The Al-Sisi Interview

Bret Baer: How do you, and how do America's other Arab allies view U.S. leadership in the region now?

Egyptian President al-Sisi: [Pause] . . . Difficult questions . . . .

Fox News Special Report, Interview of Egypt's President al-Sisi, 9 March 2015

The exchange above tells you everything you need to know about Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East. In the language of diplomacy, that is the equivalent of saying "it is completely screwed." And it is.

The Arab nations are under attack from the Wahhabi purists who dream of a caliphate as well as Iran's mad mullahs who dream of exporting the Khomeinist revolution throughout the Middle East and the world. Everything the Obama administration has done has, on one hand, allowed the growth of the Wahhabist Sunni threat, and on the hand, strengthened the hand of the mad mullahs. Morevover, as to Egypt, Obama has suspended most, if not all, military support, including equipment transfers, since the radical Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi was overthrown in 2013.

According to Fox News, in another portion of the interview, not shown in the portion posted below, President Sisi "addressed the need for what he called a religious "revolution," urging moderate Muslims around the world to "stand up" against terrorists twisting their religion." It bears repeating that President al-Sisi is the only national leader to call for Islam to reform itself, to do away with the doctrines that are today inspiring Islamic terrorism. (You can see his speech to the clerics at al Azhar University here.) President al-Sisi deserves our full support, not the back of Obama's hand.

Here is the portion of the interview already posted to the net:



Update: Much more on President Sisi's attempts to change how Islam is taught in Egypt at American Thinker.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

The National Security Disaster That Is The Obama Administration

According to an article in the WSJ (available around the paywall here), the 2012 raid on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan netted the single greatest collection of intelligence materials since 9/11. At the time -- and since -- the Obama message was that al Qaeda was all but destroyed and that it was time to wind down the war on terror. As Obama said, when two years ago he asked Congress to repeal the Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9/11, this war on terror "must end."

However, the wealth of materials captured in the bin Laden raid told a different story. They told of a vastly expanding threat from al Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISIS, as well as complicity by Iran. Those facts contradicted the Obama administration's narrative, so not only were they kept from the public eye, but in what can only be seen as treasonous insanity, they were walled off from analysis by our intelligence community for at least a year, and have had only limited availability since. Yes, read that last line twice and let it sink in.

After a pitched bureaucratic battle [that lasted about a year], a small team of analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Centcom was given time-limited, read-only access to the documents. The DIA team began producing analyses reflecting what they were seeing in the documents.

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.”

This wasn’t what the Obama White House wanted to hear. So the administration cut off DIA access to the documents and instructed DIA officials to stop producing analyses based on them.

Even this limited glimpse into the broader set of documents revealed the problems with the administration’s claims about al Qaeda. Bin Laden had clear control of al Qaeda and was intimately involved in day-to-day management. More important, given the dramatic growth of the terror threat in the years since, the documents showed that bin Laden had expansion plans. . . .

The WSJ article goes on to argue for making all of the documents from the bin Laden raid publicly available. I'd be satisfied if they'd just make them available to our intel analysts. This incident highlights both how and why Obama's foreign policy has been a complete disaster for our national security. Obama's policies are completely out of touch with reality. Obama values ideology and political power more than he does our national security. And while our nation can recover from the economic disaster that the Obama regime has been, it is far less certain that we can recover from the damage Obama has done to our national security,

In 2008, I wrote a post supporting John McCain's presidential bid on the issue of national security. I argued that McCain could be expected to make national security decisions respecting "Iran, Iraq and terrorism" based on the long term interests of our country while Obama would make such decisions based on ideology and polls. I think history has proven my point with a terrible vengeance, but it is a hollow 'I told you so.' Even I never expected this degree of disaster. As Victor Davis Hanson recently stated, "Obama’s morally confused foreign policy is making the world more dangerous by the day."

To list --

- Obama squandered our victory in Iraq because he, and indeed, the entire left wanted history to consider our war there illegitimate. Iran now increasingly holds sway in Iraq and our true allies in Iraq, the Kurds, are in desperate straits.

- Obama's decision to unilateraly end our military engagement in Afghanistan threatens that country with the same fate as Iraq.

- Obama refused to intercede in Syria at the start of their civil war. While Obama fiddled, pro-Western forces in Syria were overcome by the Sunni radical groups. Syria is now a war for spoils between the Wahabbi radicals of ISIS and the mad mullahs of Iran.

- Obama's war in Libya against Qaddafi, who at least maintained the neutrality of that country, has opened up Libya for exploitation by ISIS and al Qaeda.

- Obama fully supported the Muslim Brotherhood administration of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt as they used authoritarian tactics to reshape that nation into a permanent theocracy. The Obama administration still maintains ties with the Muslim Brotherhood while having a very cool relationship with Egypt's secular leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who, it should be noted, is the only national leader, Islamic or otherwise, to call for a reform of Islam.

- Obama refuses to even acknowledge Islam's role in the Islamic terrorism that is reshaping our world. That refusal to engage in the war of ideas guarantees that Islamic terrorism, perhaps apocalyptic given the ever increasing likelihood of a WMD attack, will never be defeated.

- Obama's entire foreign policy, based on fantasy and, we now know, a simple refusal to acknowlede uncomfortable facts, has allowed for the rise of ISIS, an utterly animalistic group that has now have proclaimed a caliphate in the areas of Syria and Iraq where they hold sway. In addition, the ISIS now hold parts of Libya. The ISIS threatens to destabilize other Sunni countries in the already unstable Middle East.

- Obama, who named as one of his many insane, utopian goals, a world without nuclear weapons, has significantly reduced our nuclear arms capacity That nuclear capacity is what has kept the peace in Europe, the Pax Americana, of the past near seventy years.

- Obama unilaterally changed our national defense posture from being able to fight in two theaters of war simultaneously -- our defense posture since WWII -- to being able to fight in one. This was certainly not based on any threat assessment. It was based on his desire to use more of our nations wealth to fund his domestic programs.

- Obama has made "climate change" one of the top priorities of our nation's defense establishment, diverting significant resources from our nation's defense.

- Under Obama, defense spending has become our nation's lowest priority, and, according to a 2015 Heritage Foundation analysis, our military capabilities are significantly declining. Add to that is Obama's decision to use our military to advance the social policies of radical feminists by allowing women into the combat arms without even the pretense of a study to determine how this would effect, let alone enhance, our war fighting capability.

- Obama, who promised in his 2008 campaign and again in his 2012 campaign that he would stop Iran's nuclear program, has broken a sanctions regime that had finally brought the Iranian theocracy to its knees. Iran is the quintessential bad actor in the world. The mad mullahs of Iran have been at war with U.S. interests, and often times the U.S. itself, since almost the first day Iran's theocracy was proclaimed in 1979. The mad mullahs pose the single greatest threat to our and the world's long term security. Yet Obama appears on the cusp of cutting a deal with Iran to allow them to continue their nuclear enrichment - and thus their march towards a nuclear arsenal.

- Obama, by allowing Iran to continue its nuclear program, is igniting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East as Saudi Arabia and other nations start their own nuclear programs for self defense. The only thing more frightening than Iran with nuclear weapons is Iran and the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons.

- Obama, when presented with a rare strategic opportunity during Iran's Green Revolution to perhaps topple or at least alter the trajectory of Iran's bloody and lawless theocracy, wholly ignored the opportunity until the mad mullahs had almost completely regained control.

- Russia has already invaded the Ukraine, and several NATO nations are concerned, probably not unreasonably, that Russia might invade and that NATO, led by the U.S., will not respond.

- North Korea is continuing to build and refine its nuclear arsenal. And its Dear Leader is beating the war drums, telling Army commanders this week to prepare for a Great War of Reunification against the U.S. and South Korea.

- China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its military capabilities far beyond that needed for regional defense. China is also becoming more bellicose and aggressive in its dealings with its neighbors.

--------------------

The world today is a far more dangerous place for America than it was in 2008, when Obama took office. We can't stop Obama's continued degradation of our national security between now and 2017, but let us hope we can slow it, at least in regards to Iran's march to a nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, our nation will not recover from the damage Obama has done and may yet do.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Netenyahu To Speak As Obama and The Mad Mullahs Slouch Towards Bethleham

Barack Obama intends the centerpiece of his foreign policy legacy to be a de facto alliance with Iran–a stroke so brilliant that only he could think of it. The U.S. will set Iran up as the dominant regional power in the Middle East, in part by allowing it to develop the nuclear capability for which its rulers have long yearned, and in exchange, Iran will keep the peace and subdue troublesome upstarts like ISIS. To someone who grew up thinking that the call to prayer from a minaret is one of the most beautiful sounds on Earth, this might make some kind of sense. To those of us forced to live in the real world, it is bonkers.

John Hinderaker, Powerline, The Mullahs: Still Crazy After All These Years

The left has continuously and catastophicly misjudged Iran's theocracy since 1979, when Jimmy Carter made Iran's theorcratic revolution possible. Carter wholly misunderstood the ideology and threat of Ayatollah Khomeini, allowing him back into Iran to take over the revolution under the belief that Khomeini was rational and could be swayed by American economic benefits. We are still paying for Carter's catastophic naivety today, as Iran remains the single most destabilizing influence, not just in the Middle East, but the world. You can read the roll-up of Iran's actions here. Since I wrote that in 2008, little has changed other than Iran's machinations are starting to pay off. The theocracy is playing an ever-more dominant role in Iraq, and the Shia rebels they were backing in Yemen have forced that country's leadership to flee. The rebels now control the capital.

Now things portend to get much worse. Obama too misjudges Iran, seeing them as a ratonal actor that can be a "partner for peace" in the Middle East and that can be entrusted with nuclear weapons. To call Obama's plans "bonkers," as John Hinderaker does in the quote at the top of this post, is to understate the existential danger of Obama's plan by an infinite order of magnitude. While Israel of course sees this Obama madness as the greatest of dangers, it is certainly not just Israel in the Iranian sites. If anyone in this country does not see the same existential danger to America and Western civilization as a whole, they are suicidally delusional. Yet if nothing is done to derail this insanity, the Obama deal, a deal of Chamberlainesque proportions, will be done.

Enter PM Bibi Netanyahu, who will speak to Congress this week. Obama is pulling out all the stops to delegitimize Netanyahu and his speech, for it really is only the Israeli PM and his ability to sway American public opinion that can stop Obama's suicidal march. As Caroline Glick writes:

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.

Treachery and cowardice indeed. Unfortunately, such people rarely pay the price their acts so justly deserve. As it is, Obama and the entire left, whose hands are bloodied from throwing away our victory in Iraq for the benefit of their domestic political narrative, will pay no price except perhaps in the history books, assuming our nation survives to write them.

I'll shift gears here and close this post with the single most prophetic and troubling poem ever written. It's by William Butler Yeats, who penned it in 1921, in the wake of the horrific destruction wrought in World War I. And when one thinks of the world today, it is far too easy to think that it could have been penned to describe our reality.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Update: This from the sidebar and headline on Drudge at the moment:

Netanyahu takes off on 'historic' US mission...
Tickets in High Demand Despite Dems' Boycott...
White House Offers Rebuttal Before Speech...
Collision Course 6 Years in Making...
'Fateful'...
KRISTOL: Vindication for Zionism...
Kerry asks for benefit of doubt on Iran...
Palestinian activist: Boycott of Israeli products begins...

PAPER: OBAMA THREATENED TO SHOOT DOWN ISRAELI JETS

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Suicidal Complicity In Iranian Nukes

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

Sec of Defense Robert Gates, 2007

As bad as the news is today in the domestic arena (FCC, Illegal Immigration, IRS, HHS), the actions of the Obama regime in the international arena are orders of magnitude worse. For while all the destruction Obama has wrought in the domestic arena can, theoretically, be fixed, the same is not true of his duplicitous and suicidal dealings with Iran, where the stakes are so high and so time sensitive that to get it wrong is to court apocalyptic disaster.

Iran is the penultimate rogue state. I won't recount all the facts, you can read them here. Suffice it to say that Iran, a theocracy being run as a violent, crony capitalist police state, is as dangerous to the world as a rabid dog is to everyone within range of its fangs. Its leaders are every bit as irrational, triumphalist, expansionist and evil as was Hitler. To allow the mad mullahs to obtain a nuclear arsenal is beyond unthinkable. A nuclear armed Iran presents an immediate existential threat to Israel as well as to all of Western civilization. Moreover, Iran's drive for a nuclear aresenal is already setting off nuclear proliferation in other Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the nation whose toxic brand of Islam, Wahhabism, is the core ideology at the heart of ISIS, al Qaeda and virtually all Sunni Islamic inspired terrorism of our era. Imagine if you will, nuclear weapons diffuse throughout the deeply unstable Middle East. The hands of the doomsday clock will soom be spinning at the speed of a fan, and death on a massive scale virtually inevitable.

None of this is new. It is why, for years, our nation has tried to end Iran's nuclear program, and do it short of war. It is why there have been six U.N. Security Council Resolutions demanding an end to Iran's nuclear enrichment program. One would think that Obama and the left, who worship at the altar of international law, would demand that Iran do just that, end the program. That is the only viable option.

But Obama has, with the surety of Neville Chamberlain vis a vis Hitler in 1937, believed from the start that Iran's theorcracy are rational actors, people with whom he can negotiate. He sees the mad mullahs as potential partners in Middle East peace. And to that end, he has dismantled the crushing regime of economic sanctions the Bush regime built, block by block, in an effort to stop Iran's enrichment program short of war. And now, Obama is negotiating a deal with Iran that will allow their enrichment program not merely to continue, but "will put Iran on a glide path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons over a period of years."

Charles Krauthammer sounds the warning bells today:

The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Bad enough. Then it got worse:

News leaked Monday of the “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want. Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would re-enter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview last December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around ten — of good behavior and Iran would be home free. The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping, and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.

Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental-ballistic-missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations. Why is Iran building them? You don’t build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.

Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation. When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment, and then gets the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.

Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free world? . . .

The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist, purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. . . .

Do read the entire article. Krauthammer goes on to prudently recommend we reimpose sanctions on the mad mullahs and demand they stop enrichment. If we do not, if we allow Obama to complete this madness, we sign the death warrant of Western Civilization.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Failed Iran Policy & The Need To Set A Red Line

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a dramatic speech to the United Nations, employed a simple diagram to hammer home his plea that the international community set a "clear red line" over Iran's nuclear program -- warning that a nuclear-armed Iran would be tantamount to a nuclear-armed Al Qaeda.

Netanyahu: 'Clear red line' needed to stop Iran's nuclear program, Fox News, 27 Sep. 2012

__________________________________________

. . . But what Obama hasn't done is effectively address the single greatest overarching foreign policy issue facing the U.S. since day one of his Administration - the continued viability of Iran's theocracy and that theocracy's drive for a nuclear weapon. This is a regime every bit as dipped in blood as that of Pol Pot's and, as they draw ever closer to having a nuclear arsenal, every bit as threatening to the world as that of Hitler. To repeat the assessment of Iran by then Defense Secretatry Robert Gates in 2008:

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

Iran, Nukes & Obama's Scales, 5 Dec. 2011

__________________________________________

On the day Obama was inagurated into office, stopping Iran's drive towards a nuclear arsenal was by far his most important foreign policy challenge. Yet here we sit, four years later, with Iran's centrifuges spinning ever faster. As Mitt Romney noted this past week

:

U.S. President Barack Obama's policy on Iran represents his single worst foreign policy failure, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview on Sunday, saying that Iran was closer to having "nuclear capability" than when Obama took office in 2008.

Obama's response - "If Gov. Romney is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so." Clement Attlee couldn't have said it better.



Without doubt the most important lesson of WWII is that the delay of Attlee and his French counterpart in standing up to Hitler - to draw a red line if you will - ended up embroiling the world in the costliest and deadliest war in the history of man. It wasn't the beligirence of the French and British that led to WWII, it was their desire for peace at all costs, and thus their refusal to threaten force against Nazi Germany all the way up until the date Germany attacked Poland in September, 1939. According to a post-war debriefing of Nazi generals, WWII could been avoided had Britain and France stood up to Hitler in 1936-37, before Hitler's war machine was built up in strength.

Today, Obama claims, for domestic consumption, that the use of force is on the table as an option against Iran. But he is trying to have it both ways, criticizing Romney for even wanting to threaten Iran with force, while to Iran, he is silent.

Israeli PM Netanyahu has been publicly begging Obama to make a credible threat for the use of force against Iran for months as Iran moves ever closer to a nuclear arsenal. At the UN yesterday, Netanyahu gave a crystal clear warning to the world of the threat Iran poses and repeated his plea to Obama to act decisively with a threat of force before it is too late. Do watch this whole speech. It is worth a half hour of your time:



Do note that not only has Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu this past week, our U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, did not attend Netanyahu's speech at the UN. She wsa off having lunch with Hillary.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

Waiting For The Iranian Shoe To Drop (Updated)

Of the major foreign policy issues facing Obama, Iran ranks at least equal to Pakistan in near term criticality. As Obama gives signals of weakness and acquiesnce, Iran is significantly increasing its deadly operational tempo throughout the Middle East. And that in addition to a nuclear weapons program that threatens to lead to nuclear proliferation on a nightmare scale. Obama's response is to seek more talks - now unconditional - with even the threat of force apparently off the table. It is the stuff of deadly fantasy.
___________________________________________________________

Iran's government is a hyper-aggressive theocracy whose goals are to spread the Khomeinist Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and the world, to destroy Israel, and to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East. Those goals are non-negotiable and Iran's mad mullahs have proven utterly beyond any civilized limits in their pursit of these goals. In the history of Iran's theocracy, the only things which have ever caused the mad mullahs to alter their deadly trajectory have been the actual or threatended use of force.

As Sec. Def. Robert Gates summed up the nature of the theocracy a year ago, "everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike." The Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence has testified that Iran is the "central banker" for terrorism throughout the world. I have blogged on Iran repeatedly and itemized many of the terrorist acts by the Iranian regime. The list is as valid today as it was when I wrote it - with the exception that Iran has now become even more aggessive in its deadly pursuits with the ascension of Obama to the post of U.S. President. Amir Taheri, writing at the WSJ today, explains:

Convinced that the Obama administration is preparing to retreat from the Middle East, Iran's Khomeinist regime is intensifying its goal of regional domination. It has targeted six close allies of the U.S.: Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan, all of which are experiencing economic and/or political crises.

Iranian strategists believe that Egypt is heading for a major crisis once President Hosni Mubarak, 81, departs from the political scene. . . .

Last month, Egypt announced it had crushed a major Iranian plot and arrested 68 people. According to Egyptian media, four are members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Tehran's principal vehicle for exporting its revolution.

Seven were Palestinians linked to the radical Islamist movement Hamas; one was a Lebanese identified as "a political agent from Hezbollah" by the Egyptian Interior Ministry. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, claimed these men were shipping arms to Hamas in Gaza.

The arrests reportedly took place last December, during a crackdown against groups trying to convert Egyptians to Shiism. The Egyptian Interior Ministry claims this proselytizing has been going on for years. Thirty years ago, Egyptian Shiites numbered a few hundred. Various estimates put the number now at close to a million, but they are said to practice taqiyah (dissimulation), to hide their new faith.

But in its campaign for regional hegemony, Tehran expects Lebanon as its first prize. Iran is spending massive amounts of cash on June's general election. It supports a coalition led by Hezbollah, and including the Christian ex-general Michel Aoun. Lebanon, now in the column of pro-U.S. countries, would shift to the pro-Iran column.

In Bahrain, Tehran hopes to see its allies sweep to power through mass demonstrations and terrorist operations. Bahrain's ruling clan has arrested scores of pro-Iran militants but appears more vulnerable than ever. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has contacted Arab heads of states to appeal for "urgent support in the face of naked threats," according to the Bahraini media.

The threats became sensationally public in March. In a speech at Masshad, Iran's principal "holy city," Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described Bahrain as "part of Iran." . . .

Iran-controlled groups have also been uncovered in Kuwait and Jordan. According to Kuwaiti media, more than 1,000 alleged Iranian agents were arrested and shipped back home last winter. According to the Tehran media, Kuwait is believed vulnerable because of chronic parliamentary disputes that have led to governmental paralysis.

As for Jordan, Iranian strategists believe the kingdom, where Palestinians are two-thirds of the population, is a colonial creation and should disappear from the map -- opening the way for a single state covering the whole of Palestine. . . .

Arab states are especially concerned because Tehran has succeeded in transcending sectarian and ideological divides to create a coalition that includes Sunni movements such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, sections of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even Marxist-Leninist and other leftist outfits that share Iran's anti-Americanism.

. . . Tehran plays a patient game. Wherever possible, it is determined to pursue its goals through open political means, including elections. With pro-American and other democratic groups disheartened by the perceived weakness of the Obama administration, Tehran hopes its allies will win all the elections planned for this year in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

"There is this perception that the new U.S. administration is not interested in the democratization strategy," a senior Lebanese political leader told me. That perception only grows as President Obama calls for an "exit strategy" from Afghanistan and Iraq. Power abhors a vacuum, which the Islamic Republic of Iran is only too happy to fill. . . .

But that is hardly the end of it. Iran is also resuming operations in Iraq, a country Iran has long sought to turn into another Lebanon, with Shia militias controlling the country and under the control of Iran. In Iraq, with the U.S. having announced an imminent withdrawal and moving out of the cities, you may recall a series of suicide bombings last week aimed at Shia civilians. Those bombings had all the hallmarks of a resurgent al Qaeda - except it now seems clear that these bombings were carried out at the direction of the Iranian Qods Force. This from the Long War Journal:

[Three] suicide bombers targeted Iranian pilgrims in Baghdad and Diyala. Three suicide attacks resulted in scores of dead Iranians as the bombers detonated near Shia religious shrines. The Iranian government blamed the US and Israeli intelligence for the attacks.

. . . But the US has found evidence of Iranian-backed Mahdi Army leaders conducting attacks that were designed to mimic al Qaeda suicide bombings.

. . . US military officers believe that Iran is ramping up its operations inside Iraq after its surrogates suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Iraqi military during the spring and summer of 2008.

. . . The US and Iraqi military believe the Special Groups are preparing to re-initiate fighting as their leaders and operatives are beginning to filter back into Iraq from Iran. On Feb. 4, Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, the deputy commander of Multinational Forces Iraq, said that Iran continues to arm, fund, and train the Special Groups, and that munitions traced back to Iran continue to be uncovered in Iraq. Recent intelligence and the finds of new Iranian caches "lead us to believe that Iranian support activity is still ongoing," Austin warned.

Read the entire article. None of this should come as a surprise since the deeply repressive Iran is mortally threatened by an Iraq on its borders that operates with an open democracy and adherence to the apolitical "quietest" school of Shia'ism.

Dwarfing all of this is the problem of Iran's determined drive towards the creation of a nuclear arsenal. It is significantly destabilizing the Middle East and, as I wrote previously:

. . . [It] has already initiated what promises to be a nightmare of nuclear proliferation. "Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt have indicated an interest in developing nuclear programs, with Israeli officials saying that if these countries did not want the programs now for nuclear capabilities, they wanted the technology in place to keep "other options open" if Iran developed a bomb." According to a recent study initiated by Senator Lugar, "the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region."

And then of course is the threat that a nuclear armed Iran intrinsically poses. According to Bernard Lewis, the West’s premier Orientalist, Iran's theocracy operates outside the constraints of Western logic. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MADD) that worked against the Soviet Union and with other nuclear armed nations is not assured of working with a theocracy whose messianic rulers welcome the carnage that will presage the coming of the hidden Imam. And to add to that is the threat that Iran could well provide nuclear materials to terrorist groups in order to conduct attacks, such as dirty bombs, that could not necessarily be traced back to Iran. Such a scenario would be completely in keeping with the historical activities of Iran's theocracy.

Obama and the left did their level best to insure that President Bush refrained from even the threat of force against Iran. This is Obama's problem now. Unfortunately for us, Obama's only answer is to embrace soft-power pacifism as the only American option. Highlighting this was Sec. of Def. Gates testifying before Congress the other day to the effect that the military option is off the table as likely ineffective and that the strategy the Obama administration intends to pursue are sanctions and talks to convince the mad mullahs that their nuclear program will "spark an arms race that would leave the Islamic republic less secure." As Michael Ledeen comments:

Gates’ other two statements–first, that sanctions are a better bet, and second, that we have to “convince” the mullahs that nukes are actually bad for them–are even sillier. I don’t think sanctions have ever deterred an enemy from actions they deemed valuable, and I don’t know a single serious person who believes that we’re going to talk the Iranians into abandoning their quest for the bomb.

Ledeen suspects, based on some other obviously questionable statements made by Gates in his testimony, that Gates deliberately watered down the facts and his assessments so as not to upset the Iranians while a massive back channel effort is underway to bring them to the negotiating table.

The problem with this approach of walk softly and carry no stick is that, just as did Britain and France in the 30's, we are setting the stage for an ever more deadly - and seemingly inevitable - confrontation with a hyperaggressive power and we do so at a point when that power can still be deterred with force or the threat of force. On this, I am in total agreement with Newt Gingrich, who comments on all of the above plus Obama's perceived coldness towards Israel:

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.

"They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we've ever seen," the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world," he said, speaking to the Post ahead of his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference.

He called US President Barack Obama's program of engagement on Iran a "fantasy," and his Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel." He summed up Obama's approach as "the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter." . . .

Read the entire article.

Update: Soccer Dad has done a post comparing the Israeli and U.S. views on Iran with, as always, the Palestinian issue making a cameo appearance. I think Soccer Dad's conclusions are spot on:

American interests in the Middle East are threatened by Iran. The United States must marshal its allies to fight Iranian designs. The Israeli view of the situation - that Iran is the major source of instability in the Middle East - is largely in agreement with the State Department's latest analysis. So the question is whether the Obama administration will allow itself to be distracted by pretending that pressuring Israel will make handling the Iranian challenge easier or whether it will heed the State Department's analysis and give priority to the Iranian threat.

Read the entire post. My sense is, unfortunately, that the Obama administration is wholly invested in the latter option.

Robert Avrech, at Seraphic Secret, has posted on Israel's preparations for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. As he points out, this will not be a repeat of the small sortie that undertook a similar mission against Iraq. It will be a large and complex operation, and he forecasts few consequences beyond a worldwide, and very private, sigh of relief:

The Israeli strike on the Persian nuclear facilities will not be a small operation of a three or four F16's. It will be a robust strike with massive cyber attacks on the Persian air-defense systems, dozens of attack jets, rescue planes, AWAC's, and almost certainly special forces on the ground in Iran directing air strikes. The world will publicly condemn Israel, but in private these same people will breathe huge sighs of relief. The only people who want the Persians to go nuclear are—what a shock—the Persians, and rabid leftist Jew-haters who hide behind the fig-leaf of, ahem, academic anti-Zionism.

Read the entire post. Our window of opportunity to fan the flames of regime change in Iran before they acquired a nuclear weapon passed long ago. A nuclear Iran is too great a danger to literally the entire civilized world to allow. It would be the equal of Hitler having a nuclear arsenal at his disposal on January 1, 1939. Moreover, the proliferation nightmare Iran has already kickstarted throughout the Middle East likewise cannot be allowed to continue. Obama's plans for "aggressive diplomacy" will only be used by the regime to buy time to strengthen its position. Either we should lead a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities or we should give full support to such an Israeli action.

Read More...

Summary only...

Walid Phares On Iran's Continuing Acts of War

Iran is employing Hezbollah to train Iraqi assassination squads with the intent of reintroducing them into Iraq. This is neither surprising nor, for that matter, in any way out of character for the mad mullahs. Terrorism expert Walid Phares weighs in on Iran's acts of war and adds a recommendation that we should be supporting elements who want to institute democracy in Iran.

Read More...

Summary only...

Iran & The End Of The Beginning

Former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht writes that Iran, now on the precipice of a nuclear arsenal, is making no pretense about even a willingness to discuss supension of its nuclear program. Obama's plans for tea in Tehran could not be more unrealistic. Very soon we will be faced with the choice of how to deal with a nuclear armed Iran.
_________________________________________________________

This from Mr. Gerecht writing at the Weekly Standard:

On July 30, Ali Khamenei demolished what was left of George W. Bush's Iran policy. Iran's clerical overlord also put paid to Senator Barack Obama's dreams of tête-à-tête, stop-the-nukes diplomacy. Ten days earlier the Americans, British, French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese had gathered in Geneva hoping to convince Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment. True to form, Khamenei told them all to stick it. The Islamic Republic will not cease and desist: "Taking one step back against the arrogant powers [the West] will lead them to take one step forward," Khamenei replied. So much for the "significant" presence of William Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, who went to Geneva to show Tehran and the Europeans the United States' willingness to have senior-level contacts with the clerical regime. . . .

The mission by Burns, an accomplished "realist" diplomat, is exactly what Obama's campaign had in mind when they said that a President Obama would approve "preparatory" meetings with Iranian officials before he sought to have a face-to-face with a worthy counterpart, which given the Iranian political system means either Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's Expediency Council and the cleric who got Iran's clandestine nuclear-weapons program rolling. Since the Illinois senator first broached the idea of personal diplomacy during a Democratic primary debate, Khamenei has unleashed a barrage of speeches against "Satan Incarnate," "the Great Enemy," and "the Enemy of Islam and all Islamic peoples" (all shorthand for the United States). Ahmadinejad, a more spiritual man than Khamenei, suggested to NBC's Brian Williams in Tehran in late July that all the problems between the United States and Iran could be eliminated if Americans would just learn to live according to the dictates of the biblical and post-biblical prophets, who are all, according to Islamic theology, Muslim. Williams didn't appear to realize that Ahmadinejad was making a call for America's conversion. If he had realized it, he would probably have ignored it as perfunctory rhetoric of little real-world relevance.

But it is helpful to imagine the reverse: Suppose Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or John McCain were to call on Iranians to accept the teachings of Christ as practiced by America's Christians. Religiously, culturally, and politically the idea is unthinkable, of course. This ought to give us some idea of the chasm separating Americans and Europeans from the leadership of the Islamic Republic. This ought to tell Senator Obama and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that face-to-face "preparatory" meetings with Iranians are irrelevant: American diplomats could talk for years to Saeed Jalili, the Iranian nuclear negotiator who is in the entourage of Ahmadinejad, and it would not disturb the universe in which Jalili lives and prays.

It's a good guess that [Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ahmedinejad] really want to tell the West, in earthy language, that they are going to get a nuclear weapon and there is nothing the Americans, the Europeans, and the Israelis can do to stop them. When both men talk about justice, and they mention it constantly, they are thinking of the imbalance in the world between devout Muslims, who follow the true path of God, and infidels, with their damnable technical superiority. By acquiring nuclear weapons, these men intend to restore that balance, allowing real Muslims, especially the faithful Iranian vanguard, to recapture the high ground throughout the Islamic world. Ahmadinejad was glad to see Ambassador Burns at the Geneva meeting not because he wants to reach a compromise with the United States, and welcomes the new, post-axis-of-evil "flexibility" of the Bush administration, but because he sees the Geneva meeting as another step in the West's process of conceding a bomb to Iran. Ahmadinejad's triumphalism, which is the mirror-image of Khamenei's more tight-lipped glee, overwhelmed Brian Williams, who was reduced to asking the same questions repeatedly. When you think you've won, you don't need to pretend with an American news anchor that you might, just possibly, compromise and give the West hope that diplomacy can continue.

There is yet a slight chance the Europeans can revive the Bush-Obama diplomatic track. But the Europeans would have to do what they have so far refused to do and may no longer be able to do: Immediately impose economy-crushing sanctions on the Islamic Republic (Tehran has been rapidly moving its financial assets out of Europe). Russia, China, and India--the key states in developing a suffocating, worldwide sanctions regime--are unlikely to help since they all seem to have concluded that a clerical Iran brought to its knees by the West is worse than an oil-rich, nuclear-armed (and grateful) Islamic Republic. With their dogged efforts to increase centrifuge production (two years ago Iran had one cascade of 164 centrifuges; now it may have 6,000 spinning), Khamenei and Ahmadinejad act as if they will soon have a weapon. And once the Iranians get the bomb and put, or just imply that they are putting, nuclear-tipped warheads on their ballistic missiles, how much resolve will the Europeans have to confront Tehran? Given contemporary European sentiments and habits, isn't an effort to placate Tehran more likely?

. . . It is now entirely reasonable to conjecture that Tehran will have nuclear-armed missiles before the United States is able to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. . . .

Even with a functioning antiballistic missile system in place to stiffen European spines, the mullahs may well be able to split the alliance once they have nukes. The allure of Iranian oil and gas is just too great. With Tehran suggesting that the Europeans have nothing to fear so long as they distance themselves from the United States in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, an American containment strategy on Iran, which necessarily has to involve the Europeans if it's going to have any economic teeth, may well be stillborn.

Thoughtful Democrats have realized the havoc the Iranians could cause in the Middle East once they obtain nuclear weapons. But few Democrats--or Republicans, for that matter--have awakened to the potential for Iranian nuclear arms to destroy the very transatlantic ties that both Obama and McCain say need to be strengthened to confront the many problems before us. When he was president of Iran, Rafsanjani began a divide-and-conquer strategy toward the West, trying to bring in the Europeans for investment and trade, while confronting the United States and lethally attacking dissidents at home and abroad. This approach was especially important to the development of Iran's then entirely clandestine nuclear-weapons program, since Rafsanjani didn't want the West lining up against Iran at a time when the clerical regime needed to build up its program to a "break-out" potential. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad abandoned Rafsanjani's and his successor Mohammad Khatami's cautious and slow approach to developing nuclear weapons. For a time, this abrupt change caused concern in Tehran that the United States and Europe might actually deploy economy-crushing sanctions or, even worse, that the Bush administration might order a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities before the enrichment process had sufficiently advanced.

But the fear of George W. Bush has vanished. And we will now see whether Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have a correct understanding of Europe--whether it really still matters. Ironically, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's confrontational strategy could prove more effective at dividing the Europeans from the Americans than did the wry smile of Rafsanjani or even the warm, soft handshakes of Mohammad Khatami.

Yet, the Europeans might still surprise themselves and us. Concern about the Islamic Republic's nuclear quest is palpable in Paris, London, and Berlin. Senior French diplomats who have been party to the EU-3 talks like to relate how Iran's European embassies are paying their bills with big wads of cash these days since they can no longer transfer the required monies through embargoed banks. The Europeans might still be able to unleash a tsunami of sanctions, sanctions that even the Italians could be shamed into joining. And it is possible that George W. Bush might again follow his better instincts and ramp up the bellicose language, suggesting that he will indeed strike before leaving office. It is even possible that Barack Obama could come to appreciate that his Iran policy has utterly collapsed, too. With Khamenei, loudly advertised machtpolitik is an indispensable inducement to a peaceful suspension of uranium enrichment. Perhaps the contemplation of his administration having to figure out a containment strategy against a nuclear-armed Iranian theocracy might convince the senator of the need now for a bit of eloquent bellicosity.

. . . More likely, we will get to see whether an Obama or McCain administration has any idea of how to contain a nuclear-armed, oil-rich theocracy willing to deploy terrorism and guerrilla warfare to ensure that "justice" is brought to the Middle East and Afghanistan. This is assuming that the Israelis--increasingly desperate as they contemplate their future opposite nuclear-armed Muslim militants who see the Jewish state as an insult to God--don't strike first and change everyone's planning. Perhaps it is not too late to breathe new life and urgency into the critical need for a united Western front against Tehran.

Read the entire article. My worst fear is that the calamity of the mad mullahs, birthed by President Carter during his first term, will come to full bloom during Carter's second term.

Read More...

Summary only...

Collision Course With The Mad Mullahs

The Iranian theocracy's dash towards a nuclear arsenal as picked up speed as they make no attempt now to engage in even the motions of cooperation on the nuclear issue. The U.S. changed its policy and met as part of unilateral negotiations with Iran to no avail. Ahmedinejad has announced a near doubling in centrifuge capacity at Natanz, turning out enriched uranium on an industrial scale. There are many meetings going on between U.S. and the Israeli government. The immediate question is whether President Bush will deal with this problem while he is still in office or whether he will kick it down the road. The former is seeming more likely.
_________________________________________________________

The mad mullahs race towards a nuclear weapon grows ever apace. On Saturday, Ahmedinejad announced that Iran had doubled the enrichment capacity of its Natanz plant to 6,000 centrifuges. Iran has no use for this nuclear fuel in any sort of civilian energy program. Nonetheless, as Fox reported:

A total of 3,000 centrifuges is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that surpasses the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough material for dozens of nuclear weapons.

Iran says it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that ultimately will involve 54,000 centrifuges.

Moreover, Iran has announced a complete halt to cooperation with the IAEA and their probe of the nature of Iran's nuclear program. This also from Fox News:

Iran on Thursday signaled it will no longer cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency experts investigating for signs of nuclear weapons programs, confirming that the probe — launched a year ago with great expectations — was at a dead end.

Coming from Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the announcement compounded international skepticism about denting Tehran's nuclear defiance just five days after Tehran stonewalled demands from six world powers to suspend activities that can produce the fissile core of warheads.

Besides demanding a stop to uranium enrichment — which can create both fuel and the nuclear missile payloads — the international community also has been pressuring Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA in its probe of allegations that Tehran hid attempts to make nuclear arms.

That investigation was launched a year ago under a so-called "work plan" between the Vienna-based agency and Tehran.

Back then, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei hailed it as "a significant step forward" that — if honored by Iran — would fill in the missing pieces of Iran's nuclear jigsaw puzzle; nearly two decades of atomic work, all of it clandestine until revealed by dissidents nearly six years ago. And he brushed aside suggestions that Iran was using the work plan as a smoke screen to deflect attention away from its continued defiance of a U.N. Security Council ban on enrichment.

But the plan ran into trouble just months after it was put into operation. Deadline after deadline was extended because of Iranian foot-dragging. The probe, originally to have been completed late last year, spilled into the first months of 2008, and then beyond.

Iran remains defiant, saying evidence from the U.S. and other board members purportedly backing the allegations was fabricated, and on Thursday Aghazadeh appeared to signal that his country was no longer prepared even to discuss the issue with the Vienna-based IAEA. . . .

Read the entire article.

And a month ago, Bush radically reversed U.S. policy and took part directly in a meeting with Iran on its nuclear issue. The meeting, which also involved the EU-3, China and Russia was a joke, with Iran refusing to discuss nuclear enrichment then or in the future. Was that meeting designed to justify a U.S. attack on Iran? That is certainly looking more plausible as time goes on. This from the Jerusalem Post:

Recent talks the United States held with Iran are aimed at creating legitimacy for a potential attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, defense officials speculated on Sunday as Defense Minister Ehud Barak headed to Washington for talks with senior administration officials.

Barak will travel to Washington and New York and will hold talks with his counterpart Robert Gates, Vice President Dick Cheney, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

. . . IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi returned to Israel on Sunday from a week-long visit to the US as Mullen's guest. Ashkenazi held talks with Cheney, Hadley and other senior officials with a focus on the Iranian nuclear program.

"There is a lot of strategic thinking concerning Iran going on right now but no one has yet to make a decision what to do," said a top IDF officer, involved in the dialogue between Israel and the US. "We are still far away from the point where military officers are poring over maps together planning an operation."

In recent weeks, Mullen has said publicly that he is opposed to military action against Iran which would open a "third front" for the US military which is currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .

Barak's talks in the US come a little over a week after the Bush administration sent its number three diplomat to Geneva to participate in European Union talks with Iran over its nuclear program.

The move led to reports that the US was changing its isolation tactic vis-à-vis Iran but Israeli defense officials speculated Sunday that the move was really a ploy to buy international support in the event that Bush decides to attack Iran in his last months in office.

"This way they will be able to say they tried everything," one official speculated. "This increases America's chances of gaining more public support domestically as well as the support of European nations which are today opposed to military action." . . .

Diplomatic officials have speculated that the Iran-US talks were also connected to the presidential elections.

Read the entire article. If we are going to go to war with Iran over the nuclear issue - and I think it is inevitable - the sooner the better. Waiting will only benefit Iran, much like waiting through the mid-30's allowed the Nazi's to go from extreme weakness to a war machine of sufficient size that it cost tens of millions of lives to defeat. The problem is exponentially more dangerous when the topic under discussion is a nuclear arsenal. We forget the lesson of Nazi Germany at our peril.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama, Aggressive Diplomacy & The Mad Mullahs Pursuit Of A Nuclear Arsenal

If anyone in the MSM is paying attention, will they start to press Obama now on his suicidally naive and grandiose plans for "aggressive diplomacy" with Tehran? The recent attempt at talks with Iran by the EU, Russia, China and the U.S. to end Iran's march towards a nuclear arsenal were wholly useless did nothing more than throw into stark relief Iran's motivations and strategy. When the Iranian proposals for endless diplomacy but refusing to address its nuclear enrichment make even the Russian envoy life, it is clear that no amount of diplomacy standing alone is going to stop Iran. It really does seem like 1938 with Iran as Germany and Obama poised to become the stand in for Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Édouard Daladier.
_____________________________________________________


The NYT reports on the recent meeting between the EU-3, Russia, China and the U.S. with Iran. Several things are apparent. One, nothing will stop the Iranian march towards a nuclear arsenal and all the danger that holds for the world. Two, the hardliners are in complete control of the reigns of power in Iran and it is showing in the margins of their increasingly hardline and amateurish diplomacy. Three, Iran wants nothing more than for the West to engage in endless "aggressive diplomacy." Indeed, Obama must seem a gift from Allah to the mad mullahs. This from the NYT:

. . . For the six powers — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — [Iran's counterproposal, containing misspellings and incorrect grammar] was just as disappointing as its style. Sergei Kisliak, the Russian deputy foreign minister, could not suppress a laugh when he read it, according to one participant.

The talks on Saturday included the participation of a senior American official for the first time. The six powers were hoping that Iran would accept a compromise formula to pave the way to formal negotiations. For six weeks, Iran would not add “any new nuclear activity,” refraining from the new installation of centrifuges that enrich uranium, and the United States and other powers would not seek new United Nations sanctions.

But both in their paper, and throughout the talks, the Iranians did not discuss the formula, called a “freeze for freeze.” As a result, they left the impression that they wanted to lure the parties into an open-ended, cost-free, high-level negotiating process.

“The paper calls for a huge exercise in talking,” said one senior European official. “If you were to try to implement it, it would take a minimum of several years.”

Officials spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

. . . The Iranian document, which has not been made public, offered a snapshot of Iran’s negotiating style. It put the burden on the other parties. Its imprecise language and misspellings were in sharp contrast to the rigorous approach by Iranian negotiators, many of them career diplomats, who were in charge in 2003 when France, Britain and Germany began the initiative of incentives in exchange for suspension of major nuclear activities. Those diplomats have since been replaced.

The paper called for at least three more meetings with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, who represents the six powers. Those would be followed by at least four meetings at the foreign ministers’ level, which would start with the halting of any sanctions against Iran, “both inside and outside” the United Nations Security Council.

The Iranian document also seemed to suggest that there could be no discussion of the main issue of contention: some sort of limit on Iran’s production of enriched uranium, which can be used to make electricity or to fuel bombs. “The parties will abstain from referring to or discussing divergent issues that can potentially hinder the progress of negotiations,” the paper said.

The six powers want to use their proposed freeze-for-freeze period as a prelude to formal negotiations on a package of economic, political, technological and security rewards. But Iran has to stop enriching uranium for the formal talks to begin.

In its paper, Iran focused only on negotiating a “comprehensive agreement” for the rewards. The paper also said current international sanctions against Iran would be discontinued. The Iranian nuclear issue will no longer be dealt with by the Security Council or the 35-country governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Only the atomic energy agency itself can deal with the subject, the paper said.

Read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...

Corruption and the Mullahs

The mad mullahs of Iran have been the greatest beneficiaries of the ever increasing oil prices, allowing them to keep their mess of an economy afloat. Iran's economy was in deep trouble in 2005. Even with high gas prices since, endemic corruption and a centralized economy where the rich wear turbans - or an IRGC uniform - have kept the economy on the edge of imploding. It is an economy made all the worse by Ahmedinejad, with inflation running above 25% and unemployment hitting new double digit highs each month.

The incredible corruption of the mullahs is no secret. What is unusual, however, is to hear it announced publicly and the turbaned ones named by a member of the Iranian General Audit Office - now jailed.
_____________________________________________________________

This from Amir Taheri writing in the NY Post:

'A BUNCH of turbaned thieves": So a member of the Iranian General Audit Office described leading Islamic Republic figures in a speech two weeks ago. On Wednesday, that official, Abbas Palizdar, was arrested by the secret police, ostensibly on orders from "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei.

Speaking at a university in Hamadan, west of Tehran, on May 27, and later on June 3, Palizdar claimed that "a mafia-style group of mullahs" is "plundering the country and sending the proceeds to foreign banks." He also said that the same "mafia" had assassinated two prominent officials who had stood in its way.

That the mullahs are filling their pockets hasn't been a secret for more than two decades. Iranians know which businesses are controlled by the turbaned heads and their "front men." What's new is that a senior official actually named names.

Palizdar claimed that former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani controls more than 300 businesses, making him the richest man in Iran. A small building contractor before the mullahs seized power, Rafsanjani has built an empire on government contracts that's now estimated to be worth several billion dollars.

Palizdar denounced many others:

* Ayatollah Muhammad Imami-Kashani, Tehran's Friday-prayer leader, and Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri, a former speaker of the Islamic parliament - who he called "leeches sucking the blood of our nation."

* Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, a pro-regime mullah from Qom, known to Iranians as "Sugar Ayatollah." Since 1995, he has controlled sugar imports through his son-in-law, Muhammad Moddallal.

* Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi, a former chief justice, who holds agency rights for several German and French firms and is a silent partner in more than 100 businesses, some with offices in Europe.

* Ayatollah Ali Fallahian, a former minister for security and intelligence, who is wanted by the Criminal Court in Berlin for his alleged involvement in the 1992 assassination of Iranian dissidents there. Palizdar said Fallahian won "juicy government contracts" in exchange for a promise "not to spill the beans."

* Ayatollah Abbas Va'ez-Tabassi, who heads the Imam Reza Foundation, Iran's largest business conglomerate.

* Ayatollah Alam al-Huda - who Palizdar called the head of "a ring of corruption and money laundering" that includes hundreds of lesser-known clerics.

* Chief Justice Muhammad Hashemi-Shahroudi, a mullah of Iraqi origin - who Palizdar said had turned the Islamic Supreme Court into "the nerve center of corruption."

Palizdar charged that the mullahs are involved in smuggling, money laundering, bribery and influence peddling. Their business interests include airlines, transportation, hotels, mines, petrochemicals and arms factories. Rafsanjani reportedly holds a monopoly on trade with China while Vaez-Tabassi controls trade with Central Asia.

Palizdar's potentially most serious charge concerns the 2002 deaths of Gen. Ahmad Kazemi, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the minister of transport, Ahmad Dadman. The air crash that killed them, he said, may not have been accidental: "They had closed two airports used by mullahs to smuggle goods without paying customs duty."

When Palizdar first made his allegations two weeks ago, Tehran circles assumed he was acting for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power promising to "clean the stables."

Ahmadinejad promised in an April speech to expose "a mafia-style organization" that he said dominates the nation's economy. And Palizdar had been a member of Tehran Mayor Ahmadinejad's faction in 2005.

. . . But as Palizdar was being sent to jail this week, Ahmadinejad's faction seemed anxious to disown him. "Palizdar has attacked and accused some clerics and simultaneously supported the government's anti-corruption campaign to put clerics and respectable figures at odds with the government," the pro-Ahmadinejad daily "Iran" editorialized.

The hardline daily Kayhan, controlled by the "supreme guide," went even further: "Palizdar was chosen by counterrevolutionaries as the right vehicle for propaganda," it said.

Clearly, the stage is being set for a new power struggle. Ahmadinejad is out to frighten his opponents by threatening to expose their corruption. The Revolutionary Guard is trying to force the mullahs to give it a bigger share of lucrative businesses. And Ahmadinejad's opponents want to clip his wings in case they have to make a deal with the Western powers. . . .

Read the entire article. This seems to be part of the struggle ongoing between Ahmedinejad and the various other factions vieing for power and a big slice of the corruption pie. Much more on this by Mehdi Khalaji writing at Policy Watch.

Read More...

Summary only...

Iran Unhappy With Maliki

How does one know when Maliki is doing the right thing? Well, for me at least, one of the prime indicators is when the major newspapers in Iran condemn Maliki as having "sold out" to the U.S.


________________________________________________________

Apparently, Iran's mad mullahs are quite unhappy with Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki. They see the invitation to the U.S. to remain in Iraq beyond the end of the U.N. mandate as inimical to their interests - which, of course, it very much is. Indeed, other than our Democrats, the only one's that want to see the U.S. abandon Iraq are Iran and Sadr. This from the Arabic news outlet Asharq Alawsat:

Iran has condemned the strategic agreement between Iraq and the United States describing it as turning Iraq into an American colony and also attacked in a rare public criticism Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki saying he has give in to the Americans.

Hussein Shariatmadari, Adviser to the Supreme Guide of Iran and editor of state-owned Kayhan Newspaper . . . said the strategic agreement between Iraq and the United States "is a return to the cold war between Iraq and Iran and the latter's isolation", adding that it turns Iraq into "an American satellite."

In an editorial entitled "Grand Deception" in Keyhan, which reflects the Iranian ruling establishment's view, Shariatmadari said the agreement denies the Iraqis self-determination and allows the United States to use the Iraqi territories, airspace, and territorial waters to attack countries in the region and also allows the Americans to remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Read the entire article. Unfortunately, to my understanding, all that is being negotiated between Iraq and the U.S. is a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which does none of the things the Iranian editor and advisor enumerates. That said, the mere presence of U.S. troops on the Iranian border has got to be a major concern to the mad mullahs.

Read More...

Summary only...