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N. Korea Submarine Missile Allows Covert Nuclear Strike on US

May 5, 2015

N. Korea Submarine Missile Allows Covert Nuclear Strike on US, Israel National News, Ari Yashar, May 5, 2015

(Perhaps North Korea and Iran can make a deal — North Korea gets sanctions-relief money and Iran gets missile equipment and nukes for its submarines. Or maybe Iran could just pay North Korea to attack the U.S. mainland.– DM)

img369953Military submarine (illustration) Reuters

[I]t was reported last month that US President Barack Obama hid intel from the UN about North Korea transferring rocket components needed to create a nuclear missile to Iran even during the nuclear talks, to try and prevent the UN from acting on the information with increased sanctions.

[O]nce the KN-11 and mobile KN-08 “systems go operational, it potentially gives North Korea a dual threat for attacking the United States with nuclear or chemical weapons – a threat generated from difficult to detect mobile platforms on both land and sea.”

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

In a worrying step showing North Korea’s rapidly expanding nuclear strike capabilities, the Communist regime recently held a test of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the first time it has launched a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead from underwater.

According to US defense officials cited by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, the test took place on April 22 from an underwater test platform near the coastal city of Sinpo in the southeast of the country, and tested what the US is calling a KN-11 missile.

The test appears to have been successful, and is the third KN-11 test showing the high-priority of the nuclear missile program for North Korea. Previous tests in January and last October were from a sea-based platform not underwater and a land-based platform.

The KN-11 joins the KN-08 mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as being part of a varied North Korean missile arsenal on platforms that would be hard for the US to detect, and consequently allow a strike that would be difficult to shoot down.

Admiral Bill Gortney, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command, admitted last month that North Korea could hit the continental US with a nuclear strike. That admission accompanied the announcement that NORAD is reopening its nuclear-EMP-proof Cheyenne Mountain bunker, apparently amid renewed concerns of an EMP attack by which a nuclear weapon would be detonated over the US, knocking out all of its electronic devices, and thereby rendering it defenseless to secondary nuclear strikes.

The latest launch test also comes after Chinese experts warned the US last month that American estimates are wrong and North Korea actually has 20 nuclear weapons, with that arsenal to double next year thanks to the regime’s higher than anticipated advanced enrichment capabilities.

Nuclear strikes the US won’t see coming

Admiral Cecil D. Haney, commander of the Strategic Command, confirmed the SLBM launch test in comments to the Senate on March 19, reports the Washington Free Beacon. The program is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Regarding the UN, it was reported last month that US President Barack Obama hid intel from the UN about North Korea transferring rocket components needed to create a nuclear missile to Iran even during the nuclear talks, to try and prevent the UN from acting on the information with increased sanctions.

Former US Defense Intelligence Agency official Bruce Bechtol, Jr. told the paper that North Korea’s SLBM program is meant to give it the ability to strike the US, and to not have the strike be detected in advance.

“With an SLBM they get both,” said Bechtol. “The submarine can get the platform to launch the missile within range of the continental United States, Alaska, or Hawaii. Thus, once operational, this immediately brings key nodes in the United States within range of what would likely be a nuclear armed missile.”

He noted that once the KN-11 and mobile KN-08 “systems go operational, it potentially gives North Korea a dual threat for attacking the United States with nuclear or chemical weapons – a threat generated from difficult to detect mobile platforms on both land and sea.”

Obama is bringing the US to “tragedy”

A number of American officials responded sharply to the KN-11 test, placing the blame squarely on Obama’s shoulders.

“This missile, along with the KN-08, happened on Obama’s watch and nothing has been done,” one US intelligence official told the Washington Free Beacon.

Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton added his criticism, saying, “by utterly ignoring North Korea’s growing missile threats, Obama has allowed the threat of rogue state proliferators to fall out of the center of the national political debate.”

“This is a potential tragedy for the country,” Bolton warned.

Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) Thomas McInerney said that the KN-08 and KN-11 programs constitute “threats to the continental United States and have been developed under the Obama administration’s leadership.”

“Leading from behind is a failed strategy as evidenced by this very dangerous strategic threat to the continental United States of nuclear attack by a very unstable North Korean government,” said McInerney.

The general also spoke about Obama’s admission that the nuclear deal being formed with Iran will allow it to obtain a nuclear weapon in under 15 years if it doesn’t breach conditions and obtain it sooner, noting that the deal “puts the United States in the most dangerous threat of nuclear attack since the height of the Cold War but from multiple threats – North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran.”

Opponents of the nuclear deal being formulated with Iran ahead of a June 30 deadline have warned it follows in the footsteps of the failed deal sealed by then-President Bill Clinton with North Korea in 1994.

Despite the deal, North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, just over ten years after the agreement.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, P5+1, Rogue nations, U.S. Military
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Pentagon: Iranian Forces Board Marshall Islands-Flagged Ship in Gulf

April 28, 2015

Pentagon: Iranian Forces Board Marshall Islands-Flagged Ship in Gulf, Reuters via Washington Free Beacon, April 28, 2015 at 11:20 am, EDT

(According to other sources, the ship is U.S. owned. — DM)

WASHINGTON – Iranian forces boarded a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf on Tuesday after patrol boats fired warning shots across its bow and ordered it deeper into Iranian waters as it was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon said.

The ship, the MV Maersk Tigris, initially ignored Iranian patrol boats that ordered it deeper into Iranian territorial waters but complied after the vessels fired several warning shots, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren said.

U.S. forces in the region responded to distress calls from the Maersk Tigris, sending the destroyer USS Farragut to monitor the situation along with reconnaissance aircraft. No U.S. citizens were aboard the cargo ship, Warren said.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran, Iranian navy, U.S. Military
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An EMP attack on America seems likely

April 19, 2015

An EMP attack on America seems likely, Dan Miller’s Blog, April 19, 2015

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

Some consider North Korea to be the rogue nation most likely to use an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to attack America; Iran is also seen as quite likely to do it. It matters little which succeeds.

Here is a lengthy 2013 video about an EMP attack, what would happen and why:

The possibilities and consequences of an EMP attack on America are too horrific to contemplate; the “legitimate news media” generally ignore them. We therefore tend to relegate them to the realm of remote “tin foil hat conspiracy theories” and to focus instead on more congenial stuff — the latest sex scandal, Hillary Clinton’s campaign van parking in a disabled-only space and other matters unlikely to impact America to an extent even approaching that of an EMP attack. Meanwhile, most of “our” Congress Critters, who should know better, focus on opinion polls, filling their campaign coffers and getting richer personally while neglecting our atrophying missile defense systems and other potential means of avoiding or recovering from an EMP attack.

Here is a 2013 video about the likelihood of an Iranian EMP attack on America that would paralyze the country for a very long time.

North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran have long cooperated in the development of nukes and means to deliver them. I wrote about their cooperation here, here, here and elsewhere. It now appears that Iran intends to use them for an EMP attack on America.

The issue of a nuclear EMP attack was raised in the final hours of this week’s elections in Israel when U.S. authority Peter Vincent Pry penned a column for Arutz Sheva warning of Iran’s threat to free nations.

“Iranian military documents describe such a scenario — including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States,” he wrote. [Emphasis added.]

Here is a March 7, 2015 video about the impact of the P5+1 “negotiations” on Iran getting (or keeping) nukes and the likelihood of an Iranian EMP attack on America:

In April of this year, John Bolton had this to say about the Iran – North Korea connection, how much we don’t know and the ongoing P5+1 “negotiations.”

Perhaps Israel can take out Iran’s nuke capabilities.

Here is a February 2015 video about what’s (not) being done to harden our domestic power grid:

As of February of this year, Govtrack US opined that the chances of passage of the SHIELD act were zero percent. Be that as it may, simply hardening the power grid would not solve communications or transport problems — most modern communications devices, as well as vehicles built after 1987, depend on computer chips and, when the chips are fried, will not function. Even if food and water could be processed, getting them to consumers in sufficient quantities to keep them alive would be an enormous if not impossible task.

Problems of a human nature would also arise and remaining alive would be difficult. If one’s family were about to starve, how many would try to steal food and water from those who still have even enough for a few days? How many roving gangs of armed criminals, quite willing to kill, would do the same? The police would likely have no communications ability and might well be otherwise occupied, tending to their own families. Military forces not confined to base would likely have the same problems and be doing the same.

That suggests another problem in restoring infrastructure seriously damaged or destroyed by the EMP attack. It would not only require the availability of transport, communications and undamaged equipment. It would also require the availability of personnel, not otherwise occupied in scrounging for food, water, medical supplies and other resources to care for their own families, while protecting them from those lacking such resources, as well as from armed gangs.

Now, the U.S. military is taking steps to protect itself by reopening a cold war bunker at Cheyenne Mountain, abandoned in 2006.

Cheyene Mt. Complex

Cheyene Mt. Complex

The Pentagon last week [early April 2015] announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.

Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that ‘because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain’s built, it’s EMP-hardened.’

. . . .

‘And so, there’s a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,’ Gortney told reporters.

‘My primary concern was… are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I’m not at liberty to discuss who’s moving in there,‘ he said.  [Emphasis added.]

The Cheyenne mountain bunker is a half-acre cavern carved into a mountain in the 1960s that was designed to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack. From inside the massive complex, airmen were poised to send warnings that could trigger the launch of nuclear missiles.

But in 2006, officials decided to move the headquarters of NORAD and US Northern Command from Cheyenne to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs. The Cheyenne bunker was designated as an alternative command center if needed.

Now the Pentagon is looking at shifting communications gear to the Cheyenne bunker, officials said.

‘A lot of the back office communications is being moved there,’ said one defense official.

Officials said the military’s dependence on computer networks and digital communications makes it much more vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, which can occur naturally or result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

Under the 10-year contract, Raytheon is supposed to deliver ‘sustainment’ services to help the military perform ‘accurate, timely and unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats’ at the Cheyenne and Petersen bases.

Raytheon’s contract also involves unspecified work at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

When will the site be fully operational, for what and who will be allowed to go there?

Some other military bases are probably being hardened, at least to an extent that might (or might not) preserve their electrical grids. If it works, they may serve as refugee centers for adjacent civilian populations. However, the military installations would likely run out of food and potable water before very long and, with food and water processing centers no longer operational, there would be substantial difficulties in getting — as well as transporting — large quantities of food and water. Were the processing centers to become operational, transportaion difficulties would remain. Communications between the military installations and the outside world? Likely zilch, at least initially, because radios, telephones and other modern communications devices (as most now are) depend on computer chips and would be fried by an EMP attack. Some might eventually be restored at some military bases, but that is not likely to be the case with those not on those bases.

Conclusions

What would you do in the event of an EMP attack? In a major metropolitan area, you would probably be SOL very quickly. In a small town? Marginally but not much better off. An isolated small farm, close to a mountain spring and adequately stocked with food, medical supplies, firearms and ammunition, could provide reason to hope that you might eventually be able to grow or slaughter sufficient food and have access to enough potable water to survive; at least until roving armed gangs arrive and overpower you.

This video is about a massive world-wide pandemic. In the event of a pandemic, electricity, automobiles and communications would still function, at least for a while. Following an EMP attack, the consequences would likely be substantially worse and last far longer.

Here is a link to a novel about one family in a small city and its efforts to survive an EMP attack on America. It does a reasonable job of summarizing the potential consequences.

Categories: Congressional Critters, Department of Defense, Diplomacy, Domestic policy, EMP attack, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian EMPs, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, P5+1, Rogue nations, U.S. Congress, U.S. Military, Urban areas
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US Sec. Defense on Iran nuclear facilities: Bunker buster bombs ‘ready to go’

April 11, 2015

US Sec. Defense on Iran nuclear facilities: Bunker buster bombs ‘ready to go’ Jerusalem Post, April 11, 2015

US SecdefAshton Carter (C), US President Barack Obama (L) and US Vice President Joseph Biden (R).. (photo credit:REUTERS)

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter addressed the possibility of a military option against Iran, saying that bunker busting bombs, meant to penetrate Iran’s underground facilities, are “ready to go.”

Speaking to CNN in an interview aired Saturday morning, Carter said that the deal between Iran and the P5+1, the basics of which were recently laid out in during negotiations in Switzerland, will hinge not on “trust but rather on “verification.”

“We have the capability to shut down, set back and destroy the Iranian nuclear program and I believe the Iranians know that and understand that,” Carter said, indicating the US’s willingness to utilize high-powered bombs if Tehran does not abide by the deal reached in the Swiss resort town where the various delegations were hosted during the eight day marathon negotiations.

The reference to the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, or MOPS, whose reach extends 200 feet below ground, is the first that any American figure has made concerning substantive military planning against the Islamic Republic’s fortified subterranean facilities.

One such facility is Fordow, near the city of Qom, where Iran maintains a facility dedicated to producing 20% enriched medium-grade uranium. Tehran insists that this would only be used for civilian purposes, a claim that has failed to assuage fears that it could then be further enriched to 90%, the necessary amount needed to produce weaponized material.

While he voiced a more hawkish tone than the White House, Carter echoed Washington’s preference for a diplomatic solution, explaining that negotiations would actually be a more long-lasting method of ensuring a nuclear-bomb free Iran since “military action is reversible overtime.”

Asked about another key factor affecting US interests int the Middle East, namely the White Houses’ willingness to deploy ground troops against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Carter suggested that the administration has not yet reached that conclusion, but that he “would not hesitate to give that advice.”

Categories: Air strikes, Ashton Carter, Bunker buster bombs, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Obama, P5+1, U.S. Military
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Obama’s Iranian-nuclear strategy brings dividend: Rev Guards lead military assault on Tikrit

March 4, 2015

Obama’s Iranian-nuclear strategy brings dividend: Rev Guards lead military assault on Tikrit, DEBKAfile, March 4, 2015

(Please see also The World Bows to Iranian Regional Hegemony and Should We Give Up on the Iraqi Army? — DM)

General_Qassam_Suleimani_IRAQ_1.15Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Tikrit battlefront

US President Barack Obama’s plans for Iran, which were spectacularly challenged by Binyamin Netanyahu in his Congress speech Tuesday, March 3, were manifested 10,000 kilometers from Washington in the firestorm over Tikrit, the important Sunni town north of Baghdad. There, Iranian-led Iraqi troops are on the offensive against the Islamic State in the biggest ground battle fought in Iraq since the Iraqi army fell apart and scattered last June against the conquering Islamist march through western and central Iraq.

For four reasons, this battle is loaded with ramifications for Obama’s Iran policy and the Islamic Republic’s drive for recognition as the leading Middle East power:

1.   For Tehran it is a high-stake gamble for prestige, Its top military strategist, Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was thrown into the Tikrit operation, to become the first high-ranking general Iran has ever placed publicly up front in direct command of a key battle as a guarantee of its success.

2.  However, three days after the offensive was launched on Sunday, March 1, the 25,000 Iranian and Iraqi troops, backed by Iraqi Shiite militias, were still fighting outside its gates, upsetting the high hopes of a swift victory and breakthrough into the city.

Islamist forces slowed their advance by strewing hundreds of mines and roadside bombs on all the roads leading to Tikrit, while teams of suicide bombers jumped out and blew themselves up amidst the invading army – a tactic seen before in the battle for the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.
ISIS boasted that one of the suicide bombers was an American citizen whom they dubbed “Abu Dawoud al-Amriki.”

3.  The United States has no military input in the battle – neither US advisers on the ground nor aerial bombardment. On Tuesday, March 3, while Netanyahu was advising Congress in reference to the relative merits of radical Iran and ISIS that “the enemy of your enemy is the enemy,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed some of the Obama administration’s thinking on the subject.

He said Iran and its allies (Iraqi Shiite militias) had taken part in the Iraq war ever since 2004. “But the Tikrit campaign signals a new level of involvement,” he said. “This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support in the form of artillery and other things” and “…could turn out to be a positive thing.”

These comments corroborated DEBKAfile’s disclosures on the US-led war on ISIS, which defined America as confining itself to air strikes over Iraq and Syria and assigning the brunt of the ground war to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards forces – a division of labor, which Israeli military chiefs watch with increasing concern as it brings the Iranian peril closer than ever to Israel, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.

The Iraq format is replicated in southern Syria, where the same Gen. Soleimani, joined by a group of fellow Iranian generals, is leading an operation to seize that part of the country from Syrian rebel hands, including the Golan town of Quneitra .

4. The role Obama has assigned Iran in the two embattled Middle East countries bears directly on the scope of his concessions in the bargaining for a comprehensive nuclear deal.

Categories: Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iraq, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Tikrit, U.S. airstrikes, U.S. Military
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The World Bows to Iranian Regional Hegemony

March 4, 2015

The World Bows to Iranian Regional Hegemony, Asia Times Online via Middle East Forum, David P. Goldman, March 4, 2015. Originally published under the title, “World Bows to Iran’s Hegemony.”

1025The looming nuclear agreement is a dark cloud for countries within range of Iranian ballistic missiles.

The powers of the world hope to delay, but not deter, Iran’s eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The US has tacitly accepted the guiding role of Iranian commanders in Iraq’s military operations against ISIS.

Washington destroyed the balance of power that defined the region’s politics when it pushed through majority rule in Iraq.

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The problem with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress March 3 was not the risk of offending Washington, but rather Washington’s receding relevance. President Barack Obama is not the only leader who wants to acknowledge what is already a fact in the ground, namely that “Iran has become the preeminent strategic player in West Asia to the increasing disadvantage of the US and its regional allies,” as a former Indian ambassador to Oman wrote this week.

For differing reasons, the powers of the world have elected to legitimize Iran’s dominant position, hoping to delay but not deter its eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons. Except for Israel and the Sunni Arab states, the world has no desire to confront Iran. Short of an American military strike, which is unthinkable for this administration, there may be little that Washington can do to influence the course of events. Its influence has fallen catastrophically in consequence of a chain of policy.

The best that Prime Minister Netanyahu can hope for is that the US Congress will in some way disrupt the Administration’s efforts to strike a deal with Iran by provoking the Iranians. That is what the White House fears, and that explains its rage over Netanyahu’s appearance.

Tehran may overplay its hand, but I do not think it will. The Persians are not the Palestinians, who discovered that they were a people only a generation ago and never miss an opportunity to miss and opportunity; they are ancient and crafty, and know an opportunity when it presents itself.

Most of the world wants a deal, because the alternative would be war. For 10 years I have argued that war is inevitable whatever the diplomats do, and that the question is not if, but how and when. President Obama is not British prime minister Neville Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich in 1938: rather, he is Lord Halifax, that is, Halifax if he had been prime minister in 1938. Unlike the unfortunate Chamberlain, who hoped to buy time for Britain to build warplanes, Halifax liked Hitler, as Obama and his camarilla admire Iran.

China is Chamberlain, hoping to placate Iran in order to buy time. China’s dependence on Middle East oil will increase during the next decade no matter what else China might do, and a war in the Persian Gulf would ruin it.

Until early 2014, China believed that the United States would guarantee the security of the Persian Gulf. After the rise of Islamic State (ISIS), it concluded that the United States no longer cared, or perhaps intended to destabilize the region for nefarious reasons. But China does not have means to replace America’s presence in the Persian Gulf. Like Chamberlain at Munich, it seeks delay.

Obama, to be sure, portrays his policy in the language of balance of power. He told the New Yorker’s David Remnick in 2014,

It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other. And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion – not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon – you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.

That, as the old joke goes, is the demo version.

On the ground, the US has tacitly accepted the guiding role of Iranian commanders in Iraq’s military operations against ISIS. It is courting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who just overthrow a Saudi-backed regime in Yemen. It looks the other way while its heavy arms shipments to the Lebanese army are diverted to Hezbollah.

At almost every point at which Iran has tried to assert hegemony over its neighbors, Washington has acquiesced. “In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power,” wrote Henry Kissinger. The major powers hope for peace through Iranian hegemony, although they differ in their estimate of how long this will last.

Apart from its nuclear ambitions, the broader deal envisioned by Washington would leave Iran as a de facto suzerain in Iraq. It would also make Iran the dominant power in Lebanon (via Hezbollah), Syria (via its client regime) and Yemen (through its Houthi proxies). Although Sunni Muslims outnumber Shi’ites by 6:1, Sunni populations are concentrated in North Africa, Turkey and South Asia. Iran hopes to dominate the Levant and Mesopotamia, encircling Saudi Arabia and threatening Azerbaijan.

It is grotesque for America to talk of balance of power in the Persian Gulf, because America destroyed the balance of power that defined the region’s politics from the end of the First World War until 2006, when Washington pushed through majority rule in Iraq.

The imperialist powers in their wisdom established a power balance on two levels. First, they created a Sunni-dominated state in Iraq opposite Shi’ite Iran. The two powers fought each other to a standstill during the 1980s with the covert encouragement of the Reagan administration. Nearly a million soldiers died without troubling the world around them.

Second, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 created two states, Syria and Iraq, in which minorities ruled majorities – the Alawite minority in Syria, and the Sunni minority in Iraq. Tyranny of a minority may be brutal, but a minority cannot exterminate a majority.

America’s first great blunder was to force majority rule upon Iraq. As Lt General (ret.) Daniel Bolger explained in a 2014 book,

The stark facts on the ground still sat there, oozing pus and bile. With Saddam gone, any voting would install a Shiite majority. The Sunni wouldn’t run Iraq again. That, at the bottom, caused the insurgency. Absent the genocide of Sunni Arabs, it would keep it going.

Under majority Shi’ite rule, Iraq inevitably became Iran’s ally. Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now leading its campaign against the Sunni resistance, presently dominated by ISIS, and Iranian officers are leading Iraqi army regulars.

This was the work of the George W Bush administration, not Obama. In its ideological fervor for Arab democracy, the Republicans opened the door for Iran to dominate the region. Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s National Security Advisor, proposed offering an olive branch to Iran as early as 2003. After the Republicans got trounced in the 2006 Congressional elections, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld got a pink slip, vice president Dick Cheney got benched, and “realist” Robert Gates – the co-chairman of the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations task force that advocated a deal with Iran – took over at Defense.

China and Russia

In the past, China has sought to strike a balance between Saudi Arabia and Iran with weapons sales, among other means. One Chinese analyst observes that although China’s weapons deliveries to Iran are larger in absolute terms than its sales to Saudi Arabia, it has given the Saudis its best medium-range missiles, which constitute a “formidable deterrent” against Iran.

1026A Chinese warship arrives in Bandar Abbas, Iran in September 2014.

As China sees the matter, its overall dependency on imported oil is rising, and the proportion of that oil coming from Iran and its perceived allies is rising. Saudi Arabia may be China’s biggest provider, but Iraq and Oman account for lion’s share of the recent increase in oil imports. China doesn’t want to rock the boat with either prospective adversary.

Among the world’s powers, China is the supreme rationalist: it views the world in terms of cold self-interest and tends to assume that others also view the world this way. One of China’s most respected military strategists told me bluntly that the notion of a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran (and by implication any regional nuclear power and Iran) was absurd: the Iranians, he argued, know that a nuclear-armed Israel could destroy them in retaliation.

Other Chinese analysts are less convinced and view Iran’s prospective acquisition of nuclear weapons with trepidation. It is not only war with Israel but with Saudi Arabia that concerns the oil-importing Chinese. For the time being, Beijing has decided to accommodate Iran. In a March 2 commentary, Xinhua explicitly rejected Israeli objections:

The US Congress will soon have a guest, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to try to convince lawmakers that a deal with Iran on its nuclear program could threaten the very existence of the Jewish state.

Despite the upcoming pressure, policymakers in Washington should have a clear mind of the potential dangers of back-pedaling on the current promising efforts for a comprehensive deal on the Iranian nuclear issue before a March 31 deadline …

With a new round of talks in Switzerland pending, it is widely expected that the P5+1 [the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany] could succeed in reaching a deal with Iran to prevent the latter from developing a nuclear bomb, in exchange for easing sanctions on Tehran.

The momentum does not come easy and could hardly withstand any disturbances such as a surprise announcement by Washington to slap further sanctions on Tehran.

The Obama administration needs no outside reminder to know that any measures at this stage to “overwhelm” Iran will definitely cause havoc to the positive atmosphere that came after years of frustration over the issue.

While it is impossible for Washington to insulate itself from the powerful pro-Israel lobbyist this time, the US policymakers should heed that by deviating from the ongoing endeavor on Iran they may squander a hard-earned opportunity by the international community to move closer to a solution to the Iran nuclear issue, for several years to come if not forever.

Russia has taken Iran’s side explicitly, for several reasons.

First, Russia has stated bluntly that it would help Iran in retaliation for Western policy in Ukraine, as I wrote in this space January 28. Second, Russia’s own Muslim problem is Sunni rather than Shi’ite. It has reason to fear the influence of ISIS among its own Muslims. If Iran fights ISIS, it serves Russian interests. Russia, to be sure, does not like the idea of a nuclear power on its southern border, but its priorities place it squarely in Iran’s camp.

Demographic Time Bomb

The Israeli prime minister asserted that the alternative to a bad deal is not war, but a better deal. I do not think he believes that, but Americans cannot wrap their minds around the notion that West Asia will remain at war indefinitely, especially because the war arises from their own stupidity.

Balance of power in the Middle East is inherently impossible today for the same reason it failed in Europe in 1914, namely a grand demographic disequilibrium: Iran is on a course to demographic disaster, and must assert its hegemony while it still has time.

Game theorists might argue that Iran has a rational self-interest to trade its nuclear ambitions for the removal of sanctions. The solution to a multi-period game – one that takes into account Iran’s worsening demographic weakness – would have a solution in which Iran takes great risks to acquire nuclear weapons.

Between 30% and 40% of Iranians will be older than 60 by mid-century (using the UN Population Prospect’s Constant Fertility and “Low” Variants). Meanwhile, its military-age population will fall by a third to a half.

Belated efforts to promote fertility are unlikely to make a difference. The causes of Iranian infertility are baked into the cake – higher levels of female literacy, an officially-sanctioned culture of sexual license administered by the Shi’ite clergy as “temporary marriage,” epidemic levels of sexually-transmitted disease and inbreeding. Iran, in short, has an apocalyptic regime with a lot to be apocalyptic about.

Henry Kissinger is right: peace can be founded on either hegemony or balance of power. Iran cannot be a hegemon for long because it will implode economically and demographically within a generation. In the absence of either, the result is war. For the past 10 years I have argued in this space that when war is inevitable, preemption is the least damaging course of action. I had hoped that George W Bush would have the gumption to de-fang Iran, and was disappointed when he came under the influence of Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates. Now we are back in 1938, but with Lord Halifax rather than Neville Chamberlain in charge.

Categories: Appeasement, China, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Free world, Ideology, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Iraqi military, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Oil, P5+1, Russia, Shia, Sunni, U.S. Military
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Pentagon spokesman portrays Guantanamo recidivism as a good thing

February 12, 2015

Pentagon spokesman portrays Guantanamo recidivism as a good thing, Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, February 11, 2015

Rear Admiral Kirby is not trying to be satirical. Or is he?– DM)

Yesterday, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby cast a positive light on jihadists from the Taliban and al Qaeda who have been released from Guantanamo and have returned to wage jihad. The topic came up in the discussion of an airstrike that killed Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban commander who was detained at Guantanamo from 2001 to 2007, released to Afghan custody and freed in 2009, and returned to the Taliban shortly afterward to assume the role of a senior military commander up until his defection to the Islamic State earlier this year. Below is the exchange, from the Pentagon’s transcript:

Q: Why was he released?REAR ADM. KIRBY: Joe, I don’t have the records on this guy from — from Guantanamo Bay.

Yes, he was a detainee. He was released in 2007. He was released to Kabul.

The other thing that we’ve said — and this is another great example, because we had a long, you know, discussion not too long ago about the — the recidivism and particularly the issue of this — this one individual who reengaged there in Qatar, and we said that they return to the battlefield and to the fight at their own peril. Mr. Kadim is proof of that.

Kirby’s statement that Khadim’s death should be viewed as a positive is cold comfort to the hundreds of Afghans, Americans, and Coalition personnel who were killed while Khadim commanded forces in southern Afghanistan. The jihadist was able to operate for more than six years as a top level Taliban commander and has the blood of thousands on his hands.

Khadim and Mullah Zakir, another Guantanamo alum (who is still alive; he “resigned due to ill health,” according to the Taliban) were responsible for implementing the Taliban’s counter-surge strategy. While the the jihadist group failed to halt Coalition and Afghan forces’ gains in the south from 2009 to 2011 (gains which are now melting away), at least 875 Coalition members were killed during the fighting in Kandahar (273 killed) and Helmand (602 killed) during that time period, according to iCasualties (note, data on Coalition members killed by province after 2011 is not available on the iCasualties website). The number of Afghan security personnel and civilians killed in Kandahar and Helmand by the Taliban during that timeframe is not available, but is likely in the thousands.

Despite this, Kirby doubles down and says Guantanamo should be closed, which means even more jihadists will be freed.

Q: After seeing such example, like former Guantanamo detainee who was released and went back to the — to work with the Taliban, is the Pentagon still convinced that Guantanamo should be closed?REAR ADM. KIRBY: Yes. The Pentagon’s position is that the detainee facility should be closed. Secretary Hagel has made that clear on any number of occasions. There’s no change to that.

 

Categories: Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, GITMO, Hagel, Human rights, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Obama, Obama administration, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S. Military
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U.S. Military Not Taught Ideology of Islamic Jihad, ‘Our Nation Is In Great Peril,’ Says CSP

January 17, 2015

U.S. Military Not Taught Ideology of Islamic Jihad, ‘Our Nation Is In Great Peril,’ Says CSP, CNS News, Penny Starr, January 16, 2015

(The pending release of the report was noted here. Released today, it is in PDF format and 74 pages in length. It should be interesting reading. — DM)

(CNSNews.com) – Center for Security Policy (CSP) official Tommy Waller, who fought against Islamic jihadists “on their turf” in Afghanistan and elsewhere, said his military training did not include instruction in the ideology of the enemy, a deliberate omission that puts America in “great peril.”

Tommy WalkerTommy Waller, director of state outreach for the Center for Security Policy.

Waller, a Marine Reserve major, speaking via Skype at the National Press Club on Jan. 16, said he was speaking as an employee of the CSP, a conservative national security group in Washington, D.C., which released that day a new report, The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement.

The plan, designed by 16 experts on counter-terrorism, intelligence, the military and national security, is based on President Ronald Reagan’s plan to defeat the Communist Soviet Union.

The Secure Freedom Strategy explains that Muslims who adhere to Sharia law are behind the global jihad movement and the deadly attacks around the world on innocent people of all faiths, including other Muslims.

Waller, who is CSP’s director of state outreach, said it was his hope that the strategy can help defeat that enemy. His full remarks are reproduced below:

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, the first thing I have to tell you is that I’m addressing you as Tommy Waller, an employee of the Center for Security Policy and not as Major Waller, a commissioned officer in the Reserve component of the Marine Corps.

“Now, why is it that I have to make that distinction? Well, it saddens me to say that if I were currently in an active duty I would have to refrain from speaking about factual information about this ideology – Sharia — the very ideology that threatens our way of life because my words might be offensive.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I took an oath to the Constitution of the United States to defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic and when those that take an oath cannot be taught about the threat to our Constitution, which is both foreign and domestic, our nation is in great peril.

“Now I’ve deployed as an active duty Marine to numerous theaters of operations. I’ve faced the global jihad movement on their turf. And yet I was never taught what animated those Jihadists.

Frank GafneyFrank Gafney, president of the Center for Security Policy. (Photo: CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

“Still to this day, if you attend a formal military school, you’ll find that there’s never mention of the ideology that animates our enemies.

“We speak in terms like violent extremist organizations. We never nail down the facts about what animates these organizations or, as Clare mentioned, individuals that subscribe to the ideology.

“I recently attended a school that was nearly a year long – a formal military school for commissioned officers at the field grade level. And in 10-plus months we covered information operations for less than an hour and our case study was the Communist insurgency and how we conducted propaganda operations against it in Vietnam.

“It’s mind-boggling to me how our enemies maintain absolute information dominance but it makes sense if that’s the curriculum that we have in our military’s formal schools.

“I’ve been up until this point, shocked and saddened by – and almost bewildered – by the absence void in factual analysis of our enemy on behalf of the national security community and what we face today is tantamount to the military of the Cold War being prevented from studying Communism. Being prevented from studying the ideology that they faced on the battlefield.

“And so it’s my sincere hope that my generation and those that follow it can recover the courage that our previous generation had to study the ideology of the enemy.

ISIL-militantsMembers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

I have to say that the ‘Secure Freedom Strategy’ gives me hope. It’s the first step in our generation doing a major course correction.

“And my personal request on behalf of the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice to that Constitution – in defense of that Constitution – on behalf of them, my request is that we embrace this strategy because we owe it to the generations that went before us and those that will follow us.”

At Waller’s request, the press conference ended with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Members of the “Tiger Team” include Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin; Clare Lopez, former Operations Officer in the CIA’s Clandestine Service and senior vice president for research and analysis at the CSP; Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons, former Commander–in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and father of the Navy Red Cell counterterrorism unit and chairman of CSP’s military committee; Dr. J. Michael Waller, expert on psychological warfare, propaganda and influence operations and a senior fellow at CSP; and Frank Gaffney, former acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and the president of CSP.

You can see read the report here.

Categories: Islam, U.S. Military
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Exclusive: ISIS Gaining Ground in Syria, Despite U.S. Strikes

January 15, 2015

Exclusive: ISIS Gaining Ground in Syria, Despite U.S. Strikes, The Daily Beast, January 15, 2015

1421322880562.cachedHosam Katan/Reuters

American jets are pounding Syria. But ISIS is taking key terrain—and putting more and more people under its black banners.

ISIS continues to gain substantial ground in Syria, despite nearly 800 airstrikes in the American-led campaign to break its grip there.At least one-third of the country’s territory is now under ISIS influence, with recent gains in rural areas that can serve as a conduit to major cities that the so-called Islamic State hopes to eventually claim as part of its caliphate. Meanwhile, the Islamic extremist group does not appear to have suffered any major ground losses since the strikes began. The result is a net ground gain for ISIS, according to information compiled by two groups with on-the-ground sources.In Syria, ISIS “has not any lost any key terrain,” Jennifer Cafarella, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War who studies the Syrian conflict, explained to The Daily Beast.Even U.S. military officials privately conceded to The Daily Beast that ISIS has gained ground in some areas, even as the Pentagon claims its seized territory elsewhere, largely around the northern city of Kobani. That’s been the focus of the U.S.-led campaign, and ISIS has not been able to take the town, despite its best efforts.Other than that, they are short on specifics.

1421269431538.cachedClick to Enlarge (Coalition For a Democratic Syria)

“Yes, they have gained some ground. But we have stopped their momentum,” one Pentagon official told The Daily Beast.

A map developed by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria (CDS), a Syrian-American opposition umbrella group, shows that ISIS has nearly doubled the amount of territory it controls since airstrikes began last year.

“Assessing the map, ISIS has almost doubled its territorial control in Syria. But more importantly, the number of people who now live under ISIS control has also increased substantially,” CDS political adviser Mouaz Moustafa said.

With the fall of that much territory into ISIS hands, Syrians who once lived in ungoverned or rebel held areas are now under ISIS’s grip. Of course, in an irregular war like this one, control of people is far more important than control of territory. In that regard, too, things appear to be going in the wrong direction.

In the first two months following American airstrikes, about a million Syrians who had previously lived in areas controlled by moderates now lived in areas controlled by extremist groups al Nusra or ISIS, according to CDS, citing conversations with European diplomats who support the Syrian opposition.

The area of ISIS’s expansion includes large segments of the Homs Desert, which begins far south of the contested northern city of Aleppo. It stretches below the presumed capital of ISIS in Syria, Raqqa, and all the way to the Iraqi border. It is largely rural and not an area that ISIS has had to fight for. Rather the group took control of uncontested parts of the countryside while skirting key regime strongholds in the area, Cafarella said.

But that does not mean that land is not valuable to ISIS. That newly acquired terrain allows ISIS troops to target and threaten more valuable areas, Cafarella said.

Since the U.S. campaign began in August, “there are little buds of ISIS control in eastern Homs, al Qalamoun [which borders northern Lebanon], and southern Damascus that do appear to be growing because of that freedom of operation that can connect those western cells to key ISIS terrains in Raqqa and Deir ez Zour” in northern and eastern Syria.

Moustafa, the CDS political adviser, blamed ISIS territorial gains on a lack of “strategic coordination between coalition strikes and moderate forces inside Syria, meaning that the Free Syrian Army and aligned groups cannot use the strikes to retake territory.” Further, Moustafa told The Daily Beast, coalition strikes have given other extremist groups sympathy for ISIS.

One frustration of the Syrian opposition groups is that the bombing campaign has been focused at the heart of ISIS controlled territory, rather than at the front lines, where ISIS territorial gains could be pushed back.

“The coalition strikes seem similar to drone campaigns in Yemen or Pakistan, targeting only leadership. The front-line strength of ISIS has undoubtedly increased even as some of these targeted strikes take out mid-level individual leaders,” Moustafa said.

As of Sunday, the U.S. and its coalition partners had conducted 790 airstrikes in Syria, according to Pentagon statistics. In all, the U.S. has spent $1.2 billion on its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

In its public comments, the U.S. military has said repeatedly the effort against ISIS is on the right track. However it often does this by conflating its war in Iraq and Syria. Ask a question about what is happening in Syria, and U.S. officials will stress that ISIS has not gained ground in Iraq. Ask if the U.S. effort is working in Syria, and the military often points to the fact that ISIS has failed to take control of Kobani.

During a Jan. 6 press briefing, for example, when a reporter asked “where ISIS’s relative strength is right now,” Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby replied by talking exclusively about the U.S. effort in Iraq, naming cities were the military believed ISIS’s momentum has been “halted.”

When the reporter pressed for an answer on what was happening in Syria, Kirby struggled, saying, “I couldn’t give you a—a specific point at which, you know, we believe, well geez, we’ve halted their momentum. It—it’s come slowly, in various stages. But I think it’s safe to say that over the last three to four weeks, we—we’ve been confident that that momentum has largely been blunted.”

On Friday, Kirby proclaimed that ISIS had lost 700 square kilometers since the campaign began—over half the size of New York City or about four times the size of the District of Columbia. But the Pentagon spokesman could not say what percentage that area marked of total ISIS-controlled land. Nor could he say if that loss was in Iraq, Syria, or combined in both nations. As Kirby asserted: “I’m frankly not sure how relevant that is. I mean, it’s—they have less ground now than they did before. They’re trying to defend what ground that they have. They’re not going on the offense much, and they’re really trying to preserve their own oxygen.”

1421269455425.cachedClick to Enlarge (Coalition For a Democratic Syria)

The American military has not been able to take full advantage of the difficulties ISIS is facing. A worldwide drop in oil prices threatens the recently declared state’s ability to raise revenue, while declining standards in public services, distribution of aid, and provision of electricity threaten to undercut the group’s support across the territories it controls. ISIS has also not been able to follow through on its military quest to challenge the Iraqi government all the way to Baghdad.

The U.S. military stressed it is waging an “Iraq first” war, that is focused on eliminating ISIS from that country first. There, the U.S. can turn to Iraqi troops on the ground to assess its efforts. But there is no equivalent resource on the ground in Syria. Perhaps because of that, the U.S. military has offered a far more detailed assessment of the air campaign in Iraq than the one in Syria.

The Combined Joint Task Force in charge of the American air campaign refused to answer a Daily Beast query about ISIS gains in Syria, even as it striking targets there. U.S. Central Command replied, “As a matter of policy we do not discuss intelligence issues.”

Information on the maps:

The maps provided by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria show the areas controlled by moderate Syrian rebels, the Syrian regime, ISIS, Syrian al Qaeda affiliate al Nusra, as well as territories contested by these groups. The maps were developed by a field team from the Coalition for a Democratic Syria (CDS), an umbrella group of Syrian American organizations. The maps were sourced through on-the-ground networks including civilian councils, humanitarian organizations, armed actors, and media monitoring of independent Syrian channels.

Categories: Airstrikes, Coalition, Department of Defense, Iraq, Islamic State, Moderate rebels, Obama administration, Syria, U.S. Military
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ISIS capture of Jordanian pilot puts US and Jordan in conflicting dilemmas, may be pivotal to anti-terror war

December 25, 2014

ISIS capture of Jordanian pilot puts US and Jordan in conflicting dilemmas, may be pivotal to anti-terror war, DEBKAfile, December 25, 2014

F-16_down_Syria_24.12.14A Jordanian air force F-16 downed over Syria

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources add that Middle East military and aviation control centers are quite sure that the Jordanian warplane was hit by an ISIS missile, while making low passes over the terrorist organization’s Syrian headquarters at Raqqa in violation of the pilot’s orders.

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The US military is going to great lengths to deny any evidence that ISIS shot down the Jordanian Air Force F-16 which came down Wednesday, Dec. 24 over the northern Syrian town of Raqaa. First Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh, aged 27, was the first Arab pilot to be taken prisoner by the Islamic State. The US Central Command statement said: “We can say with certainty that it was an aircraft crash and the plane was not downed by ISIL as was claimed by the terrorist organization.”

This contradicted an earlier statement by the Jordanian Information Minister Mohammad Momani that the plane had crashed after being hit by a ground-air missile. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources add that Middle East military and aviation control centers are quite sure that the Jordanian warplane was hit by an ISIS missile, while making low passes over the terrorist organization’s Syrian headquarters at Raqqa in violation of the pilot’s orders.

The Jordanians are making intense efforts to deter the jihadis from harming 1st Lt. Kasaesbeh.The Hashemite Kingdom’s armed forces warned that “IS and its supporters would be held responsible for the pilot’s safety and his life.”

The pilot belongs to the Bedouin tribe of Bararsha near Kerak in southern Jordan, which boasts several army generals. They and the tribal chiefs are bringing all their influence to bear to obtain his release.

American military is joining the effort to save the Jordanian pilot – from different motives, which are geared more to sustaining the goals and tactics pursued by the US and the coalition in the war on the Islamic State.
Thursday, Central Command chief Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, who is in charge of US and coalition operations in Iraq and Syria, released a long communiqué praising Jordan for its military actions in the battle, adding: “We will not tolerate ISIL’s attempts to misrepresent or exploit this unfortunate aircraft crash for its own purposes.”

The US general’s message was designed to reassure Jordanian Air Force pilots and dissuade them from dropping out of the coalition air campaign for fear of being shot down by an ISIS missile. The three other Arab coalition members, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, must also be kept from quitting.

The share of the four Arab air forces in the war is too weighty to forfeit.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi has not doubt calculated his stake in keeping the Jordanian pilot alive and at risk to scare fellow Arab pilots from continuing to take part in US-led bombing missions against his forces.

Furthermore, the Bararsha, like other South Jordanian Bedouin tribes, is known around the region for producing fierce fighters and their relentless pursuit of blood revenge.

Al Baghdadi may opt to avoid antagonizing them for this reason, as well as in the hope of a tangible benefit: ISIS is already using the smuggling routes of southern Jordan as channels to the groups his organization has planted in Sinai, Egypt and eastern Libya. He may decide to go one better and build an alliance with those very tribes behind the backs of the Americans and Jordan’s Abdullah II.

Such an eventuality would add a new dimension to the war on the Islamist terrorists.

Categories: Foreign policy, Islamic State, Jordan, Middle East, Syria, U.S. Military
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