Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Obama Heading To The U.N After His Presidency? Do These Plunging Figures Reveal An Ominous Story? Munich Vs Denmark! Validating Kissinger?

The manufacturing of chaos and outrage.  (See 1 below.)
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Obama, heading for The U.N. after being president? Lewis speculates the answer is yes!

Will Obama's personality allow him to fade or, like 'Ole Bill, will he continue to strive for a world presence? Can world peace endure more of Obama after his presidency?

After 8 years of Obama's monarchical demagoguery, Americans should be exhausted! (See 2 below.)
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You may think I am an alarmist but watch Obama and Democrats push un-elected bureaucrats to the
Federal Election Commission (FEC), to regulate (and ultimately censor) your online political speech. 

Now a few comments on Netanyahu's speaking before Congress.

When it was first announced, I commented, in a previous memo, the manner in which it was arranged could be seen as an affront to Obama and an act of payback on Boehner's part. Though probably justified, it was a bit boorish but then there is no love in D.C anymore even as Valentine Day approaches.

That said, assuming Netanyahu has more substance than just words, expressing Israel's logical fear,  I believe the world needs to hear his comments, if only because it balances the obvious press on Obama's part to bolster his ego that he brought about a 'deal' which he, no doubt, will claim, is good for world peace.

To date, nothing Obama has accomplished, or failed to accomplish, in the foreign arena has proven it can hold water.  I see no reason to trust both Iran and Obama on any deal ultimately struck.  Both have a history of lying and, unless leopards can change spots, I see no reason to lower my guard.

I am sure Netanyahu knows he must be convincing and will probably say enough, in that regard, to raise legitimate concerns to a level that might add some backbone to a world being led by some pitiful Western politicians parading as states-persons.

Lamentably, I truly doubt whatever Netanyahu has to say, in the end,  will change the  fact that Iran will be allowed to go nuclear or be within a hairs breath of doing so.

As for Democrats many will not show for Netanyahu's address. I guess they would come if he spoke on global warming,  Well if Iran goes nuclear we might well have a lot of global warming - the nuclear kind.

In today's WSJ op ed, my friend, Bret Stephens, in summing up his view of Merkel at Munich , said it well when he wrote "... The West will usually prefer its illusions to its principles, at least until it has no other choice but to defend those principles."

I also find it prophetic that the meeting, to discuss how the West responds to Russia's intrusion in the Ukraine,  is taking place in Munich. It might as well have been in Shakespeare's Denmark!
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The IDF completes destruction of Gaza tunnels on Israel's side. (See 3 below.)
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Five plunging figures tell a story? (See 4 below.)
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IEA's oil price prediction.  They did not forecast the drop. Consequently, will their new forecast be correct? (See 5 below.)

Certainly, declining rig numbers and capital cut backs will result in less lifting.  The question then becomes one of demand and economic growth.
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Is Obama bowing again? (See 6 below.)
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In my previous memo I posted the op ed in the WSJ regarding Kissinger's warnings .  Is this an act of validating his warning? (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1) Manufacturing Outrage


Manufacturing outrage is the modus operandi of Obama and Democrats.  Liberal media are their tools.  The result has been destruction, pain and murder.  And the worse is yet to come.

The last six years have seen an explosion of faux controversies generated by Democrats.  Aside from political ads attacking opponents (Paul Ryan pushing grandma and her wheelchair off a cliff; Romney as a bully, homophobe, dog abuser and carcinogenic (I may have missed a few calumnies).  Before those defamations, it was Sarah Palin who endured unceasing attacks.  And before that it was Obama’s two opponents for the Senate who were targets of ginned up outrage.

There also have been campaigns that have attacked broad groups of Americans. 
Consider the purported epidemic of rape by privileged whites on college campuses.  Then there was a fictitious gender gap in wages between men and women.  Aren’t there enough wars around the world without having to start (un)civil wars in America?

The most disgraceful use of this strategy has been the deliberate stoking of black rage against whites.  Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown became martyrs not perpetrators.  Al Sharpton was anointed healer-in-chief and Obama’s point man on race (the arsonist becomes the fire department chief -- such are the perversions Barack Obama has inflicted on America).  Barack Obama has fanned the flames by comments such as “racism is deeply rooted in American society” and his Attorney General Eric Holder has race-baited throughout his tenure, routinely claiming civil rights violations at the height of the strife triggered by the deaths of Martin and Brown -- and routinely being frustrated by the facts.  Joe Biden told a black audience that “Republicans are “going to put y’all back in chains.”  Police have borne the brunt of these malicious attacks, all but accused of being Ku Klux Klansmen in blue. 

All these slanders were meant to play on people’s worst emotions. fear and envy, and generate votes for the delectation of Democrats, costs to this country from this  artificial outrage be damned.  All were lies. 
They are manifestations of a ploy dreamt up by Barack Obama’s White House Senior Adviser (at the time) David Plouffe, as the Weekly Standard noted last year:
Last week, National Journal reporter Major Garrett provided an interesting explanation for the White House’s obsession with promoting a dubious statistic on the alleged “pay gap” between men and women.  The White House has repeatedly claimed that women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn.  Such “war on women” rhetoric has no doubt proved inspiring to many single women, the Democrats’ most crucial voting bloc.  (Republicans still enjoy an advantage among married women.) 

However, as has been repeatedly pointed out, once you control for a number of confounding factors in the data, including the degree to which women drop in and out of the workforce to attend to marital and parental duties, the pay gap all but evaporates.  Even the usually credulous D.C.  press corps was scratching their heads over the White House’s misleading rhetoric.  The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus -- not exactly the face of conservative opposition to Obama -- called the White House’s use of the stat “revolting.” But as Garrett explains, the Obama administration deliberately sought to create controversy:

[The White House was] desperate to inject the issue into the political bloodstream and amplify otherwise doomed Senate Democratic efforts to make it easier for women to sue and win damages for workplace pay differences.  The controversy that played out on front pages, social media, TV, and radio did just that. 

This is the White House theory of “Stray Voltage.” It is the brainchild of former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe, whose methods loom large long after his departure.  The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness. 
The false allegations are amplified by the usual suspects: liberal media outlets, bloggers, Democratic Party operatives masquerading as think tank “experts” (The Center for American Progress, a George Soros-creation, is among the worst of the lot; it has been described as Obama’s Idea Factory and has also been a revolving door for Obama’s key officials).  Lies are streamed through the social networks that Obama and the Democrats have spread throughout America.  Narrowcasting has empowered liars as never before.

Truth does not matter.  As the great Winston Churchill said “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  Even when purveyors of the false allegations are compelled to issue “corrections” they are ignored.  Few people read fact-checkers such as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who routinely hands out awards to Obama and his minions: Pinocchios.  We might read about Obama’s Grammy and Nobel Peace Prize, but how about his Lie of the Year, bestowed upon him by PolitiFact.com, for his repeated claims that “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it”?

But facts do not seem to matter to Democrats, only rage that can motivate people to vote for them.  Their leader Barack Obama is a con man who thinks Americans are stupid people, susceptible to believing any stories he peddles.

Many of these outrage fabricators appear to be disciples of Saul Alinsky (Hillary Clinton actually shares this ideological kinship with Barack Obama) who wrote, “it’s up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.”

This was clearly Obama’s strategy from the get-go.  When executives of AIG, an insurer bailed out by the government, were awarded bonuses, people were understandably upset if not enraged.  When asked how he would quell this anger, President Obama said he was not interested in calming the waters.
"I don't want to quell anger.  People are right to be angry.  I'm angry.  What I want us to do is channel our anger in a constructive way."
Of course, what is one man’s constructive path may be another man’s destructive path.

And so it has been throughout Obama’s presidency.  He has never missed an opportunity to manufacture outrage.  When there have not been existing “sores of discontent” he creates them.  After all, that is the logical next step when there is no discontent to manipulate -- create it.

The latest example of his modus operandi has been the agitprop he has poured out regarding the invitation extended to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak to Congress regarding the dangers of Islamic extremism (see my blog entry that Boehner blindsided Obama on Netanyahu invitation was manufactured agitprop).  Barack Obama -- the most thin-skinned, petty and prickly of our presidents -- considers this trivial incident a diplomatic affront.  The White House invented the tale of Netanyahu’s supposed outrageous behavior to blunt any unwelcome criticism of Barack Obama’s surrender to the mullahs.  The White House deliberately manufactured this spat with Netanyahu.

This is manufactured taking of offense is ironic coming from a man who gum chews while at solemn occasions with foreign leaders, took selfies during the funeral ceremony for Nelson Mandela, handed Queen Elizabeth an iPod loaded with his own speeches as a gift from the American people, insults Indians for racism in their nation while on an official visit, sent the bust of Winston Churchill out the White House door, mistreated then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, accused Canada of being greedy for wanting to export their oil-and on and on.


For some reason, the White House routinely manufactures outrage when it comes to Israel (see How Obama is turning America Against Israel for other examples). 

So what has been the result of this manipulation, this appeal to people’s most base emotions? Arson and damage in Ferguson and elsewhere (usually in areas and among people who can least afford such wanton destruction).  Americans believe race relations have worsened under Barack Obama, and that is blowback from the onslaught of disparaging whites as racists and scapegoating them as the culprits behind problems afflicting the African-American community.  Obama and Democrats who have irresponsibly played the race card for political gain have poisoned race relations in America

The anti-police hysteria fomented by many Democrats, including New York City Mayor De Blasio (see Heather MacDonald’s superb “The Mayor who slandered the Police”), Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and Barack Obama, reached a fever pitch and led to the murder of two New York policemen.

In fact, in one area --and one area only -- has he tried to quell anger.  That would be any anger towards Islamic extremism.  In that no-go zone he has done his best to manufacture apathy or ignorance or willful blindness.  Why?

The good news is that Americans have finally begun to realize they have been manipulated.  Democrats manufacture outrage, but like most tools it has begun to wear out its usefulness.  Americans have learned that where there is smoke there is not necessarily fire -- in fact, it might just be smoke blown in our faces.
The resounding defeat of Democrats in November was a sign of better things to come, one hopes.
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2) To become UN Sec General Obama must 'Solve' the Existence of Israel.



Obama is basically a Marxist of the “Third World” variety, which means that he lives in the faith that some elite political minority can rule first the United States and Europe, and then the world. In Washington speculation is rife that the end of the Obama years is only the beginning of a run for UN Secretary General, a job he can fiddle into real power, using leftist and Muslim regimes from around the world to support him. Obama’s ambition runs his mind and his life. He can’t face the end of power.

After watching the man for almost a decade, this is the only ambition that makes sense of his actions. It explains his consistent favoritism for Muslims, no matter how radical or violent. It explains his surrender to Iran’s nukes, and his constant collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood, now in active civil war with Egypt’s President El Sisi. It explains his comfort with the medieval war theology of Islam, which is also a world-conquering faith.

Like all grandiose narcissists with uncontrollable ambitions, Obama figures he can somehow resolve all the internecine warfare between Shi’ites and Sunnis, between Persians and Arabs, Turks and Kurds, Copts and Salafists, and finally get all “the fifty-seven states” -- 57 is the number of Muslim states in the UN -- to vote for him as a messianic UN Secretary General.

At the UN General Assembly, Europe will vote for him because the Left runs the EU with an iron hand. The U.S. will vote for him when the next Democrat becomes president. Three hundred Obama staffers have already come out for Liz Warren, who will follow Obama’s orders when he runs for UN Sec General. South America will vote for him in the expectation of “redistribution” of wealth from developed nations to their utterly corrupt, failed regimes.

Israel is the only thing that stands in the way of Obama’s grandiose ambition. At least in his mind.
In the real world, of course, this is a delusion, because the Muslim world is riven by a hundred hatreds, Sunnis against Shi’ites, radicals against modernists, Arabs against Persians, on and on and on. If the phony Palestinian problem is solved tomorrow, Muslim wars will go on just as they have for more than a thousand years. The Saudis are more afraid of Iran than anybody else, because Iran wants to conquer Mecca and Medina in pursuit of its own war theology.

Obama and Jarrett -- they are a classic “folie a deux,” a two-person cult -- started the surrender to Iran at the start of this administration, while lying endless times about never permitting the mullahs to have nuclear weapons. But since 1979 the mullahs have been screaming every single day “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Liberals are cursed with a delusional inability to believe such threats, no matter how serious they are. Hitler made such threats. Tojo made such threats. Lenin and Stalin did. But history has no impact on liberal minds. Realists understand world-conquering threats all too well.

Israel has deep human sources in Iran, and understands that regime a lot better than we do. Our CIA has a perfect record of failing to predict hostile nuclear programs, starting with Stalin and going all the way to North Korea and Iran. The CIA does great electronic intelligence but notoriously bad human intelligence. Based on its sources in Iran, Israel takes the Iranian nuclear threat to be a clear and present danger to its existence. Iran preaches a genocidal war theology, just like ISIS and all the rest. The Saudis, who also understand the mullahs, also have deep human sources there, and also believe the nuclear threat is real.

Obama has personally abused and threatened Benjamin Netanyahu from the beginning of this administration. It hasn’t worked. Netanyahu is a man of conviction, and he’s faced tougher enemies on the battlefield than the biggest narcissist in the world.

We are seeing an unstoppable force gathering steam against an immovable object.

That is the real nature of today’s argument about Netanyahu’s desire to speak to the U.S. Congress, and Obama’s rage against any opposition to his nuclear surrender. Netanyahu sees his chance to talk to Congress and the American people as the last chance to stop suicidal appeasement to a fanatical regime that preaches suicidal warfare against its theological enemies. Obama is bound and determined to surrender to Iranian nukes, because that will give him the power to force Israel’s hand. The Iranian Crescent now surrounds Israel, and it directly threatens Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well. Obama’s every action has been designed to weaken Israel’s sovereignty, in collusion with the European Left, which just recognized Hamas as having standing at the European court in Geneva.
If Netanyahu can convince Congress and the American people that surrender to Iran is suicidal, he may be able to stop Obama’s appeasement express. He has to take the chance of infuriating Obama, because the alternative is the risk of genocide for his people. Netanyahu is a serious man.

The next few weeks will tell. Watch for fireworks, and watch for Obama’s famous rage to explode in public.
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3)5 Plunging Numbers That Explain the World This Week
By Ian Brimmer

From Greek bond rates to Indonesian approval numbers, these figures tell the story of an unstable world





There’s a huge difference between the current Greek crisis and previous cycles of panic: today bond markets are treating the Greek economy as an isolated patient, swatting away notions of contagion risk to other periphery countries. The numbers tell the story. In the wake of the anti-austerity party Syriza’s victory in Greek elections last month, Spain’s 10-year yield fell to new record-breaking lows, closing at a staggering 1.38% at one point last week. That means Spain can borrow at better rates than the thriving United States. Compare that to Greece’s 10-year yield, which shot above 11% in the days after Syriza took office.
2. -30% Approval

Expectations for Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo were sky-high when he was elected last summer. (He even graced the cover of this publication in October with the headline “A New Hope.”) But his recent nominee for police chief is a former aide to party powerbroker and ex-president Megawati Sukarnoputri, raising concerns about her influence over the supposedly independent Joko. Just days after the announcement, police chief nominee was named as a suspect in a corruption probe. Joko’s decision to trim fuel subsidies in November was lauded by investors; after all, between 2009 and 2013, Indonesia spent more on such subsidies than it did on social welfare programs and infrastructure put together. But it’s no surprise that a hike in fuel prices didn’t go over as well with the general population. According to an opinion poll by LSI, Joko’s approval rating has dropped 30 points—from 72% in August to just 42% in January.

3. -$58 per barrel

The price of Venezuelan oil collapsed from $96 in September to $38 last month. That’s not a good thing in a country where oil exports provide more than 95% of foreign exchange. Venezuela needs that hard currency—more than 70% of its consumer goods are imported. Things are getting bleaker. The International Monetary Fund predicts an economic contraction this year of as much as 7% of GDP. Inflation is over 60%. And an economic perk is coming under threat: Venezuelans enjoy the world’s cheapest gasoline, paying the heavily subsidized rate of roughly $0.06 per gallon. This provision costs the government more than $12 billion a year. In a recent speech, President Nicolas Maduro declared, “You can crucify me if you want, but there’s a need for us to go to a balanced price.” Given all the economic woes and the President’s tanking approval ratings, it’s definitely not the easiest time to rake back this subsidy.

4. -$500,000,000 in military aid

With ISIS rampaging across Iraq and Syria—and Houthi rebels seizing the capital of Yemen and pushing that country into civil war—Saudi Arabia is accelerating its plans to wall itself off from volatile neighbors. In September, the Saudis began construction on a 600-mile wall along the border with Iraq. To the south, they are strengthening fortifications to keep unwanted visitors from breaching the 1,060-mile border with Yemen. Border guards told a CNN correspondent that in just the last three months, they have stopped 42,000 people from crossing a 500-mile section of the border. It’s not just about security—it’s also economic. As of 2013, Saudi citizens represented just 43% of the country’s workers—and only some 15% of the private sector—with the rest consisting of foreign workers. With youth unemployment at around 40% in Yemen, many try to cross in search of work. But even as the spending spree on security continues, the Saudi Kingdom is halting most of its financial aid for Yemen, fearful it could fall into Houthi hands. According to a Yemeni official, the Saudis recently refused to pay $500 million earmarked for military aid.

5. -$61,000,000,000 … and -16%

They’re the group of Russians best equipped to weather hard times, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling the burn. In 2014, the 21 wealthiest people in Russia lost a combined $61 billion—a quarter of their net fortune. Those who aren’t losing money are removing it: 2014’s net outflows by companies and banks topped $150 billion. That’s more than double the 2013 figure, and shatters the old record from ’08, amidst the financial crisis. The IMF expects the Russian economy to contract 3.5% in 2015. At least Russians can express their dismay while drinking more affordable liquor: this week, Moscow passed a new measure cutting the minimum price of a bottle of vodka by 16%.
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5)IEA See Energy Price Rise as Inevitable

Watchdog sees weaker demand from emerging countries capping rebound in prices.
The rally that lifted crude oil prices by more than 25% from their January stalled as the International Energy Agency warned that there will be no return to the boom-time days for at least five years.
The watchdog, which monitors trends in the global energy market on behalf of consumer nations, said in a new report Tuesday that the market will exit its current glut “relatively swiftly” but warned that the rebalancing would be ” comparatively limited in scope.” As such, it said, prices will stabilize “substantially below the highs of the last three years.”

The central assumptions in the IEA’s new forecasts are for crude prices to average $55/bbl this year, rising to $62/bbl next year, but then only rising another $11/bbl to an average of in $73/bbl 2020.


A whole new world. The IEA predicts a "relatively swift" but far from complete rebound for oil.
A whole new world. The IEA predicts a “relatively swift” but far from complete rebound for oil.


Benchmark crude futures fell by over 1.5% in response to the report but later recovered some of their declines. By lunchtime in Europe Tuesday, they were down 66c at $52.21 a barrel.

The IEA’s new assumptions, if they pan out, will basically rip up the internal accounting of many of the world’s oil producers, and of the governments behind them that depend on their revenues. Many had assumed that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would always support prices at or around $100/bbl, until the cartel abruptly changed course in November, triggering a global price war in an effort to defend its market share.

Companies like BP Plc  BP 1.07%  have tended to take their investment decisions on a basis of whether projects would make money at a price of $80/bbl. BP and many others have announced massive cuts in spending in recent weeks, cuts that analyst say will take a lot of the world’s more expensive oil off the market.

The IEA said two fundamental changes on both the supply and demand sides of the equation meant that “this time will be different.” On the supply side, it said it expects output from North American shale oil to continue growing, albeit at a slower rate than in recent years.

One positive side effect of the expanded role of shale oil is that the IEA expects the volatility of oil prices to subside in the coming years, because the shale industry is uniquely well placed to react quickly to price signals.

One the demand side, the IEA said, there has been a profound structural slowdown in growth due to a number of factors that add up to one big one: the world economy just doesn’t need as much oil to generate the same amount of growth as it used to.

The biggest single factor behind that is the rise of renewable sources of energy, especially in Emerging Markets, which has accounted for almost of the incremental rise in global demand over the last 25 years.

“Renewables and natural gas are increasingly price-competitive against oil and coal in emerging markets and will continue to encroach – whether directly or indirectly – on oil consumption,” the IEA said, pointing in particular to China’s pressing need to cut air pollution and its “de-emphasis” of fuel-intensive manufacturing to generate growth

By 2020, the IEA estimates the world will be burning an average of 99.05 million barrels a day, up from 92.4 million b/d last year. It expects countries outside OPEC to satisfy nearly half of that, and within OPEC, it expects Iraq–whose output hit a 25-year high of 3.7 million barrels a day last year–to raise its production still further.

By contrast, the IEA expects output from Russia, to fall by over 5% between now and 2020 due the combined effect of lower prices and sanctions, which it said will limit investment in the country’s oil sector.
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6)Iran: The ‘Americans Are Begging Us for a Deal’
By Adam Kredo, The FREE BEACON

REZAA top Iranian military leader claims that U.S. officials have been “begging us” to sign a nuclear deal during closed door negotiations with Tehran over its contested nuclear program, according to recent comments made to the Iranian state-controlled media.
Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij, a paramilitary group operating under the wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), recently claimed that the “Americans are begging us for a deal on the negotiation table,” according to comments published in Persian and independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.
Naghdi added that American officials routinely “plea” with Iran in talks and that the United States is negotiating from a position of weakness, according to his comments, which follow earlier reports claiming that Iran’s leading negotiator “frequently shouts” at U.S. officials.
The military leader’s remarks appear to jibe with new reports that the United States is conceding ground to Iran in talks and will now allow it to “keep much of its uranium-enriching technology,” according to the Associated Press.
Iran, the AP reported, “refuses to meet U.S.-led demands for deep cuts in the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium, a process that can create material for anything from chemotherapy to the core of an atomic bomb.”
Regional experts say that the Iranians feel that they are in a position of power in the talks and believe that the Obama administration is desperate to ink a deal.
“Iran feels the administration needs the deal, and this belief is supported by the way the administration is acting,” said Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iranian dissident and associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
America’s “hostility toward its traditional allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, is at its historical peak and the Obama administration either supports Iran to expand its influence in the region or at least does not oppose it at all,” Ghasseminejad explained. “Iran feels as long as the negotiation is going on, it has a green light to do whatever it wants in the region, so why should they bother to sign a deal?”
Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said a bad nuclear deal would endanger the security of America and its allies.
“The Iranian terror state continues to show its true nature as it sidesteps the international sanctions regime during negotiations, and expands its threat into Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Worse, the administration’s reported nuclear concessions to Ayatollah Khamenei will only keep Iran at the threshold of getting nuclear bombs. A bad nuclear deal will further empower Iran and endanger the security of America, Israel, and other allies in the Middle East.”
As the nuclear talks continue, Iranian leaders have stepped up their rhetoric against the United States, with top officials declaring that “Iran prepares itself for war with global powers.”
Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of the IRGC, celebrated a recent attack on Israel by the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah and promised that Tehran is readying itself to go to war with America.
“Iran prepares itself for war with global powers, and the Israeli’s are much smaller than them,” Salami was quoted as saying by the state-controlled Fars New Agency (FNA).
“The response of Hezbollah to the Zionist regime shows a quick reaction, clear will, and their iron-like strength, resistance, and power,” he added.
Salami also reiterated Iran’s commitment to fund and arm Palestinian terror groups.
“Opening up a new front across the West Bank, which is a major section of our dear Palestine, will be certainly on the agenda, and this is part of a new reality that will gradually emerge,” Salami said in a recent television interview.
Similar remarks were made by Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC’s commander, who celebrated Hezbollah’s “martyrdom” and vowed that the “fight against Zionists would not be brought to a halt.”
While U.S. officials have claimed multiple times in recent months that progress is being made in the talks, Iranian officials deny that this is the case.
Abbas Araqchi, a top Iranian negotiator, said in recent days that it is too early to say that progress has been made.
“We still are not in a position where we can say we have had progress,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by the FNA. “It is still too early to judge.”
  
“If the counterpart shows realism, political resolve, and good will, we believe we are not so far from reaching an agreement,” he said.
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7)--

Russia's Putin, Egypt's el-Sisi agree on preliminary nuclear power deal



Cairo (CNN)Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a preliminary agreement to cooperate on building a nuclear power plant after meeting Tuesday in Cairo.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Putin focused on economic cooperation, saying there was an 80% increase in trade between the two countries last year.
He said Russia would contribute to the construction of a nuclear power plant, training staff and scientific research.
El-Sisi covered both economic and political cooperation in his remarks.
The Egyptian President said he had stressed the importance of "military cooperation" to his Russian counterpart and the continuation of "strategic relations" and high-level meetings to discuss regional issues.
He said both sides were in agreement on the importance of standing together to fight terrorism.
    "I agreed with the Russian President that the terrorism challenge Egypt is facing knows no borders," he said.
    The battle against terrorism isn't only on the security front, el-Sisi said, but also includes addressing the ideological and social foundation of extremism.
    In discussions on regional issues, el-Sisi said he had stressed the need for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as well as threats to the sovereignty of Libya and the unity of both Iraq and Yemen.
    Both leaders discussed reaching a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis, including a meeting for all sides involved, he said.
    "We agreed on the need of the world to come up with a more democratic and just system," el-Sisi said.
    Putin's sole mention of political cooperation was on the subject of Syria.
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