China Warns Of Rising Nuclear Threat From North Korea – Lou Dobbs, Fox News via You Tube, April 23, 2015
(The first four minutes is about the mess in Yemen and the last four minutes is about the North Korean nuclear threat. — DM)
Posted tagged ‘Khamenei’
Empowering Iran
April 24, 2015Empowering Iran, Weekly Standard, Lee Smith, May 4, 2015 (print date)
Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.
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Last week, the Obama administration urged Saudi Arabia to halt its air campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have wrested control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The White House’s professed concern was that Riyadh’s Operation Decisive Storm was killing too many civilians. Unfortunately, that’s hardly surprising since Iranian proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, typically stash their missiles and rockets in civilian areas. Presumably, the Houthis have read from the same playbook. The effect of the administration’s diplomatic efforts, then, was to protect Iranian arms in Yemen. And this, in turn, the administration no doubt believes, protects Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
Houthis rally against Saudi Arabia, April 1. Newscom
In public, Obama is eager to show that the United States still stands by its traditional allies, like Riyadh. But behind the scenes, it’s clear that the White House’s real priority is partnering with Iran. Sure, the White House dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea, but this was not to stop Iran from shipping arms to the Houthis. As Obama himself explained, America’s blue-water Navy was present to ensure freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. The notion that the White House really intended to interdict Iranian arms shipments beggars belief. For more than four years Obama has done nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad from killing nearly a quarter of a million people in Syria, lest he endanger his nuclear agreement with Iran. With a deal so close, Obama is certainly not going to risk what he sees as the capstone of his foreign policy legacy by disarming Iranian allies in Yemen.
The problem is that by protecting his nuclear agreement with Iran, the president has protected and empowered the Islamic Republic. Tehran may boast of controlling four Arab capitals, but the reality is that its regional position is a house of cards. Pull out one of those Arab capitals, or the nuclear program, and Iran’s burgeoning empire quickly collapses. It’s Obama who is propping it up.
It’s interesting to imagine how these last six years might have gone for the Islamic Republic had the White House not been so determined to have a nuclear deal. Perhaps the Tehran regime would have been toppled when the Green Movement took to the streets in June 2009 to protest a fraudulent election if the American government had decided to back the opposition early, openly, and resourcefully. Perhaps another administration would at least have seen that uprising as an opportunity to gain leverage over the Iranian regime. Not Obama. He wanted a nuclear deal with the existing regime.
Another White House might have backed the Syrian rebels in order to bring down Assad. Indeed, a good portion of Obama’s cabinet counseled as much. To topple Tehran’s key Arab ally would have been the biggest strategic setback to Iran in 20 years, said Gen. James Mattis. Obama chose to leave Assad alone, and even ignored his own red line against the use of chemical weapons. Instead of the airstrikes he threatened on Syrian regime targets, Obama made a deal to ostensibly remove the chemical weapons that Assad is still employing.
As Assad’s position became weaker, Hezbollah entered the Syrian war to prop him up. The Iranian-backed militia was stretched thin between Syria and Lebanon, but the Obama administration helped the terrorist organization cover its flank by sharing intelligence to keep Sunni car bombs out of Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. Another administration might have understood this as an opportunity to weaken Iran’s position in Damascus and Beirut, but not Obama. He had his eyes on the prize.
In sum, over the last six years, almost all of Iran’s advances in the region, including its move into Iraq to fill the vacuum in Baghdad after the American withdrawal from that country, has taken place with either the overt or tacit assistance of Obama. The White House brags about it. Israel might have attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, as one administration official told the press, but we deterred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from striking. If the Iranians strut with confidence these days, that’s because they understand who has their back.
The nuclear deal, as the president has explained, means that within a little more than a decade, Iran’s breakout time will be down to zero—which is a nice way of saying the clerical regime will have the bomb. The likely result is that the agreement will ensure Iran’s regional position long after Obama’s presidency is around to safeguard it. It will strengthen the hand of the hardliners. It is not Rouhani or Zarif or other so-called moderates who hold the nuclear file, but Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And in the future, American policymakers will have a vital interest in ensuring there are no internal regime fights over who controls the bomb.
In other words, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.
Progressives at the Poker Table
April 24, 2015Progressives at the Poker Table, Mishpacha Magazine, Jonathan Rosenblum, via Jewish Media Resources, April 24, 2015
A comparison of the progressive approach to the threat of climate warming and that of a nuclear-armed Iran offers interesting insights into the progressive mind.
Let’s start with climate warming, which according to the best measures, inconveniently stopped about 18 years ago. First, what is the magnitude of the threat? The most alarmist predictions of future catastrophe are based on computer-generated climate models that have been consistently refuted by events of the real world. According to the alarmists, there would be fifty million refugees from global warming by 2010. Never happened.
Those models are based on a variety of assumptions about “feedback mechanisms” generated by increased CO2 in the atmosphere trapping more heat. NASA satellite date from 2000-2011 showed far more heat escaping the earth’s atmosphere than predicted by the computer models, according to study in the peer-reviewed journal Remote Sensing.
Nor is clear to what extent the global warming of the 20th century was generated by anthropogenic forces – i.e., increased CO2 emissions. Many leading climate scientists now think that solar activity — about which we can do nothing — may be a larger contributor to temperature variation than carbon emissions. That would be consistent with the wide fluctuations between warm and cold periods over the last millennium, even prior to the onset of the Industrial Resolution.
Scientists at CERN, the European Organization of Nuclear Research, which involves 600 universities and national labs and 8,000 scientists, have shown that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that grow and seed clouds. And clouds trap heat in the atmosphere. The magnitude of cosmic rays emitted by the sun depends on variations in the sun’s magnetic field.
Finally, that which the alarmists consider an unmitigated disaster — higher levels of CO2in the atmosphere may have many beneficial effects. A 2012 statement signed by 16 distinguished scientists from universities like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and the Hebrew University, pointed out that CO2 is “not a pollutant,” but rather a “key component of the biosphere’s life cycle.” Higher concentrations of CO2 spur plant growth.
In sum, the threat, if any, is one for the indeterminate future, of unknown magnitude and causation, and may not even be subject to ameliorative action. Yet climate alarmists propose a Global Green Carbon Treaty of such cost and intrusiveness that Yale’s Walter Russell Mead compares it to the 1928 Kellogg-Brand Pact outlawing war for sheer folly. He describes GGCT as less a treaty and more a constitution for world government regulating all economic production in every country on earth. That constitution would be for a “global welfare state with trillions of dollars ultimately sent by the taxpayers of rich countries to governments (however feckless, inept, corrupt or tyrannical) to poor ones.”
These proposals are put forward seemingly oblivious to the economic cost or loss of liberty involved. In his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Danish statistician Bjorn Lonborg calculated that enforcement alone of the Kyoto Treaty would cost $150,000 billion a year, money which could save tens of thousands of lives annually.
The above-mentioned statement of the 16 scientists cited the work of Yale economist William Nordhaus, whos showed that the highest benefit-to-cost ratio would be achieved via a policy of fifty years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. The least developed countries would benefit most by being able to share some of the advantages of material well-being — i.e., health and life expectancy — with the more developed world.
NOW TO THE OTHER SIDE of the comparison. Even President Obama admits that under the unsigned understanding reached at Lausanne, Iran will have zero breakout time to a nuclear weapon thirteen years from now. (Today, he puts the breakout time at three months.)
That fact alone creates a world with as many tripwires leading to war as Europe on the eve of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in August 1914. Only this time the weapons of choice will be nuclear.
The proposed agreement with Iran means the end of nuclear non-proliferation. If the world’s leading rogue state and sponsor of terrorism can have its nuclear weapons program effectively endorsed by the members of the U.N. Security Council, every other nation that was dissuaded in the past by international pressure from expanding its civilian nuclear program to include enrichment to weapons level – e.g., South Korea, Brazil – will reconsider.
The most rapid nuclear proliferation will take place in the world’s most volatile region, the Middle East, in which the millennial hatred of Sunnis and Shiites still burns hot. Saudis have made it clear that they will purchase nuclear weapons off-the-shelf from Pakistan, as per a prior agreement, to counter Iran’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons. Egypt and Turkey will almost certainly follow suit.
An already aggressive Iran would become vastly more so with the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues from the lifting of sanctions and the ability to provide a nuclear umbrella for its regional proxies. As a consequence, the Middle East would become all the more volatile.
The nations most likely to acquire nuclear arms and unstable, which increases the possibility of terrorist groups acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran has long eyed the “holy cities” of Mecca and Medina, and is already stirring up the Shiite population in Saudi Arabia’s eastern, oil-producing provinces and in Yemen on its southern border. Egypt cannot feed its population.
And Iran might find it useful to supply some of its non-state allies, like Hezbollah or Hamas, with dirty nuclear weapons that do not require missiles to deliver. Non-state actors are far harder to deter or hold accountable.
A nuclear Iran should terrify not only Israel, which it has repeatedly threatened to obliterate. Iranian leaders have publicly speculated for years about the grim calculus of a nuclear exchange with Israel: one bomb wipes out Israel; Israeli retaliation still leaves us with tens of millions survivors. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Peter Fry, a member of the congressional EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) Commission, stress the vulnerability of the United States. The recent “understanding” (the terms of which are unknown and perhaps unknowable given the wide divergence between American and Iranian descriptions of what has been concluded) makes no reference to any limitations on Iran’s ballistic missile program, on which it works closely with North Korea.
Iran may soon possess long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States or the capacity to launch a nuclear-armed satellite above the United States. Even one nuclear weapon detonated above the United States could potentially knock out much of the national power grid. The congressional EMP Commission estimated that a nationwide blackout lasting one year from such an EMP attack could result in the deaths of nine out of ten Americans, with ISIS-like gangs ruling the streets.
Nor are traditional doctrines of nuclear deterrence relevant to the Middle East, in general, and Shiite Iran, in particular. Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz ask in their devastating critique of the recent agreement how will traditional doctrines of deterrence based on stable state actors “translate into a region where sponsorship of non-state proxies is common, the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a kind of fulfillment?”
As the dean of Middle East scholars Bernard Lewis has pointed out, for Shiite fanatics awaiting the return of the “hidden Imam,” after a cataclysmic event, the destruction of nuclear war might be an inducement rather than a deterrent.
WHAT DOES PRESIDENT OBAMA offer as the response to this description of a nuclear tinderbox waiting to be lit? Pure fantasy.
He and Secretary of State Kerry have made repeated references to a fatwa of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini against the use of nuclear weapons, which does not exist and certainly is credited by none of Iran’s enemies.
And he speaks hopefully of a newly mellowed Iran after the conclusion of an agreement. What is it about the Supreme Leader’s repeated chants of “Death to America” and insistence that current negotiations have nothing to do with reconciliation that the President can’t hear?
One option that the President has completely excluded is an air campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and cut of the “head of snake,” as Woolsey once described the Revolutionary Guard to me. Obama has repeatedly accused the opponents of the Lausanne understanding as being advocates of war.
Clearly, then, all the tough talk about “all options are on the table,” “a bad deal is worse than no deal [followed by military attack],” “I will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons,” had the same truth content as “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
Yet no one doubts that the United States has the capability to destroy Iran’s enrichment infrastructure. (If Russia goes through with the delivery of advanced anti-aircraft batteries, as a consequence of the Lausanne understanding, the task will be complicated.) And there will be consequences that cannot be fully known in advance. Iran has terrorist sleeper cells around the world. But it also has lots of assets, besides its nuclear infrastructure, which would be subject to further attacks if it unleashes those cells.
Whatever the Iranian response, the price to be paid will certainly be less than consigning all humanity to live in a world perpetually poised on the cusp of nuclear war.
SO WHY in the case of global warming are progressives willing to incur unbearable costs to combat a future threat of unknown magnitude and immediacy, and against which their solutions may well prove futile, while with respect to the easily identified and imminent danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, they write off from the start a clear and known remedy?
For progressives the solution of worldwide government, run by the executive decree of “the best and the brightest,” is not a cost too great to be contemplated, but rather the fulfillment of the progressive dream. But they will never countenance military action, even to save millions of lives down the road. Churchill’s dictum, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” remains foreign to them.
Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions
April 17, 2015Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions, Times of Israel, April 17, 2015
President Barack Obama listened as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi speaks during their news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, April 17, 2015. (Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Obama also said Friday that a bill introduced by Congress seeking a review and approval of a nuclear deal with Iran would not derail negotiations with Tehran, set to resume next week, and that the proposed legislation was a “reasonable compromise” he planned to sign off on.
The legislation would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions against Iran for at least 30 days after any final agreement, which would give lawmakers time to weigh in. Obama said he still has concerns that some lawmakers are treading on his unilateral power as president to enter into a political agreement with another country, but the bill has language that makes it clear that lawmakers’ review will be limited to the sanctions imposed by Congress.
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U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday left open the door to “creative negotiations” in response to Iran’s demand that punishing sanctions be immediately lifted as part of a nuclear deal, even though the initial agreement calls for the penalties to be removed over time.
Asked whether he would definitively rule out lifting sanctions at once as part of a final deal aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Obama said he didn’t want to get ahead of negotiators in how to work through the potential sticking point. He said his main concern is making sure that if Iran violates an agreement, sanctions can quickly be reinstated — the so-called “snap back” provision.
“How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” Obama said. He said part of the job for Secretary of State John Kerry and the representatives of five other nations working to reach a final deal with Iran by June 30 “is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani insisted last week that they would not sign a deal unless all sanctions are lifted right after an agreement is signed. Obama initially portrayed their comments as a reflection of internal political pressure, while pointing out that the initial framework agreement reached earlier this month allows for sanctions to be phased out once international monitors verify that Tehran is abiding by the limitations.
Obama also said Friday that a bill introduced by Congress seeking a review and approval of a nuclear deal with Iran would not derail negotiations with Tehran, set to resume next week, and that the proposed legislation was a “reasonable compromise” he planned to sign off on.
The legislation would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions against Iran for at least 30 days after any final agreement, which would give lawmakers time to weigh in. Obama said he still has concerns that some lawmakers are treading on his unilateral power as president to enter into a political agreement with another country, but the bill has language that makes it clear that lawmakers’ review will be limited to the sanctions imposed by Congress.
“That I think at least allows me to interpret the legislation in such a way that it is not sending a signal to future presidents that each and every time they’re negotiating a political agreement, that they have to get a congressional authorization,” Obama said. He said he takes lawmakers who have drafted the legislation at their word that they will not try to derail negotiations.
The president also weighed in on Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it would lift a five-year ban on delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, giving the Islamic republic’s military a strong deterrent against any air attack. The White House initially objected, but Obama said, “I’m frankly surprised that it held this long.”
Russia signed the $800 million contract to sell Iran the S-300 missile system in 2007, but suspended their delivery three years later because of strong objections from the United States and Israel. “Their economy is under strain and this was a substantial sale,” Obama said.
Russia, which also is party to the talks along with China, France, Britain and Germany, said the preliminary nuclear agreement made its 2010 ban on sending missiles to Iran no longer necessary.
PART II: Michael Rubin on Obama: ‘He is Constructing an Imaginary Iran’
April 17, 2015PART II: Michael Rubin on Obama: ‘He is Constructing an Imaginary Iran’ Breitbart, Adelle Nazarian, April 17, 2015
Obama doesn’t understand that the Middle East isn’t a neighborhood to organize. He doesn’t understand that he’s the leader of the free world and not a zoning commissioner. In effect, the bad guys are running all over him. And the problem is, he’s too naive or too arrogant to care.
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Breitbart’s Adelle Nazarian had the opportunity to speak with renowned Middle East expert and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Dr. Michael Rubin recently. Dr. Rubin provided his analysis on U.S.-Iran relations under the Obama Administration and provided a look into the future through the periscope of the past.
This is Part II of a two-part series. For the first installment, click here.
BREITBART: Why didn’t the Obama administration look back at Khomeini’s letter from 1988 calling for nuclear weapons and compare it to Khamenei’s supposed nuclear fatwa today when approaching the nuclear talks?
RUBIN: You’ve got a situation where the Obama Administration is cherry picking dishonestly. And frankly, if Obama acted this way as a university professor, he would be dismissed. He is constructing an imaginary Iran. Take the case of the fatwa.
Does the fatwa actually exist? According to open source center there was something delivered in 2014 that purports to be the text of the fatwa to the United Nations. But in that text — according to the open source center of the United States — it doesn’t use the word “never.”
Here’s another problem. It’s Diplomacy 101 to know that you don’t rely on anything that’s not written down. Even with North Korea, we got the North Koreans and the Americans to agree on a piece of paper.
I’m not sure John Kerry is even competent to negotiate with a 5-year-old over chocolate or vanilla ice cream. I mean how could you not get something in writing? It’s the same thing with Obama and the fatwa. Get it in writing. How come Obama can’t put this up on the White House website? He puts up everything else.
BREITBART: Is it true that a fatwa, either verbalized or written, can be changed at any time?
RUBIN: Yes. It can. And Obama is operating in a vacuum.
It’s like Groundhog Day. In 2003, Mohammaed Javad Zarif negotiated with the Americans with regard to non-interference in Iraq. According to the Iranian press, the Iranians proceeded to break that agreement and inserted 2,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen into Iraq.
Now the question is, did Zarif lie? Or was he sincere but he didn’t have the power to ensure that all aspects of the Iranian government would abide by the agreement? And why is it that, 12 years later, we’re having the same discussion about the same man? Either Zarif is a liar, in which case we never should have sat down with him again. Or he’s powerless and a conman, in which case we should have never sat down with him again.
There is a major misconception under the current administration– with Obama and Kerry– that it was due to a lack of diplomacy under the Bush Administration that the number of centrifuges skyrocketed in Iran.
#1: Between 2000-2005, the European Union almost tripled its trade with Iran and sat down with them regularly. That directly corresponds to the rapid increase in Iranian centrifuges. It was because of diplomacy, not because of coercion.
#2. During that same period, the price of oil almost quintupled and the bulk of hard-currency windfall went into Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. That was under the so-called “reformists,” and this is why the so-called reformists like to claim that they are responsible for the success of the nuclear program. But this raises questions about why Obama would again repeat the same issue.
The Iranian economy, according to Iran’s Central Bank, had declined 5.4% in the year before we sat down to negotiate the joint plan of action. Now, Iran’s economy is in the black because we’ve given them an infusion of cash. But if we hadn’t given them that infusion of cash in conjunction with the halving of the price of oil, then we could literally force Iran to drink from the chalice of poison.
Those were the words that Khomeini said when he ended the Iran-Iraq War after swearing he would never do it until Jerusalem was liberated.
Giving someone $12 billion is not forcing them to drink from a chalice of poison. What Obama did was the equivalent to giving a five-year-old dessert first and then asking him to eat his spinach.
BREITBART: What has to be done strategically to stop Iran from expansion?
RUBIN: It’s the same thing with Putin and any other expansionist dictators. The more you appease, the more you show that your red lines are drawn in pink crayon and the more they are going to test you. What we forget is when Iran tested the U.S. under Reagan, Reagan responded with Operation Praying Mantis. He sank the Iranian Navy which gave way to a joke from that time. “Why does the Iranian Navy have glass bottomed-boats? So they can see their air force as well.”
Operation Praying Mantis was the largest surface naval engagement since WWII and it taught the Iranians that you don’t mess with the United States. Obama doesn’t understand that the Middle East isn’t a neighborhood to organize. He doesn’t understand that he’s the leader of the free world and not a zoning commissioner. In effect, the bad guys are running all over him. And the problem is, he’s too naive or too arrogant to care.
BREITBART: Should the next President of the United States of America be an expert on Iranian issues?
RUBIN: What you need in a presidential candidate is not someone that knows the Iran issue inside and out. What you need is someone that is true to their values, can provide moral leadership, is not afraid of moral clarity and understands the following:
#1. The importance of individual liberty, because individual liberty is a character which no dictatorship can withstand. You need someone who isn’t afraid of understanding that we should not live in a morally and culturally equivalent world.
#2. The United States is not the equal to countries like Iran or Russia. We are their moral superiors and as such it is important that we win and our adversaries lose. It’s important that freedom and liberty triumph.
You don’t need to be an expert in Iran to understand that. But you need to be someone who is not going to calibrate their foreign policy to the latest poll. Principles have to trump polls and I think that’s where Bush and Clinton are going to be disasters.
Dr Andrew Bostom on Lisa Benson show 12.5.2015
April 13, 2015Dr Andrew Bostom on Lisa Benson show 12.5.2015, You Tube, April 13, 2015
(Dr. Bostom relates Islamic doctrine to Iran’s negotiating tactics. Please see also, Lt. Col Ralph Peters: “The Iranians Negotiate, We BEG!” — DM)
Khamenei Smashes Terms of Nuclear Agreement
April 12, 2015Khamenei Smashes Terms of Nuclear Agreement, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, April 12, 2015
(Obama demands, don’t mention Iran’s mumblings about his once in a lifetime deal. Partisan wrangling must stop!– DM)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kamenei (Photo: © Reuters)
Khamenei’s accusations make Saudi Arabia a legitimate target under any understanding of jihad. He even went so far as to say the Saudis’ actions are equivalent to Israel’s so-called “genocide” in Gaza. This implies that a violent jihad against Saudi Arabia is as justifiable as one against Israel.
Iran believes that these end times prophesies correlate to the death of Saudi King Abdullah, the Houthis’ overthrow of the Yemeni government, the civil war in Syria, Saudi military action and the fierce fighting in Iraq. The regime sees the confluence of all these crises as beyond the realm of coincidence and signaling the imminent arrival of the “Hidden Imam” which will herald military victory for Iran.
Before the “Hidden Imam” can arrive, two other condition must be fulfilled: instability in Saudi Arabia and the march of a prophetic figure titled “Yamani” who will lead Shiite forces from Yemen into Mecca. The Houthis recently pledged to invade Saudi territory, capture Mecca and overthrow the royal family in Riyadh. They were likely referring to this prophecy.
“We’re not going to respond to every public statement made by Iranian officials or negotiate in public,” said State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke during a daily press briefing.
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei ended his eerie silence since the nuclear framework agreement was announced with a fiery speech accompanied with “Death to America” chants. Khamenei essentially smashed the viability of the nuclear framework to pieces, signalled a major escalations in the war in Yemen and essentially endorsed a violent jihad against the Saudi royal family.
Wishful thinkers can’t dismiss the speech as theater for a domestic audience. Khamenei tweeted highlights in English to make sure the world, especially Americans, saw them. The threats and demands are so unequivocal that failing to follow through would sacrifice his entire credibility and prestige.
The Iranian Supreme Leader is unsatisfied with the nuclear framework agreement even though it generously permits Iran to retain the ability to produce nuclear weapons while getting major sanctions relief.
First, he said that the fact sheet published by the U.S. contains lies and does not reflect what Iran agreed to. The statement obliges the regime to seek significant revisions shortly after it gave President Obama the go ahead to make a high-profile victory lap.
Khamenei’s demands are inescapably incompatible with America’s requirements for a deal.
First, Iran is demanding that all sanctions be lifted on the first day that a final deal is signed. The framework only agrees to lift sanctions in phases and only those related to nuclear activity, not terrorism or human rights. Doing so would unfreeze the assets of individuals and entities involved in terrorism around the world, sparking a massive growth in Iran’s terrorist apparatus and proxy warfare.
The inherently flawed hope by the West that “moderate” President Rouhani and other Iranian figures can reign in Khamenei can be immediately ruled out, since Rouhani said the same exact thing.
Second, Iran is insisting that there will be no “unconventional,” “special” or “foreign” inspections or monitoring. In other words, Iran will not be subject to exceptionally intrusive inspections. Khamenei’s tweets do not specify Iran’s standards, but it is clear that Iran does not intend to give the IAEA unlimited access.
This is almost definitely a reference to military sites, to which Iran consistently says it has the option of denying access. Iran wants the ability to deny access to any location by declaring it a military institution.
This is how Iran denies access to the critical Parchin site, where damning evidence may exist to prove that Iran conducted major nuclear weapons research until at least 2003. An Iranian opposition group identified an alleged nuclear site in February that is within a military compound. It is claimed that the facility is used for uranium enrichment and the production of advanced centrifuges.
Notice the language of the tweets, which was reported to be equally non-compromising in Farsi. There is no wiggle room. Khamenei would have left some ambiguity if he was willing to budge. If you believe this is just talk, then you must believe that Khamenei made the calculated decision to cause an easily avoidable self-inflicted wound for no reason.
Another flurry of tweets related to the war in Yemen, where Iran is backing the Shiite Houthi rebels who have overthrown the government.
A U.S.-supported coalition of Sunni countries intervened militarily to support President Hadi and stop Iran from threatening the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This alliance includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan and Sudan. The last two are especially significant because of their close ties to Iran. Separately, Al-Qaeda is gaining ground in Yemen and the Islamic State (ISIS) is rising up as a competitor.
Interestingly, the tweets only threatened Saudi Arabia and did not mention any of these other participants by name. Khamenei stopped just short of a formal declaration of jihad, instead laying out the justification for it.
Khamenei’s accusations make Saudi Arabia a legitimate target under any understanding of jihad. He even went so far as to say the Saudis’ actions are equivalent to Israel’s so-called “genocide” in Gaza. This implies that a violent jihad against Saudi Arabia is as justifiable as one against Israel.
Don’t be comforted by Khamenei’s mentioning of prosecuting Saudi leaders in international courts. This is not meant to substitute jihad. Khamenei is making a point about how blatant the Saudi crimes are. He’s not even saying that this is Iran’s chosen course of action.
This comes as Iran dispatches two ships to the front in Yemen, including a destroyer to “safeguard naval routes” — meaning it will challenge the challenge the Saudi-Egyptian naval blockade.
Iran sent a flotilla to Bahrain in 2011 after Saudi and Emirati forces intervened to stomp out a revolution against the Sunni monarchy. The regime blinked at the last moment when the Arabs made it clear they would use force to stop it. However, the Yemen conflict has significant differences that Khamenei’s tweets help explain.
Khamenei is signaling that unprecedented hostilities with Saudi Arabia will now commence. The previous Saudi leaders, he says, could be dealt with. The new Saudi King and his circle must be handled more toughly.
However, Iran orchestrated massive terrorist attacks on Saudi interests even under the previous “composed” leaders, a campaign that put the U.S. economy and homeland at risk.
For example, in 2011, the U.S. prevented an Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. by blowing up a restaurant, which inevitably would have taken the lives of American citizens as well. The scheme involved hiring a Mexican drug cartel to perpetrate the attack, along with bombings of the Israeli embassy in D.C. and the Israeli and Saudi embassies in Argentina.
In 2012, Iran launched a cyber attack on the Saudi Aramco oil company in response to the country’s policies in Bahrain and Syria. Aramco said the hackers tried to take down the country’s oil and gas production (which failed), but they did erase the data on 30,000 computers, three-fourths of the corporate computers.
Khamenei says that the new Saudi leadership is committing far worse crimes, so we should expect a far worse response.
We must also remember the prophecies cited by the Iranian regime. Iran believes that these end times prophesies correlate to the death of Saudi King Abdullah, the Houthis’ overthrow of the Yemeni government, the civil war in Syria, Saudi military action and the fierce fighting in Iraq. The regime sees the confluence of all these crises as beyond the realm of coincidence and signaling the imminent arrival of the “Hidden Imam” which will herald military victory for Iran.
Before the “Hidden Imam” can arrive, two other condition must be fulfilled: instability in Saudi Arabia and the march of a prophetic figure titled “Yamani” who will lead Shiite forces from Yemen into Mecca. The Houthis recently pledged to invade Saudi territory, capture Mecca and overthrow the royal family in Riyadh. They were likely referring to this prophecy.
Khamenei’s speech wasn’t the typical bluster we are used to hearing from Islamist radicals and dictators. The timing, language and high-profile nature makes it very significant.
Even though the U.S. State Dept. responded by saying that sanctions against Iran would be removed gradually based on verification that Iran had kept its commitments, its response lacked conviction:
“We’re not going to respond to every public statement made by Iranian officials or negotiate in public,” said State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke during a daily press briefing.
Obama still believes in a nuclear deal, although Iran is skittish – even against a military option
April 12, 2015Obama still believes in a nuclear deal, although Iran is skittish – even against a military option, DEBKAfile, April 12, 2015
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter:The nuclear option is on the table
In the last two days, the Obama administration has swung between conflicting signals on the Iranian nuclear deal. Unable to wave away the tough conditions laid down by Tehran, the US president was nonetheless optimistic about a final deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in comments he made at the Americas summit in Panama Sunday, April 12. Obama said he was not surprised at the way supreme leader Ali Khamenei had characterized the framework agreement, because “Iran has it own politics and hardliners who need to be satisfied, but there may be ways to structure the final nuclear deal that achieve core objectives while satisfying Iran’s pride.”
Just Saturday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said: “We have the capability to shut down, set back and destroy the Iranian nuclear program.” He referred to the Massive Ordinance Penetrator-MOP, aka the “bunker buster” which is capable of penetrating fortified facilities up to 200 feet underground. “My job is among other things to make sure that the so-called military option is on the table,” he said.
Iranian media headlines screamed: “US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has threatened Tehran with war.”
This is exactly what Khamenei was aiming for when on April 9, he laid down two implacable terms for a deal: the removal of sanctions on the day a final deal is signed and a firm refusal to allow international inspections of Iran’s military sites.
Both of these provisions contradicted Washington’s presentation of its core conditions for a comprehensive accord as being gradual sanctions relief and intrusive inspections.
One of Khamenei’s objects was indeed to remove all suspicion on his home front that Iran’s negotiators had given ground to the world powers either in the overt agreement or in any secret annexes.
The Iranian media headlines achieved this purpose.
But underlying the vocal exchanges between the two capitals is Iran’s confidence that President Obama has discarded the option of military force against its nuclear sites. This confidence gave Tehran the edge in round after round of diplomacy with the US and the world powers.
Senior negotiator Foreign Minister Javad Zarif boasted on April 7, that Iran was “capable of producing an atomic bomb at any given moment,” and was contained solely by “religious Islamic injunctions.”
His boast was amply illustrated by the 20,000 centrifuges Iran had built up during the years of negotiations, plus thousands of advanced machines standing by to further accelerate uranium enrichment – even though its stockpile of 3.6 percent had soared to 10 tons – enough to build 4-6 nuclear bombs.
This edge further enabled the Iranians to bring the Arak heavy water plant capable of producing plutonium to its final stages of construction, without encountering a prohibition in Lausanne, any more than the Fordo enrichment site, stealthily installed some years ago, or its ballistic missile program were sentenced to be dismantled.
That Iran would continue to get away with its tactic of talking while enriching was borne out by Obama assurance Sunday that ways would be found “to structure the final nuclear deal that achieve core objectives while satisfying Iran’s pride.”
The negotiating tactics pursued by Secretary of State John Kerry in Lausanne and in the previous round in Geneva not only diluted America’s military option but virtually took it off the table – not only for America but for everyone else, including Israel. To put it back, much more is needed than Ashton Carter’s reference to the bunker-buster. To make it credible, the United States must rebuild its military presence in the Gulf and the Middle East – bringing back two aircraft carriers to reinforce the lone USS Carl Vinson, for starters.
This, however, would contradict the doctrine Obama expounded on April 2 when he said: “When you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented and backed by the world’s powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”
But he failed to explain the multiple versions of the Lausanne deal published in Washington, Tehran and latterly Paris, whose discrepancies can no longer be glossed over.
Speaking after his historic meeting with Cuba’s Raul Castro Sunday, Obama rebuked Republican senators for pointing this out, accusing them of “partisanship which has crossed all boundaries.”
Sen. John McCain shot back that discrepancies between US and Iranian versions of the deal extended to inspections, sanctions relief, and other key issues. ‘‘It is undeniable that the version of the nuclear agreement outlined by the Obama administration is far different from the one described by Iran’s supreme leader,’’ he said.
This exchange took place two days before members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plan to vote on Senator Bob Corker’s bipartisan Iran nuclear agreement review act. This would give members of Congress 60 days after a nuclear deal is reached to decide if they want to waive sanctions against Iran.
But most of all it calls into question the Obama administration’s presentation of a tentative set of disputed concepts reached in Lausanne as a finalized framework, which left just a few loose ends for resolving by the next deadline of June 30. The very real gaps have been highlighted and exploited by Tehran.
US tactics don’t work well in the Persian bazaar, where the carpet seller pretends to be unwilling to sell his merchandise to an interested customer, while putting the price up in round after round of haggling.
Khamenei falls naturally into the role of the reluctant carpet seller when he is confronted with an especially keen American customer.
Ayatollah Khamenei Outlines Requirements of Final Iran Nuclear Deal
April 9, 2015Ayatollah Khamenei Outlines Requirements of Final Iran Nuclear Deal, Tasnim News Agency (Iranian), April 9, 2015
(All bold face print is from the original. — DM)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on Thursday defined the main points that a final nuclear deal between Iran and world powers should involve, but refused to adopt a stance on the Lausanne statement that entails no binding commitment.
Addressing a gathering in Tehran on Thursday, Ayatollah Khamenei said he has not taken a position on a statement released by Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) after the most recent round of nuclear talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne, because nothing has been still agreed upon, nor have the parties reached any binding agreement.
“What has happened so far does not guarantee either the principle of an agreement, or the negotiations that lead to an agreement or even the content of an agreement, and it does not even guarantee that these talks would result in a deal, so congratulation has no meaning,” the Leader said.
The comments came after Iran and the six powers on April 2 reached a framework nuclear agreement after more than a week of intensive negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, with both sides committed to push for a final, comprehensive accord until the end of June.
Ayatollah Khamenei then reaffirmed strong support for a deal that respects the Iranian nation’s dignity, and rejected as “untrue” the reports on his opposition to any agreement.
The Leader, however, underlined that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
Imam Khamenei then explained that he has only outlined the “general issues, the main guidelines, frameworks and red lines” regarding the nuclear talks and has not specified the details.
“I am not indifferent to the negotiations, but have not interfered in the details of the talks so far, and will not interfere in future either,” the Leader stressed.
The Supreme Leader then pointed to the unreliable nature of the US, an obvious sign of which he said was a biased fact sheet that Washington issued only two hours after the Lausanne statement was declared.
“Drafting such a statement (fact sheet) within two hours is not possible, so they (Americans) had been busy preparing a flawed and wrong statement contrary to the content of the talks at the same time that they were negotiating with us.”
The Leader further called on the country’s negotiators to hold consultations with the critics of the Lausanne statement to better deal with the talks, something known as “rapport” among Iranians.
Imam Khamenei once again made it clear that the talks with the US revolve only around the nuclear issue and nothing else, but at the same time noted that such nuclear negotiations provide an experience to test the possibility of talking on other subjects if Washington puts aside objections.
But, the Leader added, if the US keeps raising objections, Iran’s experience of mistrust of the US will be corroborated.
Commenting on the main points that have to be stipulated in a possible final nuclear deal, Ayatollah Khamenei pointed to the removal of anti-Iran sanctions all at once, adding, “This issue is very important and the sanctions should be completely terminated at the very day of the agreement.”
“If the removal of sanctions is to be conditioned by a new process, the fundamental of negotiations will be nonsense, because the purpose of the talks is lifting of the sanctions,” the Leader said.
The Supreme Leader also categorically rejected foreign access to the country’s “security and defensive” sectors under the pretext of nuclear monitoring.
Imam Khamenei said Iran’s military capabilities must be upheld and strengthened day by day, stressing that Iran’s backing for its “brothers” in the resistance front in different regions should never be diminished.
Moreover, the Leader voiced opposition to any deal that subjects Iran to “unconventional” monitoring and would make it a special case in the world, underlining that monitoring of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program should be conventional, like the other countries.
Iran’s “scientific and technical developments in different dimensions” was another requirement that the Leader emphasized a deal must include.
Ayatollah Khamenei finally said the responsibility lies with the country’s negotiators to fulfill those necessary demands in the talks, calling on them to “find the correct ways of negotiations” by using the view points of the informed and reliable individuals and listening to the critics.
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