as well as in all languages spoken or written in all Islamic nations unless I decree that it is not necessary for specific candidates whom I favor.
As the nation’s highest constitutional authority and scholar, I am uniquely qualified to interpret and otherwise ignore both the Constitution and the Declaration of Dependence. Both were written and adopted by White Male slaveholders, now despised by all good people.
Clearly, the statement that “all men are created equal” does not mean — as some have mistakenly claimed — equal before the law. Although the most humble of all men, I am so far above the law that I often have difficulty seeing it down below. The same is true in far lesser degree of accredited diplomats and many more. Others, such as those who maliciously oppose My sovereign will, are far beneath the law. No, equality does not mean “equal before the law.” It means equal in every respect except that. At least that’s what it should mean and it is My sworn duty to make it so. There cannot possibility be true equality without vigorous enforcement of My Decrees, to be promulgated now and in the future, mandating equality of both opportunity and result in all things.
Since it is my job to interpret and enforce our laws selectively I must also create those laws. That will be far more efficient.
An Executive Decree is now being drafted for My review, revision and signature. It will set forth the measures that are necessary to achieve our nation’s greatest dream — nay, her manifest destiny — of true equality for all. Very briefly, its directives will include the following:
1. Members of the Congress shall have no higher status or greater legislative authority than the poorest, lowest, most despised and least educated person in My nation — perhaps an illiterate, twelve year old, homeless transsexual drug abuser from Haiti. Hence, My Executive Decree shall declare the Congress in recess until truly representative members have been elected under Federal supervision to replace the elite obstructionists currently there.
In the meantime, I have my phone and veto pen ready.
2. During the congressional recess I shall, as your President, assume with great reluctance all legislative burdens which I have not already assumed. My people shall no longer be subjected to interminable partisan squabbles over such incomprehensible trivia as national debt limits, Federal budgets, tax fairness or anything else. The fruits of peace, love, joy and tranquility shall come to be enjoyed by all throughout My entire land.
3. Due to the peaceful outpourings of racial justice, tranquility, peace, love and joy due to My successful efforts to eliminate the scourge of White racism, there shall no longer be any excuse for privately owned Weapons of Mindless Destruction (WMDs). Hence, all shall be confiscated immediately and disposed of pursuant to Executive Decree.
4. All uniformed personnel of the armed forces shall have the same rank, pay and allowances. Staff Sergeant shall henceforth be the only military rank and all shall henceforth receive pay and allowances commensurate with that rank. The focus of all of My defense efforts will continue to be on social justice and the horrors of Climate Change. Accordingly, military personnel shall be given access to firearms only when called upon to enforce My Climate Change rules.
5. The gross unfairness of wealth maldistribution in the United States is unconscionable and that disgrace to humanity is compounded not only by an incomprehensible Internal Revenue Code but also by lengthy and even more incomprehensible IRS regulations. Accordingly, I shall decree a new and greatly simplified single tax rate of one hundred percent on all property and all earnings from any and all sources, with no deductions or credits. I shall also issue a new Revenue and Property Redistribution Decree granting $25,000 per person per year in cash as well as providing for the fair and just redistribution of all property confiscated in lieu of property tax payments. Since the unreasonably disparaged welfare safety net will no longer be needed it will be abolished.
6. Recognizing that My simplified tax plan may hamper states and other inferior governments in accessing revenues, all states and their subdivisions shall be abolished and the United States shall be divided into ten Federal Districts, to be governed by My appointed District Governors.
Conclusions
My simple, eminently fair and absolutely just decrees will transform My entire nation into a far better place for all of My people.
Islam absolutely must be recognized as the world’s preeminently peaceful religion; Christians, Jews and others must recognize this and accept the true enlightenment provided by the Holy Koran. If a few Jews or Christians are killed by Muslims who are ignorant of true Islamic teachings, that is far, far less hurtful to My people than the ravages of Climate Change. I believe that Pope Francis agrees with Me on this point.
As the monumental successes of My initiatives become clear throughout the world, I am confident that the United Nations will issue similar decrees for all nations, perhaps uniting some in UN protectorates to be governed in the fair and just ways of which the UN has over the years shown itself to be uniquely capable. The UN bows to no legitimate state or even to illegitimate states such as as Israel. Indeed, I am so confident that these wonders will come to pass that I have today notified the Secretary General that, when My work here is done, I shall give My service as his replacement higher priority than even My obligations to My own dear family.
Permit Me to commend those brave young people for their courage and superb intelligence in standing up for the highest, the best and brightest in our nation.
In closing, here’s another of my favorite songs. I hope you will enjoy it too:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on August 2, 2015 AFP PHOTO / POOL / GALI TIBBON)
PM says Israel ‘condemns’ such violence, while the PA ‘names public squares after the murderers of children’
Speaking in the wake of a firebombing attack in the West Bank that left a Palestinian toddler dead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday lashed out at Mahmoud Abbas, accusing the Palestinian Authority president of failing to condemn acts of Palestinian terrorism.
“We deplore and condemn these murderers. We will pursue them to the end,” he said. “They name public squares after the murderers of children. This distinction cannot be blurred or covered up,” he said.
“It is important to say this even as we utter our condemnations and unite against the criminals among our people,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister also said that there would be a “zero tolerance” policy toward such crimes in Israel, and vowed to punish the perpetrators to the full extent of the law.
Participants in the gay pride parade in Jerusalem flee stabber Yishai Schlissel, July 30, 2015. (screen capture: Channel 2)
“We recently witnessed two abhorrent crimes. Our policy toward these crimes is zero tolerance,” he said, referring both to the killing of the Palestinian child and a stabbing attack at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade on Thursday.
Netanyahu recalled visiting the home of the historian Joseph Klausner as a child. Over the arched entrance to Klausner’s home, said the prime minister, the words “Judaism” and “humanity” were engraved in Hebrew.
The perpetrators of last week’s crimes did not represent Judaism, he said.
The prime minister said he had instructed security and law enforcement officials to use all legal tools at their disposal to apprehend the perpetrators of the arson attack and prosecute the perpetrator of the stabbing attack.
“We are determined to vigorously fight manifestations of hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side. The fight against these phenomena unites us all.
“This is not a struggle by this or that faction. This is a matter of basic humanity and is at the foundation of our enlightened Jewish values,” he said.
The assailant in Thursday’s anti-gay attack was an ultra-Orthodox Jew, Yishai Schlissel, who had just been released after serving 10 years in jail for carrying out a similar attack at the 2005 Pride Parade. On Sunday, doctors said that one of the six victims, who suffered multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, remained in critical condition.
A Palestinian man mourns alongside the body of a one-and-a-half year old boy, Ali Dawabsha, during his funeral in Duma village near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, July 31, 2015. (Majdi Mohammed/AP)
On Friday, unknown assailants suspected to be Jewish settlers firebombed the home of a Palestinian family in the northern West Bank village of Duma, killing a toddler. The parents and brother of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha were hospitalized and are still fighting for their lives.
The family’s small brick and cement home was gutted by fire, and a Star of David spray-painted on a wall along with the words “revenge” and “long live the Messiah.”
The phrases were indicative of so-called “price tag” violence — a euphemism for nationalist-motivated hate crimes by Jewish extremists.
Ayatollah Ali Khameni has published his version of Mein Kampf, a 416 page book outlining his strategy to eliminate Israel, which he describes as “a cancerous tumor.” Although it is currently available only in Iran, an Arabic translation is underway, and sooner or later it will achieve wide readership in the Muslim world. The Obama administration is no doubt hoping it will achieve no notice in the United States until after the Iran deal is voted upon, because the plan advocated will be immensely aided by its implementation.
Amir Taheri of the New York Post obtained a copy from Iran:
Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state.
He uses three words. One is “nabudi” which means “annihilation.” The other is “imha” which means “fading out,” and, finally, there is “zaval” meaning “effacement.”
Khameni does not call for wiping out Israel with a nuclear bomb. He states that one of his fondest desires is to pray in Jerusalem. Instead, his plan is one of terrorism and pressure, keeping Israel from fighting back against Iran, the sponsor of terror, with the implicit threat of nuclear retaliation.
What he recommends is a long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life unpleasant if not impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews so that they leave the country.
His calculation is based on the assumption that large numbers of Israelis have double-nationality and would prefer emigration to the United States and Europe to daily threats of death.
Iran has many allies in this effort, including the BDS movement in the United States. Cripple Israel economically, and her economically productive people will leave. Make the political cost of supporting Israel high. That will pave the way for an internationally-sponsored plebiscite engineered to produce a Muslim state:
Under Khamenei’s scheme, Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza, would revert to a United Nations mandate for a brief period during which a referendum is held to create the new state of Palestine.
All Palestinians and their descendants, wherever they are, would be able to vote, while Jews “who have come from other places” would be excluded.
Double standards are inherent in Islamic thinking. Any land that once fell under Muslim control belongs to Muslims by right. So Israelis who only boast a few generations in Israel are excluded, while Arabs whose families once lived in Israel generations ago are automatically qualified.
Khamenei does not mention any figures for possible voters in his dream referendum. But studies by the Islamic Foreign Ministry in Tehran suggest that at least eight million Palestinians across the globe would be able to vote against 2.2 million Jews “acceptable” as future second-class citizens of new Palestine. Thus, the “Supreme Guide” is certain of the results of his proposed referendum.
With a $150 billion war chest, thanks to the Obama deal, and the prospect of oil exploration and other business expansion in Iran, there will be plenty of money available to subsidize Hezb’allah, Hamas, and other terror attacks against Israelis and Jews (such as the attack on the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires).
Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit “fighters” in the West Bank to set up Hezbollah-style units.
“We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip,” he boasts.
Far from a spittle-flecked madman, Khameni is coldly calculating, and explains a plan that is already underway with considerable success. And he has many allies in this country, some of them in high places.
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