Matt Lee of the Associated Press at the State Department press briefing. Photo Credit: StateDept.Gov
The State Dept. was caught in yesterday’s press briefing claiming there were not “secret deals” with Iran but admitted that it has no written copy of arrangements it is defending.
Associated Press journalist Matt Lee questioned spokesman Mark Toner at Thursday’s press briefing about many Congressmen’s concerns over IAEA access to Iran’s nuclear sites under the nuclear agreement.
Republican Sen. Bob Corker has said that IAEA director Dr. Yukiya Amano did not accept an invitation to testify at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the deal.
Toner declined to say whether Dr. Amano should testify but added:
There’s [sic] no secret deals, and we heard that expression thrown out constantly over the last couple of days. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The IAEA, which is the one that verifies – will verify this deal, does create arrangements with countries under what’s called the Additional Protocol.
And Under Secretary Sherman has already had a secure briefing with the House leadership talking about this arrangement, and we’ve continued to provide or we will continue to provide those briefings in a classified setting, as needed….
So the perception that this has somehow been – that Congress hasn’t been looped in on this, and what we know about these arrangements is, frankly, incorrect. But they’ve had to take place in a classified setting.
Fine and dandy, but the reasonable assumption is that someone knows about the arrangements.
Lee told the spokesman:
But the notion – you said the notion that Congress hasn’t been looped in, but you haven’t been looped in because you guys haven’t read it.
Toner admitted:
We haven’t received a written copy of it, but we have been briefed on the contents.
And Lee retorted:
So someone with a photographic memory has looked at it and copied everything down in their brain and then repeated it up on the Hill?
Toner fidgeted and explained that “nuclear experts with much bigger degrees than I can ever attain have looked at this and their comfort level with it is good.”
But that does not answer the question, “If there is no secret deal, why isn’t a written version available?
In this Tuesday, July 14, 2015 file photo, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at his Jerusalem office. (AP/Oren Ben Hakoon, File)
The nuclear deal between the West and Iran gives Tehran up to three months to hide illicit nuclear activity in hitherto undeclared locations, and not 24 days as claimed by the accord’s backers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.
If Iran honors the agreement, it will be able to build numerous nuclear weapons with the blessing of the international community, he lamented during a briefing for Israeli diplomatic correspondents in his Jerusalem office.
“The inspections regime is full of holes,” Netanyahu said. “This deal is terrible. It’s preferable to have no deal than this deal.”
Under the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action that the world powers signed with Iran earlier this month, Iran has 24 days before it needs to grant international inspectors access to hitherto undeclared sites they suspect host nuclear activity.
But, Netanyahu said, if no agreement has been reached after that time elapses, the deal says that the complaint is to go to another committee trying to bridge the dispute, which will deal with the issue for another 30 days. If Iran still refuses to let inspectors into the site and the United Nations Security Council is involved, it will take another 30 days before any action is taken, the prime minister said.
“It could take a total of three months,” Netanyahu said.
During an in-depth briefing, interrupted by a phone call during which Netanyahu discussed the Iran deal and other regional issues with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the prime minister vociferously attacked the deal, saying it endangers Israel’s existence.
“In another 10 to 15 years, Iran will become a nuclear threshold country with the potential to build nuclear weapons — with permission and authorization,” he said.
If US Congress rejects the deal, “it will avert the greatest danger of Iran becoming a legitimate nuclear threshold power in 10 years,” Netanyahu added.
The opposition to the deal is growing steadily, he said. “With every passing day there are more and more opponents to this deal. The more a person learns about the agreement, the more he opposes it,” Netanyahu said.
He said that Sunni Arab states in the region shared his concerns about the pact.
“Most Sunni Arab states don’t just criticize the deal, they fully reject it. They are outraged by the agreement,” he said. “There are very concrete threats on our existence. We’re not the only ones who understand that. Others understand it too.”
The comments seemed to contradict US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who earlier this month said Saudi Arabia had offered some support for the accord. In the UN Security Council, Jordan, another Sunni Arab state, voted for the deal.
The prime minister pointed to a critical article by Leon Wieseltier, a frequent critic of Netanyahu’s policies, as proof that Jews and Americans were united in opposition to the deal.
“It shows that you don’t have to be right wing Jew to criticize this agreement. You also don’t have to be a Jew at all to reject this agreement.”
Recent polling has shown Americans, as well as American Jews, split on whether to support the deal. Religious Jews are most likely to oppose the agreement, according to most surveys.
Netanyahu also said that Israel is not privy to all the content of the secret supplements of the agreement signed by Iran and the world powers. “We didn’t receive all the parts of the deal,” he said, refusing to elaborate.
On Wednesday, national security adviser Yossi Cohen told Knesset lawmakers that Israel was being kept in the dark on the annexes.
“Contrary to promises, Israel has not yet received all the written supplements to the agreement signed between Iran and the world powers,” Cohen, a former deputy head of the Mossad, told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The nuclear deal is currently being weighed by Congress, which will likely vote on whether to support it in September.
Netanyahu has indicated he will lobby against the deal in the US, even at the cost of ruffling feathers with the White House.
During the talk with Putin, the Russian president said the agreement “provided reliable guarantees” that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, according to the Kremlin.
Putin said that the agreement would help secure nuclear non-proliferation and “have a positive impact on security and stability in the Middle East.”
The ISIS is preparing to attack India to provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the US, according to an internal recruitment document of the much-feared group which also seeks to unite the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army.
An investigative story published yesterday by the USA Today and reported by American Media Institute refers to a 32- page Urdu document obtained from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani Taliban.
“The document warns that ‘preparations’ for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America,” the report said.
“Even if the US tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the ummah (Muslims) will be united, resulting in the final battle,” it added.
The document, according to the report, was independently translated into English by a Harvard scholar and verified by several serving and retired intelligence officials.
Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA official and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said striking in India would magnify the ISIS’ stature and threaten the stability of the region.
“Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists,” he was quoted as saying.
The undated document is titled ‘A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate, The Caliphate According to the Prophet.’
It seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army, the daily said.
“It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaeda to join the group and says the Islamic State’s leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a ‘caliphate’,” it said.
Aware of the ISIS’ presence in Afghanistan, the White House said it is closely monitoring the situation.
ISIS’ presence and its threat perception was also discussed in the past two months between senior US and Pakistan officials.
“Instead of wasting energy in a direct confrontation with the US, we should focus on an armed uprising in the Arab world for the establishment of the caliphate,” the document said.
The document was reviewed by three US intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the ISIS, USA Today added.
Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator in nuclear talks said that under the terms of the recently inked accord, the Islamic Republic is permitted to violate current embargoes on the shipment of arms and construction of missiles, according to recent comments made before Iran’s parliament.
Zarif, who spoke to the country’s parliament about the terms of the nuclear deal, also bragged that the finalization of the accord “puts the Zionist Regime in an irrecoverable danger,” according to an independent translation of his Persian language remarks provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
Zarif insisted that “violating the arms and missiles embargo” placed on Iran by the United Nations “does not violate the nuclear agreement.”
U.S. officials and analysts have become increasingly concerned about portions of the deal that will unilaterally lift current restrictions on Iran’s importation and exportation of weapons, as well as its missile construction programs.
While these restrictions still apply, they would be completely lifted in five to eight years under the agreement.
Zarif also took aim at Israel in his remarks, claiming that the deal has isolated Israel as it never has been before.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to kill himself if it helps to stop this nuclear agreement because this agreement puts the Zionist regime in an irrecoverable danger,” Zarif was reported as saying. “The abominable Zionist Regime has never been so isolated among its allies.”
The recent approval of the deal by the United Nations Security Council has solidified Iran’s right to enrich and operate a nuclear program, Zarif went on to say.
“Our biggest accomplishment is that the U.N. Security Council has endorsed our enrichment, this has never happened in the last 70 years,” Zarif said.
“Permit me not to mention the names, but many countries close to the U.S. have agreed to relinquish their enrichment rights, they all envy us today,” he added.
US president says such outrageous rhetoric has become commonplace among Republican politicians.
US President Barack Obama on Monday condemned rhetoric about the Iran deal from leading members of the Republican party, including GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, who has drawn criticism for comparing the accord to the Holocaust.
Huckabee called Barack Obama “feckless” and “naive” in an interview with Breitbart News on Saturday, adding that by signing the deal the President “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”
Speaking at a press conference in Ethiopia on Monday, Obama said that such “outrageous attacks” have become “all too commonplace” among Republican politicians.
The US president described Huckabee’s comments as “part of just a general pattern we have seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.”
Huckabee has come under fire from both Jewish groups and the Democratic party after making the comparison between the Holocaust and the Iran deal.
However the Republican presidential candidate refused to back down, continuing to make his case against the Iran deal on Twitter.
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 26, 2015
He tweeted a series of messages Sunday with quotes from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in which they threaten Israel with a holocaust.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iranian Martyr Foundation rep: “We have manufactured missiles that allow us…to replace Israel…with a big holocaust”
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 27, 2015
“It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.” – Ayatollah Khamenei http://t.co/tMBfHPHZk2
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 27, 2015
“If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” – Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 27, 2015
Obama, speaking in Ethiopia during a tour of African nations, said the majority of the world’s nuclear scientists and non-proliferation experts backed the July 14 accord, indicating it was the best way to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
“There is a reason why 99 percent of the world thinks it’s a good deal — it’s because it’s a good deal,” Obama said during a joint press conference with Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn in the capital Addis Ababa.
“The good news is that I’ve not yet heard a factual argument on other side that holds up to scrutiny,” he added.
Turkish journalist: “Turkey prefers ISIS to the Kurds”
In an exclusive interview with JerusalemOnline, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut described how the Turkish state systematically persecutes the Kurds while at the same time assisting ISIS and other jihadist terror groups.
In an exclusive interview with JerusalemOnline, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut, who writes for the Gatestone Institute, proclaimed that Turkey prefers the ISIS terror organization to the Kurds: “In a television interview on 28 December, 2012, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the government was in negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, in order to resolve the Kurdish issue. But at the same time, there are also several reports and witness accounts that Turkey has aided the rise of ISIS, enabling the flow of funds and fighters to support it.”
According to Bulut, the establishment of Turkey as a state was based upon the denial of the Kurds identity: “After the state was founded in 1923, the name of the Kurdish land, Kurdistan, the Kurdish language and everything else related to the Kurdish existence was denied. According to the founding ideology of the state, there were no Kurds or Kurdish language. So Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders became a sub-colony without even borders or a name. Kurds have been exposed to numerous massacres and extrajudicial murders for more than 90 years. As a result of these repressive and assimilationist policies, many Kurds have been assimilated into Turkishness but many others have resisted and still demand their national rights.”
Bulut noted that it has been more than 90 years since the establishment of the Turkish Republic but the Kurds within the country are still struggling for political recognition and the Turkish government wants to stop the spread of this desire for national rights at all costs. “The establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq was a huge step in the liberation of Kurdistan,” Bulut noted. “Now Syrian Kurdistan is on the rise; Kurdish male and female defenders there are struggling for their freedom. So Turkey wants to stop this new development. And ISIS is the name of their new plan that they apply to stop the liberation of Kurdistan and to exterminate the Kurds – as much as possible.”
In order to highlight this, Bulut stressed that on July 20th, there was a bomb attack in the Kurdish town of Suruc that killed 32 people during a meeting to discuss reconstruction efforts in Kobane and Turkish fighter jets recently bombed Qandil where the PKK was operating. She also noted that scores of Kurds have been arrested within Turkey this week: “These developments do not signal a positive change in Turkish state policy towards the Kurds.”
In an another instance, Kurds were persecuted by the Turkish state for taking a stand against ISIS: “Esra Yakar, a 5th-year Kurdish student at the Medical School of Dicle University in Diyarbakir, went to the Kurdish province of Kobani a few months ago as a volunteer doctor to help treat Kurds wounded in the fighting with ISIS terrorists. In December 2014, she suffered heavy wounds to her head and right eye during an attack by ISIS. Her referral to a hospital for advanced examination and treatment in Turkey was delayed. In the meantime, she lost her right eye. And while still under medical treatment, she was arrested and jailed in the Sincan prison in Ankara for being a terrorist.”
However, Bulut noted that ISIS terrorists face no such obstacles for receiving medical treatment in Turkey: “Emrah Cakan, a Turkish-born ISIS commander wounded in Syria, got medical treatment at the university hospital in Turkey’s Denizli province in March. As it is evident from this instance and many others, aiding ISIS terrorists while attacking or not helping Kurds has paved the way for the crimes committed by ISIS and other jihadist armies there.”
While the Kurds are being systematically oppressed within Turkey, Bulut noted that Turkey has not only economic relations with jihadist groups but also political relations with them as well: “For Islamic armies to advance and invade places today, they do need fighters as well as logistics and military support. People who believe in Islamic jihad become the fighters – or murderers and rapists – of ISIS and other Islamist armies. But the logistics and military support is mostly provided by the regional states – including Turkey.”
This support is used in order to oppress the Kurds: “ISIS mostly operates in all parts of Kurdistan, threatening the security of all Kurds in the region and even slaughtering or kidnapping and selling them as they did to the Yazidi Kurds in the Shengal region in August 2014. And this seems to be the only concrete outcome of the so-called resolution process in Turkey. No Kurdish rights have been recognized officially and Kurdish massacres are still happening.”
“Subjugating Kurds has been one of the primary policies of Turkey since 1920s,” Bulut emphasized. “A democratic state would choose to grant political and cultural rights to indigenous Kurds but Turkish supremacism, Kurdish-hatred and anti-Kurdish bigotry is so intense in Turkey that Turkey does not seem to aim to achieve real and sustainable peace with the Kurds. And because of that, the Turkish state seems to prefer even a genocidal group like ISIS to the Kurds.”
2004 satellite image of the military complex at Parchin, Iran. (AP/DigitalGlobe-Institute for Science and International Security)
WASHINGTON — As top administration officials prepared for what will be their first day of unclassified testimony in Congress Thursday in support of the Iran nuclear deal, a very public row erupted Wednesday over whether the administration could — and would — disclose what some lawmakers called the “secret side deals” of the agreement.
Even as the White House deployed Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to Capitol Hill for a series of classified briefings Wednesday meant to shore up support for the Iran deal in a dubious legislature, lawmakers demanded more details on agreements reached between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran with the consent of the P5+1 group of world powers. Those agreements were not previously revealed to Congress as part of the 60-day review process required under law.
One day after Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Mike Pompeo said that an IAEA official in Vienna had told them about the agreements with Iran, administration officials denied these constituted “secret side agreements” that were kept out of the nuclear agreement presented to Congress for review.
“There’s no side deals, there’s no secret deals, between Iran and the IAEA, that the P5+1 has not been briefed on in detail. These kinds of technical arrangements with the IAEA are a matter of standard practice, that they’re not released publicly or to other states, but our experts are familiar and comfortable with the contents, which we would be happy to discuss with Congress in a classified setting,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said during his daily press briefing.
Tom Cotton (Courtesy United States Congress)
Kirby explained that the so-called “side deals” involved “issues between Iran and the IAEA,” referring to them as “technical agreements” and emphasizing that such agreements “are never shared outside the state in question in the IAEA.” At the same time, the US had been briefed on the agreements and administration officials were willing to discuss them with lawmakers.
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice during an interview with Charlie Rose on the Public Broadcasting Service, February 24, 2015. (screen capture/YouTube/Charlie Rose)
National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Wednesday confirmed the existence of the side agreements, telling reporters that they dealt with Iran’s documentation of previous military dimensions of its nuclear program, a key aspect of intelligence about the program that enabled a better assessment of its scope and purpose.
Although Rice claimed that the arrangements between the IAEA and Iran were “no secret,” the firestorm began when Cotton and Pompeo, following a meeting in Vienna Friday with representatives of the IAEA, said officials from the watchdog group had told them the agreements would remain secret.
“The agency conveyed to the lawmakers that two side deals made between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will remain secret and will not be shared with other nations, with Congress, or with the public,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), left, shakes hands with ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) during a committee markup meeting on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran on April 14, 2015. (JTA/Win McNamee/Getty Images)
One of the agreements covers inspection of the Parchin military complex, a site that the IAEA suspects was being used for experiments related to weaponization of Iran’s nuclear technology. The second details how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues in determining the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, Cotton and Pompeo said.
Although Rice and Kirby claimed that US negotiators were familiar with the contents of the IAEA-Iran agreements, Cotton and Pompeo said that they were told that the agreements would not be released even to the P5+1 member states who negotiated the broader deal.
Under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act passed earlier this year, the administration is required to provide Congress with all documents related to the agreement, including “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.”
On Wednesday, the author of the law, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican, teamed up with Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat, to write their second letter to the administration in as many weeks expressing concern over whether it had adhered to the law’s requirements.
This time, the bipartisan duo reportedly requested that Kerry provide them any available documents related to the IAEA-Iran agreements.
Cardin is one of many Democratic senators who have yet to say whether they will support or oppose the deal with Iran when it comes to key Senate and House votes on deal-killing legislation that will likely be placed before Congress within the allotted 60 days. The administration needs to win over at least 34 senators or 146 House members to ensure President Barack Obama’s veto of any such legislation cannot be overturned.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, an announced supporter of the deal, has expressed optimism that the White House can prevail, and Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, declared his support for the agreement this week.
Best speech of the night: Judging by how widely it is being shared on Facebook, this was the winner, from former U.S. Rep. Allen West.
Quote:
I want President Barack Obama to know one thing: You may say that you have done something that no one else has ever done. You know why no one else has ever done it? ‘Cause it’s a damn stupid thing that you just did.
A close second–Caroline Glick’s speech, which brought tears to more than a few eyes:
8:30 p.m. EDT: The rally finally ends. As the speakers continued, a full hour past the scheduled end of the rally, so did the enthusiasm and intensity.
Juan Hinojosa traveled from Brooklyn to participate in the rally. He said, “As an American I am disgusted with President Obama, the Democratic Party and the weak GOP in Congress. They are a disgrace to this nation and I cannot wait until 2016 when Obama’s gone.”
Stop Iran Rally (Breitbart News)
7:30 p.m.EDT: The rally, stretching six blocks long and over 10,000 strong, was due to end at 7:30, but continues with a roster of speakers, including Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), and many others.
7:10 p.m. EDT: Conservative Jerusalem Post columnist (and occasional Breitbart News contributor) Caroline Glick gives a fiery speech attacking the Iran deal: “This deal gives the mullahs $150 billion as a signing bonus…that’s real money that you’re putting the hands of murderers!”
She warns that even if Iran abides by the agreement, “in ten years’ time it can build nuclear weapons at will.” She calls on Sen. Schumer and several of New York’s Democratic U.S. Representatives.
“You know what to do, unless you have no honor and no shame….You will not only vote against this deal, you will talk to all of your friends in the Democratic Party…you will tell them you can claim to care about the security of the United States of America and support this deal.”
She concludes: “Tell your lawmakers. Tell your friends. Tell the President of the United States to kill this deal. To preserve life, to preserve liberty, to preserve freedom, this deal must be killed.
“Thank you, God bless America, Am Israel Chai.”
6:55 p.m. EDT: Advocates for the American captives, and for victims of Iranian-backed terror, take the stage. The anger against Obama is severe: “You couldn’t even pronounce their names properly….You, Mr. President, have become our national nightmare.”
The organizer takes the stage as well to lead chants: “Where is Chuck? Kill this deal! Where is Chuck? Kill this deal!”
6:45 p.m. EDT: Former CIA director James Woolsey, another Democrat, criticizes the Obama administration for ignoring the pro-democracy protests in 2009, and focuses his remarks on the totalitarian nature of the Iranian regime.
6:35 p.m. EDT: Alan Dershowitz, noted Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, comes to the stage. He says that it is important that opposition to the Iran deal remain bipartisan: “It is a bad deal for Demcorats. It is a bad deal for liberals. I am here opposing this deal as a liberal Democrat.”
Dershowitz attacks the way in which the deal is being handled, with democracy being “ignored” as the Obama administration circumventing Congress. “That is not the way democracy should operate. This deal is essentially a treaty. It binds the United States in a multi-national way. This treaty should be submitted to the Senate for two-thirds approval. But the president won’t do that.”
Dershowitz criticizes Obama for taking the military option “off the table,” which allowed Iran “to negotiate with us as equals,” which is how the deal that resulted was so good for Iran and so bad for everyone else.
He warns that Benjamin Netanyahu will take “whatever actions” he has to take to stop Iran. The crowd cheers.
6:20 p.m. EDT: Organizers estimate attendance at the Stop Iran Rally at over 10,000 in Times Square.
The rally hears from presidential candidate and former New York governor George Pataki, who led the state during 9/11.
He takes a dig at Hillary Clinton: “She has embraced this agreement…Hillary, let me tell you one thing: America does not need as our next president another appeaser-in-chief.”
6:10 p.m. EDT: Organizer Jeffrey Wiesenfeld continues the focus on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), “Where are you, Chuck?” He tells the crowd about White House efforts to twist the arms of wavering Democrats, warning that the Obama administration will give a green light to “pro-Israel” Democrats to vote against the bill once they have enough votes in hand to pass it.
“This is our civil rights! Our right to live! It will not be enough if those Congress members say they are opposing the bill
because they got permission from Valerie Jarrett.”
He warns Schumer to round up votes against the bill, or “we will throw you the hell out.” The crowd roars. He offers Schumer “a chance for redemption” if he stands up to Obama and rallies opposition to the deal. “Chuck, this is your moment! This is your time to make the decision.”
5:50 p.m. EDT: Fox News contributor Monica Crowley offers the most powerful speech of the rally so far: “Everybody who’s here tonight in Times Square wants to save Western Civilization before it’s too late,” she says. “Never again! Seventy years after the Holocaust, have we forgotten already?”
She adds: “Of the countless destructive things President Obama has done, this deal is the most dangerous of all….President Obama says that he can basically do what he wants because ‘he’s got a pen and a phone.’ Well, guess what, Mr. President? We’ve got pens and phones, too.”
Crowley singles out
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
2%
, daring him to lead. She said that Schumer would not be able to get away with voting against the deal once enough votes were secured for its passage.
Finally, Crowley attacks Hillary Clinton, who received a round of boos from the crowd, taking her to task for supporting the Iranian regime while toppling the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak. At a black-tie dinner in Bahrain, Crowley says, “She [Clinton] literally chased the Iranian foreign minister around the room, and got blown off by the Iranian foreign minister, not once, but twice.”
— Jonathan Margulis (@eliyahumargulis) July 22, 2015
5:40 p.m. EDT: The rally is well under way, kicking off with a speech by prominent publisher and editor Mort Zuckerman. His address is heavy on detail, but mentions of the Iranian regime and Secretary of State John Kerry draw loud boos from the crowd, now apparently several thousand strong.
5:00 p.m. EDT: One very important theme at the rally, as Jacob Kornbluh points out in the tweet below, is the central role that New York’s own Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) will play. The self-described “guardian of Israel” has declined to oppose the Obama administration in recent battles, but is said to be carefully weighing his response to the Iran deal. The entire rally could be described as a giant message to Schumer, because if he opposes the deal, other Democrats will follow (and vice versa).
4:45 p.m. EDT: Demonstrators are arriving in significant numbers, along with national media. Fox News devoted a segment to the rally, and their cameras are there to record the action.
One of the main organizations behind the protest, StandWithUs, has tweeted a list of 19 key U.S. Senators, all Democrats, that it is asking the public to contact.
If just 13 Democrats join Republicans in opposing the deal, they will override a presidential veto and the deal will fail (assuming a similar two-thirds majority can be assembled in the House).
***
The event was coordinated by the Jewish Rapid Response Coalition, a grassroots organization concerned with the potential for a nuclear-armed Iranian regime.Over 100 partners are sponsoring the rally.
Other rallies are scheduled this week and next nationwide. A partial list is here.
The idea for the Stop Iran Rally came to fruition following the nuclear accord agreed to by the P5+1 world powers (US, UK, Germany, France, China, Russia) and the Iranian regime. Organizers expect that thousands of concerned Americans will be at the Times Square rally.
Featured speakers will include:
Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post Columnist)
Alan Dershowitz (Harvard Law Professor)
George Pataki (Fmr. Gov. of New York and Current Republican Candidate For President)
Monica Crowley (Political Commentator)
James Woolsey (Fmr. Director of the Central Intelligence Agency)
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)
88%
Former Congressman Allen West (R-FL)
Richard Kemp (Fmr. Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan)
Breitbart News will be there with timely interviews from the major players at the event.
US freed top Iranian scientist as part of secret talks ahead of Geneva deal’
Mojtaba Atarodi, arrested in California for attempting to acquire equipment for Iran’s military-nuclear programs, was released in April as part of back channel talks, Times of Israel told. The contacts, mediated in Oman for years by close colleague of the Sultan, have seen a series of US-Iran prisoner releases, and there may be more to come
Iranian scientist Mojtaba Atarodi speaks to journalists, upon his arrival at the Imam Khomeini airport outside Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 27 (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)
The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month’s interim deal in Geneva on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told.
In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs.
American and Iranian officials have been meeting secretly in Oman on and off for years, according to a respected Israeli intelligence analyst, Ronen Solomon. And in the past three years as a consequence of those talks, Iran released three American prisoners, all via Oman, and the US responded in kind. Then, most critically, in April, when the back channel was reactivated in advance of the Geneva P5+1 meetings, the US released a fourth Iranian prisoner, high-ranking Iranian scientist Atarodi, who was arrested in California on charges that remain sealed but relate to his attempt to acquire what are known as dual-use technologies, or equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs. Iran has not reciprocated for that latest release.
Solomon, an independent intelligence analyst (who in 2009 revealed the crucial role played by German Federal Intelligence Service officer Gerhard Conrad in the negotiations that led to the 2011 Gilad Shalit Israel-Hamas prisoner deal), has been following the US-Iran meetings in Oman for years. Detailing what he termed the “unwritten prisoner exchange deals” agreed over the years in Oman by the US and Iran, Solomon told The Times of Israel that “It’s clear what the Iranians got” with the release of top scientist Atarodi in April. “What’s unclear is what the US got.”
The history of these deals, though, he said, would suggest that in the coming months Iran will release at least one of three US citizens who are currently believed to be in Iranian custody. One of these three is former FBI agent Robert Levinson.
Solomon told The Times of Israel that the interlocutor in the Oman talks is a man named Salem Ben Nasser al Ismaily, who is the executive president of the Omani Center for Investment Promotion and Export Development and a close confidant of the Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
The latter tells the fictional tale of John Wilkinson, a successful American businessman who fails in all of his business endeavors in the Gulf until he meets Sultan, who explains to him, according to the book’s promotional literature, how to forgo his hard-charging Western style and “surrender to very different values rooted in ancient tribal customs and traditions.” Those mores have been central to the murky prisoner swaps surrounding the nuclear negotiations, Solomon said.
Solomon said he identified Ismaily’s role back in September 2010, when Sarah Shourd, an American who apparently inadvertently crossed into Iran while hiking near the Iraqi border, was released, for what were called humanitarian reasons. She was delivered into Ismaily’s hands in Oman and from there was flown to the US — the first release in the series of deals brokered in Oman. One year later, in September 2011, her fiancé and fellow hiker, Shane Bauer, was set free along with their friend, Josh Fattal. The two men were also received at Muscat’s Seeb military airport by Ismaily before being flown back to the US.
The US began reciprocating in August 2012, Solomon said. It freed Shahrzad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian convicted on three counts of weapons trafficking. Next Nosratollah Tajik, a former Iranian ambassador to Jordan — who, like Gholikhan, had been initially apprehended abroad trying to buy night-vision goggles from US agents — was freed after the US opted not to follow up an extradition request it had submitted to the British. Then, in January 2013, Amir Hossein Seirafi was released, also via Oman, having been arrested in Frankfurt and convicted in the US of trying to buy specialized vacuum pumps that could be used in the Iranian nuclear program.
Finally, in April, came the release of Mojtaba Atarodi.
The facts of his case are still shrouded. On December 7, 2011, Atarodi, a faculty member at the prestigious Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Tehran — a US-educated electrical engineer with a heart condition, a green card and a brother living in the US — arrived at LAX and was arrested by US federal officials.
He appeared twice in US federal court in San Francisco and was incarcerated at a federal facility in Dublin, California and then kept under house arrest. The US government cloaked the contents of his indictment and released no statement upon his release. His lawyer, Matthew David Kohn, told The Times of Israel he would like to discuss the case further but that first he had to “make some inquiries” to see what he was allowed to reveal.
In January, shortly after Atarodi’s arrest, his colleagues wrote a letter to the journal Nature, protesting his detention. “We believe holding a distinguished 55-year-old professor in custody is a historical mistake and not commensurate with the image that America strives to extend throughout the world as a bastion of free scientific exchange among schools and academic institutions,” they said.
Solomon, who compiled a profile of Atarodi, believes that the scientist, prior to his arrest, played an important role in Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. Atarodi, he said, has co-authored more than 30 technical articles, mostly related to micro-electric engineering and, in 2011, won the Khwarizmi award for the design of a microchip receiver for digital photos. “That same technology,” he said, “can be used for missile guidance and the analysis of nuclear tests.”
Solomon further noted that the then-Iranian defense minister and former commander of the revolutionary guards, Ahmad Vahidi, attended the prize ceremony and that Professor Massoud Ali-Mahmoudi, an Iranian physics professor who was assassinated in 2010, was an earlier recipient of the prize.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Atarodi came to the US at the behest of the logistics wing of the IRGC [the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps],” Solomon said.
On April 26 Atarodi was flown from the US to Seeb military airbase in Oman, where he met with Ismaily, and onward to Iran. “The release of someone who holds that sort of information and has advanced strategic projects in Iran is a prize,” Solomon said. The US, said Solomon, must have already received something in return or will do so in the future.
Thus far, US-Iran prisoner swaps have been conducted in a manner utterly distinct from the old Cold War rituals, in which, as was the case with Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky, spies or prisoners from either side of the Iron Curtain walked across Berlin’s old Glienicke Bridge toward their respective home countries. Instead, with Iran claiming it knows nothing about the whereabouts of former FBI agent Levinson, for instance, and the US eager to show that it will not barter with hostage-takers, the deals have taken the form of a delayed quid pro quo.
There are currently three US nationals — Levinson, Saeed Abedini, and Amir Hekmati — still believed to be held in Iran.
US President Barak Obama raised the issue of the imprisoned Americans in his historic September phone call to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Tony Blinken, told CNN that aside from the nuclear program it was the only other issue that was brought up in the call.
The interim deal in Geneva did not include any reference to prisoner dealings. Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN, “you’ve got to decide how much you’re going to try to accomplish, and just tackling all the dimensions of the nuclear agreement is ambition enough.” A spokeswoman for the National Security Council added that the “talks focused exclusively on nuclear issues.”
The omission prompted the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, who is representing Pastor Saeed Abedini’s wife Naghmeh, to charge Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry with turning their backs on an American citizen. On the center’s website, he called the decision “outrageous and a betrayal” and said it sends the message that “Americans are expendable.”
Abedini, who was born in Iran and later converted to Christianity, was arrested earlier this year in Iran for what would seem was strictly Christian charity work and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was recently transferred from Evin Prison, a notorious jail for political prisoners in Tehran, Sukelow wrote in a letter to Kerry, “to the even more notorious and brutal Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj.”
Amir Hekmati, a 31-year-old former Marine from Flint, Michigan, who allegedly obtained permission to visit his grandmother in Iran in 2011, was charged with espionage and sentenced to death in 2012. In September, Hekmati managed to smuggle a letter out of prison. Published in the Guardian, it contended that his filmed admission of guilt had been coerced and that his arrest “is part of a propaganda and hostage-taking effort by Iranian intelligence to secure the release of Iranians abroad being held on security-related charges.”
Levinson, a 65-year-old veteran of the FBI, was last seen on March 9, 2007, on Kish Island, Iran. According to Solomon, Levinson was stationed in Dubai at the time as part of a US task force comprised of former officers operating in the United Arab Emirates, training officials there to combat weapons trafficking, and was tempted to come to Kish for a meeting.
The last person he is known to have had contact with, and with whom he shared a room the night before his abduction, according to a Reuters article from 2007, is Dawud Salahuddin, an American convert to Islam, who is wanted in the US for murder. According to a New Yorker profile of the Long Island-born Salahuddin, he showed up at the home of Ali Akbar Tabatabai’s Bethseda, Maryland door in July 1980, dressed as a mailman, and shot Tabatabai, a Shah supporter, three times in the abdomen, killing him. From there he fled to Canada and on to Switzerland and Iran.
Salahuddin has indicated that Levinson had come to Kish to meet with him.
In September, Rouhani denied any knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, he said that, “We don’t know where he is, who he is. He is an American who has disappeared. We have no news of him.”
This is highly doubtful. In 2010 and 2011 Levinson’s family received a video and photographs respectively of him in captivity. In January of this year the AP reported that “despite years of denials,” many US security officials now believe that “Iran’s intelligence service was almost certainly behind the 54-second video and five photographs of Levinson that were emailed anonymously to his family.” The photos and the videos traced back to different addresses in Afghanistan and Pakistan, suggesting, perhaps, that Levinson, the longest-held hostage in US history, was imprisoned in Balochistan, a desert region spanning the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Levinson’s son Dan wrote a column in the Washington Post calling Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif “well-respected men committed to the goodwill of all human beings, regardless of their nationality.”
Several hours later, White House Spokesman Jay Carney published a statement saying that the US government welcomes the assistance “of our international partners” in attempting to bring Levinson home and, he added, “we respectfully ask the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to assist us in securing Mr. Levinson’s health, welfare, and safe return.”
As was the case with the Geneva negotiations, and as is likely happening with the upcoming round of talks regarding Syria, there is good reason to believe, and in this case to hope, that the movements played out under the spotlights of the international stage have been choreographed well in advance, perhaps in the sea-side city of Muscat, under the careful tutelage of Salem Ben Nasser al Ismaily.
Iranian long-range Shahab-1 missiles. Photo Credit: Press TV
Iran’s Foreign Minister buried the Obama administration’s claim that the nuclear agreement will curtail Iran’s ballistic missile production and maintained that the prohibition is in a non-binding appendix of “ObamaDeal.”
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was quoted by the state-controlled Fars News Agency as saying:
Using ballistic missiles doesn’t violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); it is a violation of a paragraph in the annex of the (UN Security Council) Resolution (2231) which is non-binding
This paragraph (of the annex) speaks about missiles with nuclear warheads capability and since we don’t design any of our missiles for carrying nuclear weapons, therefore, this paragraph is not related to us at all.
That is pretty fancy mouth-work, even better than President Barack Obama’s.
Zarif is laughing all the way to the nuclear bank. He admits that the nuclear agreement prohibits ballistic missiles but since it is non-binding, so what?
And it doesn’t make any difference because the missiles are not meant for carrying nukes.
If anyone wants to inspect the military sites to make sure he is telling the truth, he can’t because military sites are off-limits. The Islamic Republic’s international affairs adviser to the regime stressed on Tuesday that Iran will not allow international inspectors visit our military centers and interfere in decisions about the type of Iran’s defensive weapons.”
Velayati added:
Missiles like Shahab, Sejjil and the like, have never been used for carrying nuclear warheads, and therefore, are not subject to the paragraphs of the Vienna draft agreement.
Just take his word for it.
Zarif’s Foreign Ministry reassured everyone who still is listening that “Iran will continue its pioneering role in campaign against terrorism and violent extremism.”
For the record, just in case Congressional Democrats are awake, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told a Senate committee just before ObamaDeal was concluded:
We should under no circumstances relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.
Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who is in Israel to go through the motions that ObamaDeal is good for Israel, told the Senate Armed Services Committee:
We want them [Iran] to continue to be isolated as a military and limited in terms of the kinds of equipment and material they are able to procure.
That is what he wants. That is not what he – and Israel – is going to get.
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