Iran was heavily involved in nuclear weapons research, according to documents given to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005. To date, Iran has refused to acknowledge this past work on nuclear weapons, but IAEA reports leave no doubt the documents are credible and described research only suitable for a nuclear arms.
With the self-imposed deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran coming this week, now is probably a good time to recall that Iran has been lying about its nuclear ambitions for a very long time. In 2005, an IAEA member state turned over more than 1,000 pages of documents outlining a substantial nuclear research program in Iran. Known collectively as the “alleged studies documentation,” a 2011 IAEA report describes the cache as containing “correspondence, reports, view graphs from presentations, videos and engineering drawings.” The documents also contained “working level correspondence consistent with the day to day implementation of a formal programme.” In short, proof Iran had a sustained nuclear weapons program.
After carefully examining the documents and gathering additional information, the IAEA confronted Iran with the documents in 2008. Iran sent the Agency a 117-page response that confirmed some of the fine details, such as names and places, but denied all the evidence showing a nuclear weapons research project had been underway. Iran claimed the documents were “forged” and “fabricated.”
One of the details contained in the IAEA document cache was evidence that Iran had been studying how it could integrate its planned nuclear weapon with its own Shahab 3 missile (which has a range of 800 miles). Specifically, it wanted to create a firing mechanism that could detonate the nuclear payload in mid-air or upon impact. When confronted with this specific information (which may have included video), Iran claimed it was part of an “animation game.”
The IAEA decided to show the missile plans to experts from other member states (not including the nation that originally gave them the documents). They asked these experts to look at the designs and assess if there was any other military or peaceful application for them other than launching a nuclear weapon. The results of this investigation appear as Attachment 2 in the IAEA’s November 2011 report:
Clearly, the experts concluded there was no peaceful application for the designs (such as a satellite). And while some elements of the design could have been useful for other types of weapons, the overall combination of elements pointed to only one likely possibility: a nuclear payload.
In addition to the missile payload designs, the “alleged studies documents” indicated Iran was also researching detonators, neutron initiators, firing equipment for an underground test, and many other aspects of nuclear weapons research.
The 2011 IAEA report was an attempt to get Iran to come clean about its past work on nuclear weapons, but thus far, Iran has refused to acknowledge it. As recently as last week, IAEA Director Yukiya Amano has said that Iran still needs to come clean. In an interview with Judy Woodruff of PBS, Amano said, “Our information indicates that Iran engaged in activities relevant to the development of nuclear explosive devices. We do not draw conclusions. But we are requesting Iran to clarify these issues. …So far, there has been some clarification, but the progress has been very limited.”
(Don’t worry! Be Happy! Obama is in charge so everything will come up roses for sure.
Just ask Obama, the all-wise, all-knowing. He will set it right, as soon as Iran uses the nukes she deserves. — DM)
American warplanes have begun bombing the Islamic State-held Iraqi city of Tikrit in order to bail out the embattled, stalled ground campaign launched by Baghdad and Tehran two weeks ago. This operation, billed as “revenge” for the Islamic State (IS) massacre of 1,700 Shiite soldiers at Camp Speicher last June, was launched without any consultation with Washington and was meant to be over by now, three weeks after much triumphalism by the Iraqi government about how swiftly the terrorist redoubt in Saddam Hussein’s hometown was going to be retaken.
U.S. officials have variously estimated that either 23,000 or 30,000 “pro-government” forces were marshaled for the job, of which only slender minority were actual Iraqi soldiers. The rest consisted of a consortium of Shiite militia groups operating under the banner of Hashd al-Shaabi, or the Population Mobilization Units (PMU), which was assembled in answer to afatwahissued by Iraq’s revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani in June 2014 following ISIS’s blitzkrieg through northern Iraq. To give you a sense of the force disparity, the PMUs are said to command 120,000 fighters, whereas the Iraqi Army has only got 48,000 troops.
Against this impressive array of paramilitaries, a mere 400 to 1,000 IS fighters have managed to hold their ground in Tikrit, driving major combat operations to a halt. This is because the Islamic State is resorting to exactly the kinds of lethal insurgency tactics which al Qaeda in Iraq (its earlier incarnation) used against the more professional and better-equipped U.S. forces. BuzzFeed’s Mike Giglio has ably documented the extent to which IS has relied upon improvised explosive devices, and just how sophisticated these have been. Even skilled explosive ordnance disposal teams — many guided by Iranian specialists — are being ripped apart by what one termed the “hidden enemy” in Tikrit.
Because IS controls hundreds of square miles of terrain in Iraq, it has an unknown number of bomb manufacturing plants, and because it knows the terrain so well, it’s been able to booby-trap houses and roads. Even Shiite prayer beads left lying on the ground are thought to be rigged to explosives. One Kurdish official told Giglio that the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters alone have “defused or detonated more than 6,000 IEDs along their 650-mile front with ISIS since the war began in August.”
The toll this has taken on the militias is extraordinary. Cemetery workers in Najaf told the Washington Postthat as many as 60 corpses are arriving per day. Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Derek Harvey tweeted last week that an Iraqi Shiite source told him the number of militia war dead from the Tikrit offensive so far may be as high as 6,000. So the militias’ triumphalism, much of it no doubt manufactured by Iran’s propaganda machine, proved to be misplaced. Jeffrey White, another former DIA analyst now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes “there’s a failure of will on the part of the militias and government forces. They just didn’t have the sufficient desire and determination to take the fight forward given the casualties they’ve been sustaining.”
So now, the same Iraqi government which earlier dismissed the need for U.S. airpower had to put in an eleventh-hour request for it, lest an easy victory descend into embarrassing folly. But the past few months ought to have shown that even indirectly relying on Iranian agents to conduct a credible ground war against Sunni extremists was always a lousy idea for three reasons: those agents hate the United States and have threatened to attack its interest in Iraq; they’re guilty of IS-style atrocities themselves; and they’re lousy at fighting an entrenched jihadist insurgency.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey told Congress on March 3: “What we are watching carefully is whether the militias — they call themselves the popular mobilization forces — whether when they recapture lost territory, whether they engage in acts of retribution and ethnic cleansing.” He needn’t watch any longer. They are engaging in exactly that.
The crimes of war
On March 10, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a comprehensive study of human rights violations committed by both IS and pro-Iraqi forces. The Islamic State, OHCHR concluded, has likely committed genocide against the Yazidis, a ethno-religious minority in Iraq, in a catalogue of war crimes and crimes against humanity that include gang-rape and sexual slavery. But OHCHR’s language is equally unambiguous in condemning the other side on the battlefield: “Throughout the summer of 2014,” the report noted, “[PMUs], other volunteers and [Shiite] militia moved from their southern heartlands towards [Islamic State]-controlled areas in central and northern Iraq. While their military campaign against the group gained ground, the militias seem to operate with total impunity, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.” [Italics added.]
Sunni villages in Amerli and Suleiman Bek, in the Salah ad-Din province, have been looted or destroyed by militiamen operating on the specious assumption that all inhabitants once ruled by IS must be IS sympathizers or collaborators. Human Rights Watch has also lately discovered that the “liberation” of Amerli last October — another PMU/Iranian-led endeavor, only this one abetted by U.S. airstrikes in the early stages — was characterized by wide-scale abuses including the looting and burning of homes and business of Sunni residents of villages surrounding Amerli. The apparent aim was ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch concluded, from witness accounts, that “building destruction in at least 47 predominantly Sunni villages was methodical and driven by revenge and intended to alter the demographic composition of Iraq’s traditionally diverse provinces of Salah al-Din and Kirkuk.”
Sunnis weren’t the only demographic subjected to collective punishment. A 21-year-old Shiite Turkmen from the Yengija village was “burned with cigarettes and tied to a ceiling fan” by militants of Saraya Tala’a al-Khorasani, another Iran-backed militia. He told Human Rights Watch: “They kept saying, ‘You are ISIS,’ and I kept denying it. They were beating me randomly on my face, head, shoulders using water pipes and the butts of their weapons…. They went to have lunch and then came back and beat us for an hour and half. Later that night they asked me if I was Shia or Sunni. I told them I was Shia Turkoman and they ordered me to prove it by praying the Shia way…. They kept me for nine days.”
This account tracks with a mountain of social media-propagated video and photographic evidence showing that Iraq’s Shiite militias are behaving rather like the Islamic State — beheading and torturing people they assail as quislings, and then exhibiting these atrocities as a means of recruitment. More worrying, a six-month investigation by ABC News has found that U.S.-trained Iraqi Security Force personnel are also guilty of anti-Sunni pogroms, with officers from Iraq’s Special Forces shown in one video accusing an unarmed teenaged boy of being a shooter (a charge the boy denies) before opening fire on him.
Looking the other way
The Obama administration’s counterterrorism-driven policy for the Middle East, and a quietly pursued diplomatic reconciliation with Iran, has resulted in America’s diminishment of grave war crimes committed by Iran’s clients and proxies, and the problem is hardly just confined to Iraq. In Syria, for instance, the National Defense Force, a conglomerate of militias trained and equipped by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC) — a U.S.-designated terrorist entity — has been accused by the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, of “[burning] at least 81 people to death, including 46 civilians; 18 children, 7 women, and 35 of the armed opposition fighters,” along with other pro-Assad forces. The State Department has offered condolences to Iran’s President Hasan Rouhani on the death of his mother; to date, it has not said a word about the immolation of these Syrians at the hands of a Quds Force-built guerrilla army.
All of which raises the question: Does the United States have a “common interest,” as Secretary of State John Kerry phrased it, with a regime in Tehran whose proxies are currently burning people alive in their houses, playing soccer with severed human heads, and ethnically cleansing and razing whole villages to the ground?
It really ought to surprise no one in the U.S. government that what amounts to an Iranian occupation of the Levant and Mesopotamia would lead to an increase in jihadist bloodletting. Dempsey has less of an excuse than most. A four-star general, he formerly commanded the First Armored Division in Baghdad, which in 2004 was the unit redirected, as it was about to go home, to fight the Shiite militias who had taken over Karbala and other southern cities, so he would have seen the precursor to the PMUs in action. Yet somehow managed to brief legislators that the Islamic Republic’s role in Iraq might yet prove “positive” — provided, that is, it didn’t lead to an uptick in sectarianism. This is like arguing that death wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t result in being dead. It did not take much, however, for the scales to fall from Dempsey’s eyes. He took a helicopter tour of Baghdad last week and noticedthe “plethora of flags, only one of which happens to be the Iraqi flag,” The rest, he told reporters to evident dismay, belonged to Shiite militias. (He might have also added that posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are now omnipresent in the Iraqi capital where ones of Saddam Hussein used to be.)
Everyone from Gen. David Petraeus to Kurdish intelligence chief Masrour Barzani is acknowledging the obvious: that Shiite militias pose more of a long-term threat to the stability of Iraq than does the Islamic State. Even Ayatollah Sistani has made noises lately about the rampant abuses committed by the “volunteers” he assembled through a religious edict.
While it is true that most Iraqis do not wish to live in a state of vassalage to Iran, it also true that most of the “units” in the PMUs are well-known subsidiaries of the Quds Force. “The indoctrination they’ve been getting is anti-American, Khomeinist ideology,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shiite militias and author of a comprehensive survey of them put out by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Sectarianism has been promoted whether we like it or not.”
According to Chris Harmer, a former U.S. Naval officer and now an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, there really is no dressing up who the supposed “good guys” in Iraq now are. “They killed hundreds of Americans during the war,” Harmer said. “These are not ‘affiliated’ organizations — they are same guys, the same organizations. And can you find me anybody stupid enough to say that what Iran wants is a stable, unified, secular, non-sectarian Iraq?”
The enemies of our enemy are our enemy
Indeed, quite apart from having American blood on their hands and American interests furthest from their mind, Shiite militias — following Tehran’s favorite playbook — have also taken to conspiratorially blaming the United States for inventing and militarily supporting the Islamic State, while decrying any American anti-IS involvement in Iraq. Take, for instance, the Badr Corps, headed by Hadi al-Amiri, the commander of Hashd al-Shaabi, and a man infamous for “using a power drill to pierce the skulls of his adversaries,” or so the State Department found in a 2009 cable to Washington, which also alleged that al-Amiri “may have personally ordered attacks on up to 2,000 Sunnis.” (Despite this grim record, al-Amiri was invited to the Obama White House in 2011 when he was Iraq’s transportation minister.)
Lately al-Amiri taken to both boasting that Stuart Jones, the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, personally offered him close air support, whilereprehending those Iraqis who “kiss the hands of the Americans and get nothing in return.” But when it comes to Tehran, he’s full of praise for the “unconditional” support his country has received. Now al-Amiri has found a more modest tongue. He told the Guardian’s Martin Chulov on March 26: “We did not ask for [U.S. airstrikes on Tikrit] and we have no direct contact with the Americans. From what I understand, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi made the request. However, we respect his decision.”
Kataeb Hezbollah may be the only Iraqi Shiite militia in Iraq to be designated a terrorist entity by the United States, but that hasn’t stopped it from driving around in Abrams tanks, Humvees, armored personnel carriers, MRAPs, and toting M4 and M16 rifles — all the accidental largesse of Uncle Sam, which has sent $1 billion in military equipment to Baghdad, but has no oversight as to which actors, foreign or domestic, ultimately receive what. An abundance of U.S. weapons hasn’t dissuaded Kataeb Hezbollah from openly inciting violence against the American-led coalition to destroy the Islamic State.
“Recently we had them accusing the United States of supplying [IS] via helicopters,” said Smyth. “Kataeb Hezbollah then came out with a bullshit article claiming that they shot down a British cargo plane carrying arms to [IS]. They also said they were going to move antiaircraft missile batteries in Anbar and north of Baghdad to counter U.S. airdrops to [IS]. Whenever they sense too much of a U.S. influence in Iraq, they start to threaten American soldiers.” Kataeb Hezbollah, it bears mentioning, is headed by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iranian spy who is widely believed to have planned the bombings of both the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in the 1980s. There’s even a photograph of him holding up a Kuwaiti newspaper fingering him for this act of international terrorism. Kataeb Hezbollah has also been caught on video playing bongos with severed human heads.
Another prominent Shiite militia is Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, which in 2007 set an ambush which killed 5 U.S. servicemen in Karbala. It, too, now also happily motors around Iraq in U.S. armored vehicles, some of them thought to have been stolen from the U.S. consulate in Basra. One unnamed U.S. official told Al Jazeera that Asaib was most recently responsible for burning down homes in Albu Ajil, a village near Tikrit in retaliation for massacres carried out by the Islamic State. It has also been implicated in the abduction and murder of Sheik Qassem Sweidan al-Janabi, one of the Sunni tribal leaders who worked cheek-by-jowl with U.S. forces in fighting al Qaeda in Iraq during the so-called Awakening period.
Remarkably, the demagogic Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, once the bane of U.S. forces in Baghdad, condemned al-Janabi’s murder — in language more severe than anything contrived by the U.S. State Department’s Marie Harf or Jennifer Psaki. “Did not I tell you that Iraq will suffer from the brazen militias?” al-Sadr was quoted as saying. “Did I tell you that the army must handle the reins?” Al-Sadr demanded that Shiite head-loppers be punished and actually backed up his rhetoric with action, suspending the participation of his own al-Salam Brigades and al-Yaom ak-Mawood military in ongoing operations. (He unsuspended these militias a week ago to help with the battle in Tikrit, but so far, because of the frozen nature of the ground campaign, none of the Sadrists have seen any real action.)
Assad’s friends in Iraq want to kill Americans
The Basij-ization of Iraq of was both inevitable, given the defunct and corrupted state of the U.S.-trained military, and Iran’s outsize influence in Baghdad even before ISIS conquered a third of the country. “When the Iraqi Army was destroyed last July, this was a gift to Iran to build up these militias,” Gen. Najim Jibouri, the former mayor and police chief of Tal Afar, a crucial Iraqi border town now held by the Islamic State, said in a recent interview. “A few days ago, Khaled al-Obaidi, Iraq’s minister of defense, went to Tikrit, but the militias wouldn’t allow him to enter. He had to stay in Samarra.”
All of which makes risible U.S. officials’ continued emphasis that there is no direct American coordination with Iran or its proxies. Gen. James Terry, the U.S. commander of the coalition, claims that the “ongoing Iraqi and coalition air strikes are setting the conditions for offensive action to be conducted by Iraqi forces currently surrounding Tikrit. Iraqi security forces supported by the coalition will continue to gain territory.”
One of the authors personally witnessed in Baghdad how the IRGC targets make their way into the U.S. targeting queue. Shiite militia commanders pass Quds Force-selected targets to Badr-affiliated Iraqi Security Force commanders on the ground (many of whom are, in fact, agents of the militias), who then pass them on as legitimate targets to Iraq’s Defense Ministry representatives in the Joint Operations Centers where U.S. advisors then put those targets into a queue for aerial sorties. This is the pattern of target development that U.S. forces tried to stop during the American occupation of Iraq — when there was actually a military strategy for countering Iranian influence in the country.
But this nefarious chain of putting intelligence into action — and making the United States do the dirty work — has been resurrected. Soleimani knows it, al-Muhandis knows it, al-Amiri and his Badr agents in the Iraq Security Forces know it — so, too, should the Pentagon, whatever claims to the contrary it puts out. Iranian intelligence operatives are now America’s eyes on the ground.
What does this mean for Tikrit? The Islamic State will no doubt be flushed from the city or bombed to death eventually, but it will be a tactical loss for IS, not a strategic one. They’ll still have Mosul and most of Anbar province. The Institute for the Study of War’s Chris Harmer notes that this will have a direct bearing on bigger fights ahead. “These militiamen will say, ‘This is how badly we got beat up in Tikrit, who wants to volunteer to storm that castle in Mosul?’”
Even if Iran’s proxies do end up massing on Mosul, they’ll remain the ultimate occupying force in post-Islamic State Tikrit. The Washington Post’s Loveday Morris tweeted on March 26 that Kataeb Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq have now “suspended” their operations in the city, no doubt out of a desire to not appear to be coordinating with the hated United States. But once the Pentagon declares victory, the militias will no doubt try to hijack it and move right in to serve as the occupying force in Tikrit.
Despite reports on Thursday that three Shiite militias were “withdrawing” from operations in objection to U.S. airstrikes, now the news has come that they’ve called off their boycott, largely owing to another edict by Ayatollah Sistani. Even an alleged accidental hit by U.S. warplanes on Asaib Ahl al-Haq barely raised that militia’s pique, according to the New York Times. A Badr Corps representative also told the newspaper, “We haven’t retreated from our positions near Tikrit.” Still, others have indicated that they’re not going to let a good turn go unpunished and intend to strike at American soldiers in Iraq.
Akram al-Kabi, the leader of the Al Nujabaa Brigade, which has also fought with the Assad regime in Syria, has said: “We are staying in Tikrit, we are not leaving and we are going to target the American led coalition in Tikrit and their creation, ISIS.” Today, one of al-Kabi’s spokesmen reiterated thatthreat. Al-Kabi was once a deputy in Asaib Ahl al-Haq and was associatedwith that militia’s attacks against U.S. and British troops in 2008-2011, including an incident in which British contractors were abducted from the Iraqi Finance Ministry and later murdered. CENTCOM commander Gen. Lloyd Austin’s nevertheless briefed the Senate on Thursday with a straight face that “[c]urrently, there are no [Shiite] militia and as reported by the Iraqis today, no [PMU] in that area as well.” This is either propaganda or sheer ignorance about what is transpiring in Austin’s theatre of operations. The Guardian’s Chulov, who just returned from Tikrit, confirmed to one of the authors, in fact, that both al-Amiri and al-Muhandis were indeed in the center of the city on March 26.
Recrimination and resentment by these militias is no light matter. According to Politico, U.S. military planners are now worried that any decision to engage or isolate the Assad regime in Syria will encourage Iran or its cut-outs to attack the some 3,000 U.S. military trainers currently stationed in Iraq. It’s hard to tell where genuine concern bleeds into further excuse-making on the part of an Obama administration that has shown no intention of engaging or isolating the Assad regime, which is responsible for the vast majority of war dead and war crimes in Syria. Regardless, the result is the same: Washington is now behaving as if it needs Tehran’s permission to pursue its own anti-IS strategy, if it can even be called that.
You call this a plan?
“What strategy?” asks Chris Harmer. “We have only consequentially intervened in one part in Syria — Kobani. What’s the plan for countering [the Islamic State] there? Training 5,000 Syrian rebels per year. That is laughable when you consider the 200,000 dead from four years of attritional warfare, the four million refugees, and slow-motion destruction of the country. Five thousand doesn’t even get you into the ballgame. You have to have a significant portion of the population on your side. Moderate Syrians should be on our side. They’re saying the Americans are unreliable, they’re not on our side. This is why the moderate opposition has collapsed and the beneficiaries of that collapse have been al Qaeda, the Islamic State and Assad.”
The loss of confidence in the United States by moderate Sunnis in Syria is mirrored in Iraq. New polling data has confirmed that most Mosulawis, for instance, welcomed IS back into Iraq’s second city not out of ideological sympathy for the terror group, but out of deep-seated political grievances with the Iraqi government. Yet the Obama administration is doing next to nothing to redress these grievances. The Anbar tribal leader Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, whose charismatic brother was notoriously gunned down by al Qaeda just days after meeting with President George W. Bush in Baghdad in 2007, simply could not get a meeting with any significant official in White House during a 10-day tour of Washington last February. Vice President Joe Biden was good enough to drop in on a lesser confab, mainly to smile and pat them on the head and tell them to work constructively with the new government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
“Many of the people in Mosul will stand with [the Islamic State] if Shiite militias invade,” said Gen. Najim Jibouri. “Eighty percent of the population is does not like [IS], but if the militias are involved — 80 percent will stand very strong with [IS]. I told the Americans before, the image now is not like it was in 2003. Now the Sunni people want American forces. They will throw the flowers on them now, because the battle now is not between them and the United States and [IS], it’s between the Sunnis and Iran.” Yet far too many Sunnis still see the United States as aligned with Iran against them, Jibouri said.
Whether or not a nuclear agreement with Iran gets signed in Lausanne this weekend, whether or not Obama inaugurates a perestroika with Tehran as a result, the unshakable truth is that most of Iraq looks in the long term to remain a satrapy of the mullahs. This will only lead to further sectarian violence and civil war. “I met with almost two dozen national leaders in Iraq last week,” Ali Khedery, the longest consecutively serving U.S. diplomat in the Green Zone, told us. “I heard from Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish officials and virtually all of them told me that the real prime minster of the country is Qasem Soleimani and his deputy is Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.”
US President Barack Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, October 1, 2014. (photo credit:REUTERS)
As Max Boot explained Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, the administration’s animosity toward Israel is a function of Obama’s twin strategic aims, both evident since he entered office: realigning US policy in the Middle East toward Iran and away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and ending the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.
Obama has reached a point in his presidency where he is prepared to give full expression to his plan to end the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.
He thinks that doing so is both an end to itself and a means of succeeding in his bid to achieve a rapprochement with Iran.
*********************
On Wednesday the Jerusalem Municipality announced it is shelving plans to build 1,500 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood. Officials gave no explanation for its sudden move. But none was needed.
Obviously the construction of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem was blocked in the hopes of appeasing US President Barack Obama.
But is there any reason to believe he can be appeased? Today the White House is issuing condemnations of Israel faster than the UN.
To determine how to handle what is happening, we need to understand the nature of what is happening.
First we need to understand that the administration’s hostility has little to do with Israel’s actions.
As Max Boot explained Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, the administration’s animosity toward Israel is a function of Obama’s twin strategic aims, both evident since he entered office: realigning US policy in the Middle East toward Iran and away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and ending the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.
Over the past six years we have seen how Obama has consistently, but gradually, taken steps to advance these two goals. Toward Iran, he has demonstrated an unflappable determination to accommodate the terrorism supporting, nuclear proliferating, human rights repressing and empire building mullahs.
Beginning last November, as the deadline for nuclear talks between the US and its partners and Tehran approached, Obama’s attempts to accommodate Tehran escalated steeply.
Obama has thrown caution to the winds in a last-ditch effort to convince Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei to sign a deal with him. Last month the administration published a top secret report on Israel’s nuclear installations. Last week, Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper published an annual terrorism threat assessment that failed to mention either Iran or Hezbollah as threats.
And this week, the administration accused Israel of spying on its talks with Iran in order to tell members of Congress the details of the nuclear deal that Obama and his advisers have been trying to hide from them.
In the regional context, the administration has had nothing to say in the face of Iran’s takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden this week. With its Houthi-proxy now in charge of the strategic waterway, and with its own control over the Straits of Hormuz, Iran is poised to exercise naval control over the two choke points of access to Arab oil.
The administration is assisting Iranian Shi’ite proxies in their battle to defeat Islamic State forces in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. It has said nothing about the Shi’ite massacres of Sunnis that come under their control.
Parallel to its endless patience for Tehran, the Obama administration has been treating Israel with bristling and ever-escalating hostility. This hostility has been manifested among other things through strategic leaks of highly classified information, implementing an arms embargo on weapons exports to Israel in time of war, ending a 40-year agreement to provide Israel with fuel in times of emergency, blaming Israel for the absence of peace, expressing tolerance and understanding for Palestinian terrorism, providing indirect support for Europe’s economic war against Israel, and providing indirect support for the BDS movement by constantly accusing Israel of ill intentions and dishonesty.
Then there is the UN. Since he first entered office, Obama has been threatening to withhold support for Israel at the UN. To date, the administration has vetoed one anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council and convinced the Palestinians not to submit another one for a vote.
In the months that preceded these actions, the administration exploited Israel’s vulnerability to extort massive concessions to the Palestinians.
Obama forced Benjamin Netanyahu to announce his support for Palestinian statehood in September 2009. He used the UN threat to coerce Netanyahu to agree to negotiations based on the 1949 armistice lines, to deny Jews their property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to release scores of terrorist murderers from prison.
Following the nationalist camp’s victory in last week’s election, Obama brought to a head the crisis in relations he instigated. He has done so for two reasons.
First, next week is the deadline for signing a nuclear agreement with Iran. Obama views Netanyahu as the prospective deal’s most articulate and effective opponent.
As Obama sees it, Netanyahu threatens his nuclear diplomacy with Iran because he has a unique ability to communicate his concerns about the deal to US lawmakers and the American people, and mobilize them to join him in opposing Obama’s actions. The letters sent by 47 senators to the Iranian regime explaining the constitutional limitations on presidential power to conclude treaties without Senate approval, like the letter to Obama from 367 House members expressing grave and urgent concerns about the substance of the deal he seeks to conclude, are evidence of Netanyahu’s success.
The second reason Obama has gone to war against Israel is because he views the results of last week’s election as an opportunity to market his anti-Israel and pro-Iranian positions to the American public.
If Netanyahu can convince Americans to oppose Obama on Iran, Obama believes that by accusing Netanyahu of destroying chances for peace and calling him a racist, Obama will be able to win sufficient public support for his anti-Israel policies to intimidate pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers into accepting his pro-Iranian policies.
To this end, Obama has announced that the threat that he will abandon Israel at the UN has now become a certainty. There is no peace process, Obama says, because Netanyahu had the temerity to point out that there is no way for Israel to risk the transformation of Judea and Samaria into a new terror base. As a consequence, he has all but made it official that he is abandoning the peace process and joining the anti-Israel bandwagon at the UN.
Given Obama’s decision to abandon support for a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians, modes of appeasement aimed at showing Israel’s good faith, such as Jewish building freezes, are no longer relevant. Scrapping plans to build apartments in Jewish neighborhoods like Har Homa will make no difference.
Obama has reached a point in his presidency where he is prepared to give full expression to his plan to end the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.
He thinks that doing so is both an end to itself and a means of succeeding in his bid to achieve a rapprochement with Iran.
Given this dismal reality, Israel needs to develop ways to minimize the damage Obama can cause.
Israel needs to oppose Obama’s policies while preserving its relations with its US supporters, including its Democratic supporters. Doing so will ensure that it is in a position to renew its alliance with the US immediately after Obama leaves office.
With regards to Iran, such a policy requires Israel to act with the US’s spurned Arab allies to check Iran’s expansionism and nuclear progress. It also requires Israel to galvanize strong opposition to Obama’s goal of replacing Israel with Iran as America’s chief ally in the Middle East and enabling it to develop nuclear weapons.
As for the Palestinians, Israel needs to view Obama’s abandonment of the peace process as an opportunity to improve our diplomatic position by resetting our relations with the Palestinians. Since 1993, Israel has been entrapped by the chimerical promise of a “two-state solution.”
By late 2000, the majority of Israelis had recognized that there is no way to achieve the two-state solution. There is no way to make peace with the PLO. But due to successive governments’ aversion to risking a crisis in relations with Washington, no one dared abandon the failed two-state strategy.
Now, with Obama himself declaring the peace process dead and replacing it with a policy of pure hostility toward Israel, Israel has nothing to gain from upholding a policy that blames it for the absence of peace.
No matter how loudly Netanyahu declares his allegiance to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland, Obama will keep castigating him and Israel as the destroyer of peace.
The prevailing, 23-year-old view among our leadership posits that if we abandon the two-state model, we will lose American support, particularly liberal American support. But the truth is more complicated.
Inspired by the White House and the Israeli Left, pro-Israel Democrats now have difficulty believing Netanyahu’s statements of support for the establishment of a Palestinians state. But those who truly uphold liberal values of human rights can be convinced of the rightness of Israel’s conviction that peace is currently impossible and as a consequence, the two-state model must be put on the back burner.
We can maintain support among Republicans and Democrats alike if we present an alternative policy that makes sense in the absence of an option for the two-state model.
Such a policy is the Israeli sovereignty model. If the government adopts a policy of applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria in whole – as I recommend in my book The Israeli Solution: A One- State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, or in part, in Area C, as Economy Minister Naftali Bennett recommends, our leaders will be able to defend their actions before the American people, including pro-Israel Democrats.
Israel must base its policy of sovereignty on two principles. First, this is a liberal policy that will ensure the civil rights of Palestinians and Israelis alike, and improve the Palestinians’ standard of living.
Second, such a policy is not necessarily a longterm or permanent “solution,” but it is a stable equilibrium for now.
Just as Israel’s decision to apply its laws to united Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past didn’t prevent it from conducting negotiations regarding the possible transfer of control over the areas to the Palestinians and Syrians, respectively, so an administrative decision to apply Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria will not block the path for negotiations with the Palestinians when regional and internal Palestinian conditions render them practicable.
The sovereignty policy is both liberal and strategically viable. If the government adopts it, the move will rebuild Israel’s credibility and preserve Israel’s standing on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Never before has Israel had to deal with such an openly hostile US administration. Indeed, until 2009, the very notion that a day would come when an American president would prefer an alliance with Khamenei’s Iran to its traditional alliances with Israel and the Sunni Arab states was never even considered. But here we are.
Our current situation is unpleasant. But it isn’t the end of the world. We aren’t helpless. If we act wisely, we can stem Iran’s nuclear and regional advance. If we act boldly, we can preserve our alliance with the US while adopting a policy toward the Palestinians that for the first time in decades will advance our interests and our liberal values on the world stage.
(Perhaps it’s just Obama’s unrequited love for Iran and his need to get any nuke deal that Iran will give him. — DM)
US government officials and top military commanders are so eager to destroy the Islamic State that they are crawling into bed with the flip side of the jihadist coin: the fanatical Shiite militias backed by Iran that are terrorist organizations and ultimate destabilizers of Iraq in their own right.
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Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the US-led Coalition that is launching airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, announced that it conducted 17 strikes against Islamic State fighters entrenched in Tikrit. US commanders continue to insist that they are supporting Iraqi security forces, and not the Iranian-backed Shiite militias who make up more than two-thirds of the fighting force in the Tikrit offensive.
The 17 airstrikes targeted “an ISIL [Islamic State] building, two ISIL bridges, three ISIL checkpoints, two ISIL staging areas, two ISIL berms, an ISIL roadblock and an ISIL controlled command and control facility,” according to a press release. The US military continues to refer to Islamic State as ISIL, the outdated acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Syria).
The airstrikes launched “in support of Iraqi Security Forces in Tikrit commenced last night after a request from the Government of Iraq,” CJTF-OIR stated. The 17 targets hit in the last 24 hours were “approved by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.”
US military officials have previously said that support for the Tikrit offensive was being withheld because of the massive presence of the Iranian-backed militias and Iranian military units and advisers.
Despite this previous acknowledgment, Lieutenant General James Terry, the commander of CJTF-OIR, skips over the presence of Shiite militias in the Tikrit operation [emphasis mine] in the latest statement.
“The ongoing Iraqi and Coalition air strikes are setting the conditions for offensive action to be conducted by Iraqi forces currently surrounding Tikrit,” said Lt. Gen. James Terry. “Iraqi Security Forcessupported by the Coalition will continue to gain territory from Daesh [a vaguely pejorative Arabic acronym for the Islamic State].” [Emphasis in original — DM]
Pretending that US airpower isn’t supporting the Iranian-backed Shiite militias obviously doesn’t make it so.
US military officials’ denials that they are serving as the air force for Iranian-backed Shiite militias that are responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers before US forces withdrew from Iraq in December 2011 becomes even more perplexing once you understand that many of the top leaders of these militias have been designated by the US as terrorists. And one of these militias (Hezbollah Brigades) is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. [See LWJ report, US begins airstrikes against Islamic State in Tikrit, supports Shiite militias.]
US government officials and top military commanders are so eager to destroy the Islamic State that they are crawling into bed with the flip side of the jihadist coin: the fanatical Shiite militias backed by Iran that are terrorist organizations and ultimate destabilizers of Iraq in their own right.
(The positions of Obama’s friends in Iran. How soon will he bow, apologize and make more concessions to Iran to atone for his sins? — DM)
Tribal gunmen loyal to the Houthis Ansarullah shout slogans against Saudi Arabia during a gathering in the capital Sana’a on March 26, 2015.
The leader of Yemen’s Houthi fighters has heaped scorn on Saudi Arabia for conducing unjust and heinous attacks on Yemeni people, saying the Arab kingdom is serving as a puppet for the United States and the Israeli regime.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi made the remarks in a televised address on Thursday in reaction to Saudi Arabia’s “unjustified” deadly attacks targeting Yemeni people in the capital, Sana’a.
Saudi Arabia is a puppet at the disposal of superpowers, the Houthi leader said, adding that Riyadh is putting in action the US-Israeli conspiracy in Yemen.
He noted that the US-Israeli plot in Yemen aims to break up the chaotic country and deprive people of security and freedom.
Al-Houthi said the Saudi invasion of Yemen came after their agents, including al-Qaeda terrorists and the ISIL Takfiri terrorists, failed to execute their plots in Yemen.
He said the “criminal” attacks uncovered the “tyrannical” nature of the Saudi regime.
Al-Houthi warned that Saudi Arabia would face consequences should it push ahead with its aggression against Yemen, saying, “We will confront the criminal forces and their tools in the country.”
“You think you can kill Yemeni people, but this is because of your stupidity,” he said. “This unjustified aggression shows the hostility and arrogance of this regime. The attacks are reflecting the inhumanity of the aggressor.”
Al-Houthi said the “aggressors” should keep in mind that the Yemeni people are “committed to defending their country and revolution” by relying on God.
On Thursday, Saudi warplanes carried out fresh airstrikes against Yemen, hitting the northern cities of Sa’ada and Ta’izz in the south.
Airstrikes also targeted arms depots in the Malaheez region in Sa’ada near the border with Saudi Arabia.
Saudi warplanes started bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a International Airport and the Dulaimi airbase early on Thursday.
Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is attacking Ansarullah positions, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near the Sana’a airport. Based on early reports, the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have so far claimed the lives of 18 civilians with more deaths feared, Yemeni sources said.
The Saudi invasion of Yemen has drawn condemnation from many countries such as Iran, Russia, Iraq and Syria, as well as the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
The blatant invasion of Yemen’s sovereignty by the Saudi government comes against a backdrop of total silence on the part of international bodies, especially the United Nations. The world body has so far failed to show any reaction whatsoever to the violation of the sovereignty of one of its members by Riyadh.
(At least the Gulf States are awakening. That’s a good start. — DM)
The West’s weakness and apathy toward Iran and the perilous predicament it has created in Yemen again prove the flimsy nature of those security and defense treaties. This lesson justifies Israel’s approach, which is based on the ability to defend itself on its own. In the meantime, following the Houthi takeover, Saudi Arabia has decided to deploy a massive military force along the border with Yemen. The first shot is in the chamber and the finger is already on the trigger.
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Shiite Iran’s increasing involvement in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, while exploiting the Shiite elements of the population in those target countries, is causing a great deal of concern among leaders of Arab Gulf states. The trauma of Iran’s attempt to topple the regime in Bahrain, where most of the population is Shiite, under the claim that Bahrain is Iran’s 14th province, is still fresh in their minds. The Iranian goal of using Bahrain as a bridgehead from which to spread across the Arabian Peninsula is still in play, despite Iran’s first effort being blocked in March 2011, when some 1,000 Saudi troops and 500 policemen from the United Arab Emirates entered Bahrain to save its regime.
Ever since Saddam Hussein’s sudden invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE — realized the need for a type of “Al Jazeera defense force” to pose a strategic deterrent against Iranian machinations on the peninsula. Their effort has not been a success. Through its latest intervention, via the mobilization of Shiite Houthi tribesmen to capture key targets in Yemen, including the primary port cities and airports in the south of the country leading to control of the Gulf of Aden, Iran is clearly reiterating its ambition of acquiring the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, which will allow Iran to paralyze the Red Sea and Persian Gulf waterways.
Arab stagnation combined with the West turning a blind eye to this Iranian aggression, alongside the willingness of Western powers to sign a deal allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb, is causing sleepless nights among those Arab leaders who are again pushing the need to upgrade the capabilities of the “Al Jazeera defense force.”
Considering the lack of trust in the West and Yemen’s expected fall to the Houthis, the leaders of the Arab Gulf states are again working, feverishly, to build the military capability to curb Iran. As early as December 2009, with the goal of protecting the integrity of Arab territories situated in the Arabian Peninsula, the Arab League decided to establish a massive, unified, heavily funded, rapid-reaction military force comprising hundreds of thousands of troops and naval capabilities, capable of posing a deterrent and striking a decisive blow on the battlefield. Morocco and Jordan were also added to this coalition, as strategic depth, but the initiative ultimately failed to gain traction.
The recent gathering of these partner states in Riyadh gave birth to a multitude of agreements, including support and aid to Egypt, which is considered the strongest true military force in the Sunni Arab Middle East. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has lobbied for Pakistani support in the aftermath of Yemen’s inevitable fall, or worse, when Iran completes its nuclearization with American consent.
As the West falls victim to the fraud peddled by Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, the Arabs (and Israel) have no illusions about Iran’s true intentions. Even as the Bahrain crisis was unfolding, the threats issued by many of Iran’s highest-ranking defense establishment officials — whether in the regime, the military or the Shura (parliament) — reflected the hostile nature of Iran’s foreign policy, and removed any doubt in the minds of neighboring Arab leaders.
Many of the Gulf states with signed security and defense pacts with the West, namely the United States, are currently feeling abandoned. Ever since the events in Bahrain, and to a greater degree following the recent developments in Yemen, the realization is growing in the Gulf that Iran’s aggressive goals and ambitions regarding the Arabian Peninsula have not changed and that they must take care of themselves.
The Arabs have recently come to the realization that not only will they not receive aid from the West in their hour of need, but that the West is forging a deal with Iran at their expense — a deal that will pose the greatest threat to their security. The situation that has been created provides an opportunity for Israel, even if clandestinely, to play a part in the geostrategic plans being formulated by states in the region, and which could help lead to an agreeable deal on the Palestinian issue — which is rather secondary in the current pan-Arab context.
The West’s weakness and apathy toward Iran and the perilous predicament it has created in Yemen again prove the flimsy nature of those security and defense treaties. This lesson justifies Israel’s approach, which is based on the ability to defend itself on its own. In the meantime, following the Houthi takeover, Saudi Arabia has decided to deploy a massive military force along the border with Yemen. The first shot is in the chamber and the finger is already on the trigger.
(The present House of Representatives, despite a Republican majority, is very unlikely to bring a bill of impeachment. If it did the present Senate, despite a modest Republican majority, would not convict; that would require a two-thirds majority of the Senators present. We are stuck with Obama at least until January of 2017– DM)
The Associated Press
The current Kabuki dance ongoing in Geneva between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Jamad Zarif regarding an agreement on Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a sham. Its outcome was pre-ordained many years ago by President Obama in his secret communications with the Iranian mullahs in 2008– at least according to one report.
These secret communications were exposed in a August 29, 2014 article written by Michael Ledeen in PJ Media and drew little attention then, but now must be addressed. According to Ledeen, shortly after Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president on June 3, 2008, he also opened a secret communication channel to the Iranian mullahs. The message was that they should not sign any nuclear agreement with the Bush administration on preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon capability. He informed them that he would be much easier to deal with once he assumed the presidency. He further assured the mullahs that he was a “friend” of the Iranian theocracy and that they would be very happy with his policies.
Today, Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism that has been “at war” with the United States since the 1979 takeover of our Tehran U.S. Embassy. Since then, Iran has directed many “acts of war” against the United States that have cost the loss of thousands of American lives. Most importantly, Iran provided the key material and training support to the 9/11 hijackers, which cost the lives of 3,000 innocent Americans.
The secret channel was conducted through Ambassador William G. Miller, who previously served in Iran during the Shah’s reign. The Ambassador confirmed to Ledeen the aforementioned communications he personally held with the Iranian mullahs on behalf of candidate Obama during the 2008 campaign. The Iranian mullahs apparently believed the message since on July 20, 2oo8, the New York Timesreported “Nuclear Talks with Iran End on a Deadlock.” The main reason was that Iran would not address the “international demands that it stop enriching uranium.” What a surprise!
The shocking fact is that candidate Obama secretly told the Iranian mullahs not to make a deal until he assumed the presidency, according to Ledeen’s report. They would then be able to make a much better agreement with him – and that’s exactly what’s happening. Some would consider what candidate Obama did was treason.
President Obama abandoned the requirement that Iran stop enriching uranium. The result has been that Iran’s nuclear program has been greatly expanded with more secret underground facilities and expanded capability during the course of the long, drawn out negotiations. When the interim agreement, called the “Joint Plan of Action,” was announced in late 2013, the Iranian president openly bragged that the West had finally acknowledged Iran’s right to its uranium enrichment program.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Zarif, furthermore bragged that Iran “did not agree to dismantle anything; not its centrifuges; not its ballistic missile program; not its nuclear programs.” It also did not give up its role as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. By his cooperation with Iran in combatting the Islamic State, he is actually sanctioning de facto Iranian hegemony throughout the Persian Gulf region.
Andy McCarthy, in his book Faithless Execution, lays out a very detailed and logical case for President Obama’s impeachment. Even Liberal law professors are now talking about Obama’s many abuses of power, too many to list here. A summary of President Obama’s extensive violations of law and dereliction of duty are covered on pages 11-26 of Faithless Execution. President Obama’s use and abuse of power is clearly out of control. We are in a Constitutional crisis.
The Constitution vests in the House of Representatives “the sole power of impeachment.” With a Republican controlled House of Representatives, a simple House Majority can vote out articles of impeachment. However, successfully impeaching a president means removing him from office. Removal requires the president’s conviction on articles of impeachment by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. Even with a Republican controlled Senate, this will require much work.
Clearly the Speaker of the House of Representatives must start the process. If the current Speaker is unable to find the courage to start the impeachment proceedings, then he should resign. The House members should elect a new Speaker who is prepared to live up to his Oath of Office and protect the Constitution. The survival of America as we know it, as the shining city on the hill, must come first before any party politics.
President Obama has made it one of his chief missions to reach out to the Islamic Republic of Iran. His attempt to cut a nuclear deal with Iran – a deal that would leave Iran with a huge number of centrifuges intact and a crippling sanctions regime against it largely removed – is merely the latest signal that the President has faith that the Iranian dictatorship can be an ally to the United States. In 2009, Obama said this:
My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect. You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.
In 2009, Iran began shooting dissenters in the streets.
Obama said this particular shooting was “heartbreaking” and blathered about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. Then he went back to catering to the mullahs.
In 2011, Obama did virtually nothing when Iran began filling the vacuum left by the United States in Iraq. This week, Obama signaled that he was ready to cut a deal with Iranian-backed Syrian dictator Bashar Assad – a man he said “had to go” after Assad used weapons of mass destruction on his own people in 2011. Earlier this year, the Obama State Department labeled the radical Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen – a group that burns American flags and screams “Death to the Jews” – a “legitimate political constituency.” This week, Obama celebrated the Iranian holiday of Nowruz at the White House, with Michelle Obama gushing, “I think it’s so fitting we’re holding this celebration here today.”
How wrong is Obama about Iran?
Let’s look back at history. In 1979, after Jimmy Carter let the Shah of Iran fall, the Ayatollah Khomeini took over. The new regime promptly popularized the slogan “Death to America,” and took Americans at the embassy hostage. Every Friday for the last 37 years, massive prayer sessions led by the mullahs chant that slogan. Here’s one from last year, as our friends at MEMRI reveal:
Murals like this one are not uncommon across Tehran.
It’s not just sloganeering. The bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983 was carried about by Hezbollah, a Shiite Iranian proxy group. The United States believes that Hezbollah was behind the bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut that same year as well, and Reagan reportedly thought about bombing Iranian Revolutionary Guard stations in retaliation. The continuous kidnapping of Americans ended up leading to the Iran-Contra scandal when the Reagan administration began smuggling weapons to the Iranians in an attempt to free American hostages. During this period, the Iranian regime used child soldiers; the president encouraged those above the age of 12 to volunteer. A reported 95,000 children under the age of 18 were wounded or killed in the war.
Iran provided significant material support for the 9/11 hijackers. According to the 9/11 Commission Report:
Senior managers in al Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is based mainly in southern Lebanon and Beirut. Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah. Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after Bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan…we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001….In sum, there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.
The Commission concluded, “We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government.” No further investigation ever took place.
During the Iraq War, the Iranian government heavily facilitated the rise of Shiite militias dedicated to the murder of American troops. In Afghanistan, they provided material support to the Taliban to assist in the murder of American troops. All of this continued during the Obama administration. Obama’s own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said in 2011 that Iranian-backed militas were “killing our troops” in Iraq. He said that Iranian officials “know about it.” “Iran is playing an outsized role,” Mullen said. “That has to be dealt with. It’s killing our people.”
Obama’s solution: pull out of Iraq and hand the country over to Iran, which had already helped turn the country into shambles with its allied leader, Nouri Al-Maliki, cleaning security forces of Sunnis. His replacement is an even more pro-Iranian leader, Haider al-Abadi.
Even as the Iranian economy suffers from global sanctions and Saudi attempts to undercut Iranian oil prices, Iran’s expansionism grows. Iraq. Syria. Lebanon. Yemen. The Saudis live in fear. So do the Jordanians and the Egyptians.
Iranian power over the past three decades has meant thousands of dead Americans. But Obama keeps pushing for Iranian power nonetheless. Which means thousands more dead Americans in our future.
(What are the chances of such a reformation over the next hundred years or so? — DM)
A man prays during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, at Jama Masjid in New Delhi on Oct. 6, 2014. Eid al-Adha marks the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“Islam’s borders are bloody,” wrote the late political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1996, “and so are its innards.” Nearly 20 years later, Huntington looks more right than ever before. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims. In 2013, there were nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks world-wide. The lion’s share were in Muslim-majority countries, and many of the others were carried out by Muslims. By far the most numerous victims of Muslim violence—including executions and lynchings not captured in these statistics—are Muslims themselves.
Not all of this violence is explicitly motivated by religion, but a great deal of it is. I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace.
When I assert this, I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself.
It is not just al Qaeda and Islamic State that show the violent face of Islamic faith and practice. It is Pakistan, where any statement critical of the Prophet or Islam is labeled as blasphemy and punishable by death. It is Saudi Arabia, where churches and synagogues are outlawed and where beheadings are a legitimate form of punishment. It is Iran, where stoning is an acceptable punishment and homosexuals are hanged for their “crime.”
As I see it, the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts. It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been “hijacked” by extremists. The killers of Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.
Instead of letting Islam off the hook with bland clichés about the religion of peace, we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts.
As it turns out, the West has some experience with this sort of reformist project. It is precisely what took place in Judaism and Christianity over the centuries, as both traditions gradually consigned the violent passages of their own sacred texts to the past. Many parts of the Bible and the Talmud reflect patriarchal norms, and both also contain many stories of harsh human and divine retribution. As President Barack Obama said in remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, “Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
Islamic State militants marching through Raqqa, Syria, a stronghold of the Sunni extremist group, in an undated file image posted on a militant website on Jan. 14, 2014. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yet today, because their faiths went through a long, meaningful process of Reformation and Enlightenment, the vast majority of Jews and Christians have come to dismiss religious scripture that urges intolerance or violence. There are literalist fringes in both religions, but they are true fringes. Regrettably, in Islam, it is the other way around: It is those seeking religious reform who are the fringe element.
Any serious discussion of Islam must begin with its core creed, which is based on the Quran (the words said to have been revealed by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad) and the hadith (the accompanying works that detail Muhammad’s life and words). Despite some sectarian differences, this creed unites all Muslims. All, without exception, know by heart these words: “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah; and Muhammad is His messenger.” This is the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.
The Shahada might seem to be a declaration of belief no different from any other. But the reality is that the Shahada is both a religious and a political symbol.
In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door in Mecca trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah’s messenger.
After 10 years of trying this kind of persuasion, however, he and his small band of believers went to Medina, and from that moment, Muhammad’s mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.)
No symbol represents the soul of Islam more than the Shahada. But today there is a contest within Islam for the ownership of that symbol. Who owns the Shahada? Is it those Muslims who want to emphasize Muhammad’s years in Mecca or those who are inspired by his conquests after Medina? On this basis, I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims.
The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.
I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it.
It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys.” It is Medina Muslims who prescribe death for the crime of apostasy, death by stoning for adultery and hanging for homosexuality. It is Medina Muslims who put women in burqas and beat them if they leave their homes alone or if they are improperly veiled.
Muslim children carry torches during a parade before Eid al-Fitr, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, on July 27, 2014, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims. Like devout Christians or Jews who attend religious services every day and abide by religious rules in what they eat and wear, Mecca Muslims focus on religious observance. I was born in Somalia and raised as a Mecca Muslim. So were the majority of Muslims from Casablanca to Jakarta.
Yet the Mecca Muslims have a problem: Their religious beliefs exist in an uneasy tension with modernity—the complex of economic, cultural and political innovations that not only reshaped the Western world but also dramatically transformed the developing world as the West exported it. The rational, secular and individualistic values of modernity are fundamentally corrosive of traditional societies, especially hierarchies based on gender, age and inherited status.
Trapped between two worlds of belief and experience, these Muslims are engaged in a daily struggle to adhere to Islam in the context of a society that challenges their values and beliefs at every turn. Many are able to resolve this tension only by withdrawing into self-enclosed (and increasingly self-governing) enclaves. This is called cocooning, a practice whereby Muslim immigrants attempt to wall off outside influences, permitting only an Islamic education for their children and disengaging from the wider non-Muslim community.
It is my hope to engage this second group of Muslims—those closer to Mecca than to Medina—in a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith. I recognize that these Muslims are not likely to heed a call for doctrinal reformation from someone they regard as an apostate and infidel. But they may reconsider if I can persuade them to think of me not as an apostate but as a heretic: one of a growing number of people born into Islam who have sought to think critically about the faith we were raised in. It is with this third group—only a few of whom have left Islam altogether—that I would now identify myself.
These are the Muslim dissidents. A few of us have been forced by experience to conclude that we could not continue to be believers; yet we remain deeply engaged in the debate about Islam’s future. The majority of dissidents are reforming believers—among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.
How many Muslims belong to each group? Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in the militant terms I associate with Muhammad’s time in Medina. But out of well over 1.6 billion believers, or 23% of the globe’s population, that 48 million seems to be more than enough. (I would put the number significantly higher, based on survey data on attitudes toward Shariah in Muslim countries.)
In any case, regardless of the numbers, it is the Medina Muslims who have captured the world’s attention on the airwaves, over social media, in far too many mosques and, of course, on the battlefield.
The Medina Muslims pose a threat not just to non-Muslims. They also undermine the position of those Mecca Muslims attempting to lead a quiet life in their cultural cocoons throughout the Western world. But those under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself.
For the world at large, the only viable strategy for containing the threat posed by the Medina Muslims is to side with the dissidents and reformers and to help them to do two things: first, identify and repudiate those parts of Muhammad’s legacy that summon Muslims to intolerance and war, and second, persuade the great majority of believers—the Mecca Muslims—to accept this change.
Islam is at a crossroads. Muslims need to make a conscious decision to confront, debate and ultimately reject the violent elements within their religion. To some extent—not least because of widespread revulsion at the atrocities of Islamic State, al Qaeda and the rest—this process has already begun. But it needs leadership from the dissidents, and they in turn stand no chance without support from the West.
What needs to happen for us to defeat the extremists for good? Economic, political, judicial and military tools have been proposed and some of them deployed. But I believe that these will have little effect unless Islam itself is reformed.
Such a reformation has been called for repeatedly at least since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate. But I would like to specify precisely what needs to be reformed.
I have identified five precepts central to Islam that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when the harmfulness of these ideas are recognized and they are repudiated will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved.
Here are the five areas that require amendment:
1. Muhammad’s semi-divine status, along with the literalist reading of the Quran.
Muhammad should not be seen as infallible, let alone as a source of divine writ. He should be seen as a historical figure who united the Arab tribes in a premodern context that cannot be replicated in the 21st century. And although Islam maintains that the Quran is the literal word of Allah, it is, in historical reality, a book that was shaped by human hands. Large parts of the Quran simply reflect the tribal values of the 7th-century Arabian context from which it emerged. The Quran’s eternal spiritual values must be separated from the cultural accidents of the place and time of its birth.
2. The supremacy of life after death.
The appeal of martyrdom will fade only when Muslims assign a greater value to the rewards of this life than to those promised in the hereafter.
3. Shariah, the vast body of religious legislation.
Muslims should learn to put the dynamic, evolving laws made by human beings above those aspects of Shariah that are violent, intolerant or anachronistic.
4. The right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law.
There is no room in the modern world for religious police, vigilantes and politically empowered clerics.
5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
Islam must become a true religion of peace, which means rejecting the imposition of religion by the sword.
I know that this argument will make many Muslims uncomfortable. Some are bound to be offended by my proposed amendments. Others will contend that I am not qualified to discuss these complex issues of theology and law. I am also afraid—genuinely afraid—that it will make a few Muslims even more eager to silence me.
But this is not a work of theology. It is more in the nature of a public intervention in the debate about the future of Islam. The biggest obstacle to change within the Muslim world is precisely its suppression of the sort of critical thinking I am attempting here. If my proposal for reform helps to spark a serious discussion of these issues among Muslims themselves, I will consider it a success.
Let me make two things clear. I do not seek to inspire another war on terror or extremism—violence in the name of Islam cannot be ended by military means alone. Nor am I any sort of “Islamophobe.” At various times, I myself have been all three kinds of Muslim: a fundamentalist, a cocooned believer and a dissident. My journey has gone from Mecca to Medina to Manhattan.
For me, there seemed no way to reconcile my faith with the freedoms I came to the West to embrace. I left the faith, despite the threat of the death penalty prescribed by Shariah for apostates. Future generations of Muslims deserve better, safer options. Muslims should be able to welcome modernity, not be forced to wall themselves off, or live in a state of cognitive dissonance, or lash out in violent rejection.
But it is not only Muslims who would benefit from a reformation of Islam. We in the West have an enormous stake in how the struggle over Islam plays out. We cannot remain on the sidelines, as though the outcome has nothing to do with us. For if the Medina Muslims win and the hope for a Muslim Reformation dies, the rest of the world too will pay an enormous price—not only in blood spilled but also in freedom lost.
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