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Our grandson, Kevin Trager, is a TV reporter for Gannet's NBC affiliate in Little Rock Arkansas. Yesterday Kevin’s story made the front page of USA Today website.. Go Kevin!
http://www.usatoday.com/
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More blood on Holder and Obama's hands. By stirring up racial discord what you get is anarchy. Perhaps that is their goal ? (See 1 below.)
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Russia's option in the Ukraine. (See 2 below.)
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Neeman - Iran is the enemy!
Don't trust Congress only our monarch! (See 3 and 3a below.)
Whither the Ayatollah? (See 3b below.)
Sisi is no sissy so Obama dissed him as he has Netanyahu. (See 3c below.)
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Dick
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1)Two Police Officers Shot in Ferguson
Two officers were shot in front of the Ferguson Police Department early Thursday, authorities said, as demonstrators gathered after the resignation of the city's police chief in the wake of a scathing Justice Department report alleging bias in the police department and court.
Planners must also consider the force needed to deal with a potential insurgency from the population, which becomes decidedly less pro-Russia outside of the Donbas territories. Counterinsurgency force structure size is generally based on the size of the population and level of resistance expected. This naturally leads to a much wider variance in estimates. In this scenario, a compliant populace would require a force of only around 4,200 troops, while an extreme insurgency could spike that number to 42,000. In this particular case, no extreme insurgency is expected, as it would be in cities such as Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv or Kiev. The defensive force could overlap with the counterinsurgency force to some degree if there were no external threat, but if such a threat existed the forces would have to be separate, potentially doubling the manpower required to secure the territory.A 32-year-old officer from nearby Webster Groves was shot in the face and a 41-year-old officer from St. Louis County was shot in the shoulder, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said at a news conference. Both were taken to a hospital, where Belmar said they were conscious. He said he did not have further details about their conditions but described their injuries as "serious."
"I don't know who did the shooting, to be honest with you," Belmar said, adding that he could not provide a description of the suspect or gun.
He said his "assumption" was that, based on where the officers were standing and the trajectory of the bullets, "these shots were directed exactly at my officers."
The protest was a familiar scene in Ferguson, which saw similar and much larger demonstrations after the shooting death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown last summer by city police officer Darren Wilson. When Wilson, who is white, was cleared in November by a state grand jury, the decision set off further protests, looting and fires. But Wednesday was the first time an officer at a
protest had been shot.
Marciay Pitchford, 20, was among the protesters outside the police department. She told The Associated Press the protest had been mostly peaceful until she heard the shots ring out.
"I saw the officer go down and the other police officers drew their guns while other officers dragged the injured officer away," Pitchford said. "All of a sudden everybody started running or dropping to the ground."
Belmar said the shots were fired from across the street from the police department.
Jackson was the sixth employee to resign or be fired after a Justice Department report last week cleared Wilson of civil rights charges in the shooting. Wilson has since resigned. A separate Justice Department report released the same day found a profit-driven court system and widespread racial bias in the city police department.
Mayor James Knowles III announced Wednesday that the city had reached a mutual separation agreement with Jackson that will pay Jackson one year of his nearly $96,000 annual salary and health coverage. Jackson's resignation becomes effective March 19, at which point Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff will become acting chief while the city searches for a replacement.
Jackson had previously resisted calls by protesters and some of Missouri's top elected leaders to step down over his handling of Brown's shooting and the weeks of protests that followed. He was widely criticized from the outset, both for an aggressive police response to protesters and for his agency's erratic and infrequent releases of key information.
He took nearly a week to publicly identify Wilson as the shooter and then further heightened tension in the community by releasing Wilson's name at the same time as store security video that police said showed Brown stealing a box of cigars and shoving a clerk only a short time before his death.
During a 12-minute news conference, Knowles said Jackson resigned after "a lot of soul-searching" about how the community could heal from the racial unrest stemming from the fatal shooting last summer.
"The chief is the kind of honorable man you don't have to go to," Knowles said. "He comes to you when he knows that this is something we have to seriously discuss."
Jackson oversaw the Ferguson force for nearly five years before the shooting that stirred months of unrest across the St. Louis region and drew global attention to the predominantly black city of 21,000.
In addition to Jackson, Ferguson's court clerk was fired last week and two police officers resigned. The judge who oversaw the court system also resigned, and the City Council on Tuesday agreed to a separation agreement with Shaw, the city manager.
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2) http://bcove.me/g49ykcaw
Gaming a Russian Offensive
Summary
Russia's current military position in Ukraine is very exposed and has come at a great cost relative to its limited political gains. The strategic bastion of Crimea is defensible as an island but is subject to potential isolation. The position of Ukrainian separatists and their Russian backers in eastern Ukraine is essentially a large bulge that will require heavy military investment to secure, and it has not necessarily helped Moscow achieve its larger imperative of creating defensible borders. This raises the question of whether Russia will take further military action to secure its interests in Ukraine.
To answer this question, Stratfor examined six basic military options that Russia might consider in addressing its security concerns in Ukraine, ranging from small harassment operations to an all-out invasion of eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper River. We then assessed the likely time and forces required to conduct these operations in order to determine the overall effort and costs required, and the Russian military's ability to execute each operation. In order to get a baseline assessment for operations under current conditions, we initially assumed in looking at these scenarios that the only opponent would be Ukrainian forces already involved in the conflict.
Analysis
One of the most discussed options is a Russian drive along Ukraine's southern coast in order to link up Crimea with separatist positions in eastern Ukraine. For this scenario, we assumed that planners would make the front broad enough to secure Crimea's primary water supply, sourced from the Dnieper, and that the defensive lines would be anchored as much as possible on the river, the only defensible terrain feature in the region. This would in effect create a land bridge to secure supply lines into Crimea and prevent any future isolation of the peninsula. Russia would have to drive more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) into an area encompassing 46,620 square kilometers, establish more than 450 kilometers of new defensive lines, and subdue a population of 2 million.
Taking this territory against the current opposition in Ukraine would require a force of around 24,000-36,000 personnel over six to 14 days. For defensive purposes, Russian planners would have to recognize the risk of NATO coming to Kiev's assistance. Were that to happen, Russia would have to expand the defensive force to 40,000-55,000 troops to hold the territory.
A similar scenario that has been considered is the seizing of the entire southern coast of Ukraine in order to connect Russia and its security forces in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transdniestria to Crimea. The logic goes that this would cripple Kiev by cutting off access to the Black Sea and would secure all of Russia's interests in the region in a continual arc. In terms of effort required, Russia essentially would be doubling the land bridge option. It would require an attacking force of 40,000-60,000 troops driving almost 645 kilometers to seize territory encompassing 103,600 square kilometers over 23-28 days. The required defensive force would number 80,000-112,000. This would also add a complicated and dangerous bridging operation over a large river. Moreover, the population in this region is approximately 6 million, necessitating 13,200-120,000 counterinsurgency troops.
These first two scenarios have a serious flaw in that they involve extremely exposed positions.
Extended positions over relatively flat terrain — bisected by a river in one scenario — are costly to hold, if they can be defended at all against a concerted attack by a modern military force. Supply lines would also be very long throughout the area and, in the scenario that extends beyond the Dnieper River, rely on bridging operations across a major river.
A third scenario would involve Russia taking all of eastern Ukraine up to the Dnieper and using the river as a defensive front line. When it comes to defending the captured territory, this scenario makes the most sense. The Dnieper is very wide in most places, with few crossings and few sites suitable for tactical bridging operations, meaning defending forces can focus on certain chokepoints. This is the most sensible option for Russia if it wants to take military action and prepare a defensive position anchored on solid terrain.
However, this operation would be a massive military undertaking. The force required to seize this area — approximately 222,740 square kilometers — and defeat the opposition there would need to number 91,000-135,000 troops and advance as much as 402 kilometers. Since the river could bolster defensive capabilities, the defensive force could remain roughly the same size as the attacking force. However, with a population of 13 million in the area, the additional troops that might be required for the counterinsurgency force could range from 28,000-260,000. Russia has approximately 280,000 ground troops, meaning that the initial drive would tie down a substantial part of the Russian military and that an intense insurgency could threaten Russia's ability to occupy the area even if it deployed all of its ground forces within Ukraine.
One positive aspect would be that this operation would take only 11-14 days to execute, even though it involves seizing a large area, because Russia could advance along multiple routes. On the other hand, the operation would require such a vast mobilization effort and retasking of Russian security forces that Moscow's intent would be detectable and would alarm Europe and the United States early on.
Two remaining options that we examined were variations on previous themes in an effort to see if Russia could launch more limited operations, using fewer resources, to address similar security imperatives. For example, we considered Russia taking only the southern half of eastern Ukraine in an effort to use decidedly less combat power, but this left the Russians with an exposed flank and removed the security of the Dnieper. Similarly, a small expansion of current separatist lines to the north to incorporate the remainder of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to make the territory more self-sustaining was considered. Both operations are quite executable but gain little in the grand scheme.
The final scenario we considered was the most limited. It involved Russia conducting small temporary incursions along the entirety of its border with Ukraine in an effort to threaten various key objectives in the region and thus spread Ukraine's combat power as thin as possible. This would be efficient and effective for the Russian military in terms of the effort required. It could accomplish some small political and security objectives, such as drawing Ukrainian forces away from the current line of contact, generally distracting Kiev, or increasing the sense of emergency there, making the Ukrainians believe Russia would launch a full invasion if Kiev did not comply.
For all of the scenarios considered, the findings were consistent: All are technically possible for the Russian military, but all have serious drawbacks. Not one of these options can meet security or political objectives through limited or reasonable means. This conclusion does not preclude these scenarios for Russian decision makers, but it does illuminate the broader cost-benefit analysis leaders undertake when weighing future actions. No theoretical modeling can accurately predict the outcome of a war, but it can give leaders an idea of what action to take or whether to take action at all.
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3)Netanyahu: Iran is "the enemy"
By Yisrael Ne'eman
In summing up Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress at the beginning of the month, the most noteworthy phrase is "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy." Netanyahu was referring to the fact that the Obama Administration appears to be moving closer to Iran and a nuclear arms deal because Tehran is willing to do battle against the Islamic State and other fanatical Sunni Jihadi regimes or organizations. In this he correctly represented the majority of Israelis. Unfortunately much of the impact was lost because of the divisiveness caused by the timing (two weeks before the Israeli elections), lack of coordination with the mainstream Israeli political parties and the clash with the Obama Administration.
It is imperative that this point of Iranian enmity be well taken, internalized by all – especially in the West, and acted upon. Shiite Khomeinist Iran demands Israel's demise and must be taken at its word when saying so. Furthermore, the Sunni Muslim World, Arab or otherwise is an immediate primary target, as is Europe with all of its Islamic issues. America remains the "Great Satan" and Israel retains "Little Satan" status.
Iran in many ways is no better than the Islamic State. True, there are no public burnings or beheadings but there are still public hangings in Tehran. The Iranians are battling on several fronts. Foremost is Iran's Syrian ally where chemical weapons and barrel bombs are indiscriminately dropped by the Assad regime on its own civilian population. The Iranian proxy Shiite Hezbollah militia controls and enforces its control over much of Lebanon while stockpiling approximately 100,000 rockets, usually in civilian areas, for future use against Israel. The idea is to turn Lebanon into a massive human shield hostage if and most likely when a decision will be made to open a front against Israel. In Yemen the pro-Iranian Houthi overthrow of the legitimate government is causing havoc in the strategically important Bab el-Mandeb Straits region at the southern tip of the Red Sea. Yemen is moving towards civil war enhancing Iranian influence throughout the southwest Arabian Peninsula. In Gaza Iran aids Hamas through weapons procurement and endangers not only Israel but Egypt and the more moderate Sunni states. Add to this the Iranian domination of Iraq and the projection of force against the Arab Sunni Gulf states.
Iran has a ballistic missile system capable of hitting not only Israel but Europe. None of this should come as a surprise. The Islamic leadership in Iran makes clear their intentions to become a regional power and should be taken at their word. Their Islamist ideology demands an eventual global reach as well. One can expect that with the defeat of the Islamic State Iran will emerge as the dominant power in the Middle East. Realizing there is a power vacuum in the Muslim world Washington is seeking a rapprochement with Tehran for use in the future. The hope is to curtail Iranian nuclear aspirations – for the moment, while possibly gaining an ally in the future. Israeli concerns are an obstacle in the equation. The idea is that the US will guarantee Israel's security and that the Iranians will be deterred from attacking Israel despite theological and ideological imperatives to the contrary. Policy makers in Washington are depending on a rationalist approach in Tehran, not one dictated by an extremist Islamic interpretation.
The Obama Administration from the outset of its foreign policy initiatives in 2009 made it clear their intentions to bridge gaps between the West and Christendom and the Islamic World. Today this includes buying time with a ten year moratorium before Iran can break out to become a nuclear power. The hope is for the rise of a moderate Iranian regime in ten years but no can count out an extremist regime either. Obama is willing to realign American foreign policy towards Iran in the hope of bringing about a shift towards moderation in Tehran. This is risky business leaving the Gulf States and Israel increasingly vulnerable. The immediate gain for the US and its allies comes with Iranian military activism against the Islamic State through its Syrian and Iraqi proxies. The US and Europe are understandably war weary; the Iranians know this and are demanding a price for their intervention against the Islamic State. The price is deferred for a decade and will be paid when Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state. The next crisis surfaces in the second act (or quite possibly before) when Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab states face Iran in 2025.
Somehow Iran is expected to bring stability to the Middle East. Defeating the Islamic State is of enormous significance. The fact that Western and Iranian interests may coincide temporarily does not mean Tehran will accept the legitimacy of all states in the region, particularly Israel. Netanyahu is inferring that any endgame scenario must include the right of existence for all states in the region, meaning the legitimacy of the Jewish State must be ensured. Until then Iran is an enemy.
Somehow placating Iran appears to be part of an overall American global realignment where Israel is not necessarily meant to be abandoned. Unfortunately peace overtures to Iran are more important as the first step in a rapprochement between the West and this Shiite form of radical Islam. As we know from chess, it may not be intentional, but to "win" the game a player may need to sacrifice a piece or two. To make matters worse for the West there is no point of "Game Over." In a decade from now it is most likely that the world will be no less threatened by Islamic extremism (including the Iranian Shiite type) than it is today.
3a)The Nuclear Deal
The Senators Are Right on Iran
Walter Russell Mead & Nicholas M. Gallagher
Put not your faith in Presidents—unless you get a Congressional say-so.
Forty-seven Republican Senators sent an open letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran warning him that a nuclear deal with President Obama will not survive his term in office. The letter is likely to set off a fight between the branches over the most contentious foreign policy debate of the day. Writing in Bloomberg View, Josh Rogin reports:
Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber’s entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.
“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
The Senators have been taking a lot of heat for this, and it is certainly a strong step. For fans of President Obama and/or his approach to Iran, the letter seems to be a gratuitous piece of mischief. One can certainly question the timing of the letter, and it probably ought to have been addressed to President Obama rather than to the Supreme Leader of Iran as a matter of form, but what the Senators say in the letter is, as a matter of both politics and law, correct. Unless President Obama takes a treaty to the Senate and gets it ratified, he has no power to bind Congress or future Presidents to an agreement with Iran.
(Incidentally, the Senators are probably also correct in assuming the Iranians don’t fully grasp America’s separation of powers. Peter Baker of the New York Times reports that Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javid Zarif, released a statement arguing the agreement would be binding no matter what: “Mr. Zarif added that a change in administration would not relieve the United States of its obligations under any agreement. “I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law,” he said.” Mr. Zarif doesn’t know very much about how the American system works, it would appear, and the Senate will not appreciate his lecture.)
The classic case of a Congress voting to override a presidential assurance to a foreign leader came in 1975. When President Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in 1972, the spirit and letter of the agreement guaranteed South Vietnam’s independence; what’s more, President Nixon promised Nguyen Van Thieu, President of South Vietnam at the time, that the United States would come to the South’s rescue if the North broke the agreement and attacked. But the PPA was not a treaty, and the Senate did not ratify it. Nixon was later forced to resign because of his role in the Watergate scandal, and in early 1975 North Vietnam attacked the South. President Ford, seeking to honor both the spirit of President Nixon’s signature to the Paris Peace Accords and his promise to Thieu, asked Congress for money for military aid for South Vietnam.
With overwhelming Democratic support, Congress refused to provide aid and South Vietnam went down the tubes. As the embittered Thieu said in a final address as his country collapsed, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis. But the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days? The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men.”
One can agree or disagree with Congress’ decision in that case, but there is no doubt that Congress had every right and even a duty to consider the matter of aid to South Vietnam for itself. Just because Nixon wrote Thieu that, as quoted by Richard Holbrooke in The New Republic, “You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action,” did not mean that Congress was bound by these empty words. Nor did the promise of independence in the PPA create a US treaty obligation.
In 1975, South Vietnam was going down in flames and the Ford Administration was fighting to get aid from Congress. In the process, it suggested strongly that Congress was bound to honor what were essentially a series of formal and informal executive undertakings in foreign policy. Senator Jackson took on the Administration’s claims that the United States was bound by Nixon’s promise to support South Vietnam:
Jackson said the Ford administration had intimated that Congress had reneged on “commitments” and “obligations” to the Saigon government. “The fact is,” he continued, “that Congress is being accused of violating commitments and obligations it never heard of…. I call upon the President now to make public and to provide to Congress all documents embodying or reflecting these secret agreements…. We in the Congress cannot play our constitutional role in constructing a coherent foreign policy so long as information to which we are entitled is kept from us.”The White House responded in a statement issued April 9 that former President Nixon had assured South Vietnamese President Thieu in private correspondence that the United States would “react vigorously to major violations” of the Paris peace accords. The “confidential exchanges” between Thieu and Nixon did not differ in substance from what was stated publicly when the accords were signed in January 1973, the statement said, when the U.S. intentions to provide adequate economic and military assistance and to enforce the Paris agreements “were stated clearly and publicly by President Nixon.”
In the final House vote on military aid, 90 Republicans and 46 Democrats voted to uphold Nixon’s agreements with Thieu; 46 Republicans and 200 Democrats voted to repudiate them.
Here at TAI, we still don’t know whether we will support any agreement that the President may reach with Iran. As we’ve said many times, we think a strong nuclear agreement with Iran is preferable to the alternative courses; the choice between military action against Iran or accepting an Iranian bomb does not fill us with joy. On the other hand, we agree with those who think there are some solid questions that need clear answers before a deal can be endorsed. But whether we agree or disagree with what the President ultimately does here is not as important as the reality that President Obama is no more able than President Nixon was to bind his successors, or Congress, on a matter of this importance.
Suppose back in 2008 President George W. Bush had wanted to tie Barack Obama’s hands in Iraq. Did President Bush have the legal authority to sign an agreement with the Prime Minister of Iraq promising that the United States would keep 100,000 troops in his country for twenty years no matter what his successors or future Congresses might think? He clearly did not, and Congress would have rightly considered such an agreement an abuse of Presidential authority and have treated it as non-binding.
The Constitutional problem therefore isn’t that Congress is trying to micromanage the President; the problem is that the President is trying an end run around Congress on a matter of the greatest importance. President Obama has the right to conduct whatever policy he wishes towards Iran as long as he stays within the bounds of American law; he cannot, however, bind future Presidents and Congresses unless the legislative branch weighs in. Writing a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran might not have been the best or the most tactful way to make the point, but Senators have an obligation to their institution and to the Constitution to uphold their right to review long term international commitments made in America’s name.
The best way out of the potential deadlock would be for the President and the Secretary of State to work directly with key Senators who can command the support of the GOP caucus and work to meet their objections. Historians fault President Wilson for failing to bring Republican Senators with him to the negotiating sessions in Versailles and working with people like Lodge (who was anything but isolationist) to find an approach to the Treaty that they could support. People praise Truman for reaching out and working with key Republicans to get their support for the Marshall Plan.
We note that Senator Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and no stranger to criticisms of the administration’s Iran policy, has not signed Senator Cotton’s letter. If the White House is smart, it will take the opportunity to work with Corker and other important Republicans to reach some kind of bipartisan agreement on Iran policy. President Obama may complain that this means that he can’t get the Iran policy he wants; that may be true, and it may be as bad a thing as the President fears, but that isn’t the point. American presidential powers have their limits, and President Obama can’t bind the future without congressional buy-in.
Republicans like Senator Corker and Senator Cotton are neither stupid nor malicious. Both men are serious figures who take their responsibilities seriously. We don’t need a Congress that is continually gumming up the foreign policy works by intervening on every little negotiation, but a prospective nuclear deal with Iran is one of the most important questions that the nation faces. Nothing about our Constitutional system says that the executive should have a free hand to reach an agreement that binds the whole country on a matter like this without congressional concurrence. To blame the Senate for the possibility of a constitutional train wreck is to blame the victim; it is the responsibility of the President to go to Congress on a matter of this kind.
Walter Russell Mead is editor-at-large of The American Interest and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College. Nicholas M. Gallagher is staff writer at The American Interest.
3b)The ayatollah in winter
A dying jihadi ponders his ‘holy mission’
Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
T he Lord works in mysterious ways. That sentence does not appear in the Koran. Nor, actually, is it found in the Bible. But in recent days it has probably occurred to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.
On the one hand, he is reportedly suffering from cancer, an advanced stage. On the other hand, he is tantalizing close to winning battles he has been fighting for more than a quarter-century, since he assumed the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, charismatic leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Most significant: His negotiators appear to be on the brink of concluding a deal with President Obama, who plans to suspend economic sanctions without congressional input (although the most onerous sanctions can be terminated only by Congress) and, in effect, guarantee Iran the right to possess nuclear weapons in the not-too-distant future.
In exchange, he is not being required to dismantle his illicit nuclear weapons program or stop sponsoring terrorism. He is only being asked to slow-walk the program. What if he agrees and then violates the agreement and the Americans find out? I doubt that worries him.
“I am not a diplomat. I am a revolutionary,” the supreme leader said two years ago. Paradoxically, that may be among the reasons Iranian diplomacy has been so effective. He drew red lines and wouldn’t move them. By contrast, his American and European enemies — he does not view them as “negotiating partners” — displayed flexibility in pursuit of “conflict resolution.” You might call this asymmetric diplomacy.
It has been obvious that Mr. Obama — who began writing letters to him in 2009 — was more eager than he to conclude a deal; more fearful of what might follow should the talks collapse. Over time, the American president’s definition of success grew modest: It would suffice to end up with a piece of paper that the naive could believe guarantees peace for our time — our time being roughly 10 years, when a “sunset” clause in the pending agreement kicks in and most restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program vanish.
During the course of the negotiations, Ayatollah Khamenei must have been encouraged — if not surprised — to find that nothing he and his deputies did provoked the Americans. For example, last year Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif placed a wreath on the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah leader believed responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that together killed 268 Americans, as well as attacks in the 1990s on the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 114.
This past weekend, Iran announced a new surface-to-surface cruise missile system, an important addition to its arsenal of long-range rockets. Research continues on intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads to American targets. And earlier this month, Iranian forces destroyed a replica U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s petroleum passes. A general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the exercise was intended to send a “message.”
Mr. Obama’s messages have been rather different. He has been instructing Congress not to pass legislation mandating additional sanctions in the event Iranian intransigence continues. Last week, Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator most adamant about stopping the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons, was accused of corruption by Mr. Obama’s Justice Department.
I suspect the supreme leader is clever enough to appreciate how lucky he has been to have America as his enemy. President George W. Bush took on the task of deposing Iran’s nemesis, Saddam Hussein. That achieved, Iraq might have been transformed into a U.S. ally, providing the Americans with a permanent military base right next door and in the heart of the Arab Middle East.
Mr. Obama chose instead to withdraw U.S. troops — essentially inviting the supreme leader to step in, which he did, supporting Iraq’s Shiites and the suppression of Iraq’s Sunnis. One consequence: the growth of the Islamic State, a Sunni jihadi movement and rival to the Islamic republic. The United States is helping confront the Islamic State — which means the U.S. is assisting Iranian-backed Shiite militias similar to the ones that a few years ago were killing American troops in Iraq.
Thanks to the supreme leader’s bold policies, Iran is now the dominant power in four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sana’a. Hamas, which rules Gaza, maintains close ties to Tehran, which sends weapons when it can. For example, in March 2014 the Israeli navy stopped a commercial ship called the Klos-C, which was filled with Syrian long-range rockets.
Israel, along with America’s Arab allies in the region, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, worry that Mr. Obama means to form a de facto alliance with Iran — one that could be maintained only at their expense. That may bring a smile to the lips of the supreme leader.
Perhaps the smile fades, though, as he ponders this irony: He has given his life to what Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iranian dissident in exile and a colleague of mine at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calls “a holy mission.” Like Moses, he has led his followers to the Promised Land — a land not of milk and honey but of power and glory. Also like Moses, he may not be able to accompany them on the final journey. Western intelligence sources quoted by the French newspaper Le Figaro estimate the 75-year-old cleric has no more than “two years left to live.”
Yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways. But a man of faith accepts that, counts his blessings, and submits to the Divine Will.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.
3c)
In a Middle East where Islamist terror groups and the Iranian regime and its allies have been on the offensive in recent years, the one bright spot for the West in the region (other, that is, than Israel) is the way Egypt has returned to its old role as a bulwark of moderation and opposition to extremism. The current government led by former general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has clamped down on Hamas terrorists and has been willing to deploy its armed forces to fight ISIS in Libya while also clamping down on a Muslim Brotherhood movement that seeks to transform Egypt into another Islamist state. Yet despite this, the Obama administration is unhappy with Egypt. Much to Cairo’s consternation, the United States is squeezing its government on the military aid it needs to fight ISIS in Libya and Sinai terrorists. As the Israeli government has already learned to its sorrow, the Egyptians now understand that being an ally of the United States is a lot less comfortable position than to be a foe like Iran.
The ostensible reason for the holdup in aid is that the Egyptian government is a human-rights violator. Those concerns are accurate. Sisi’s government has been ruthless in cracking down on the same Muslim Brotherhood faction that was running the country until a popular coup brought it down in the summer of 2013. But contrary to the illusions of an Obama administration that hastened the fall of Hosni Mubarak and then foolishly embraced his Muslim Brotherhood successors, democracy was never one of the available options in Egypt.
Planners must also consider the force needed to deal with a potential insurgency from the population, which becomes decidedly less pro-Russia outside of the Donbas territories. Counterinsurgency force structure size is generally based on the size of the population and level of resistance expected. This naturally leads to a much wider variance in estimates. In this scenario, a compliant populace would require a force of only around 4,200 troops, while an extreme insurgency could spike that number to 42,000. In this particular case, no extreme insurgency is expected, as it would be in cities such as Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv or Kiev. The defensive force could overlap with the counterinsurgency force to some degree if there were no external threat, but if such a threat existed the forces would have to be separate, potentially doubling the manpower required to secure the territory.
The choice in Egypt remains stark. It’s either going to be run by Islamists bent on taking the most populous Arab country down the dark road of extremism or by a military regime that will keep that from happening. The obvious Western choice must be the latter, and Sisi has turned out to be an even better ally than Washington could have dreamed of, as he ensured that the Brotherhood would not return to power, took on Hamas in Gaza, and even made public calls for Muslims to turn against religious extremists.
But rather than that endearing him to the administration, this outstanding record has earned Sisi the Netanyahu treatment. Indeed, like other moderate Arab leaders in the Middle East, Sisi understands that President Obama has no great love for his country’s allies. Besotted as he is by the idea of bringing Iran in from the cold, the American government has allied itself with Tehran in the conflicts in both Iraq and Syria. He also understands that both of those ongoing wars were made far worse by the president’s dithering for years, a stance that may well have been motivated by a desire to avoid antagonizing Iran by seeking to topple their Syrian ally.
But those issues notwithstanding, one of the major changes that took place on President Obama’s watch was a conscious decision to downgrade relations with Cairo, a nation that his predecessors of both parties had recognized as a lynchpin of U.S. interests in the region. The current weapons supply squeeze is not only a blow to the efforts of a nation that is actually willing to fight ISIS and other Islamist terrorists; it’s a statement about what it means to be an American ally in the age of Obama.
As the Times of Israel reported:
On Monday Sisi was asked what he and the other Arab allies thought of U.S. leadership in the region. It is hard to put his response in words, mainly due to his prolonged silence.“Difficult question,” he said after some moments, while his body language expressed contempt and disgust. “The suspending of US equipment and arms was an indicator for the public that the United States is not standing by the Egyptians.”It turns out that although the American administration recently agreed to provide the Egyptian Air Force with Apache attack helicopters; it has been making it increasingly difficult for Cairo to make additional military purchases.For example, the U.S. is delaying the shipment of tanks, spare parts and other weapons that the army desperately needs in its war against Islamic State.
This development raises serious questions not only about U.S.-Egyptian relations but the administration’s vision for the region.
This is, after all, a time when the administration is going all out to make common cause with Iran, an open enemy that is currently the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world. President Obama is pursuing a diplomatic arrangement that will strengthen the Iranian regime and guarantee the survival of a nuclear program that moderate Arabs see as being as much of a threat to them as it is to Israel or the West.
The Egyptians understand that Washington isn’t interested in their friendship. Nor is the administration particularly supportive of Cairo’s efforts to rein in Hamas or to fight ISIS. Indeed, the Egyptians are now experiencing the same sort of treatment that has heretofore been reserved for the Israelis. That’s especially true in light of the arms resupply cutoff
against Israel Obama ordered during last summer’s war in Gaza.
Despite flirting with Russia, Egypt may, like Israel, have no real alternative to the United States as an ally. Perhaps that’s why Obama takes it for granted. But if the U.S. is serious about fighting ISIS as opposed to just talking about it, Washington will have to start treating Egypt and its military as a priority rather than an embarrassment.
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