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While I was away I noticed The White House spokesperson was given a chance to allow Obama to disavow Reid's lie regarding Romney's failure to pay income taxes and the person refused to do so stating he would not comment on something said three years ago.
Earlier in the day Obama had been critical of the divisiveness of political rhetoric.
Apparently having integrity and being courageous has a shelf life.
Furthermore, no fellow Democrat has called Reid on the carpet for his blatant lie. The reason given is that since Dirty Harry remains in office and is all powerful, controlling his Party's Senate purse strings, no one dare cross him. More evidence of what weasels politicians are.
Thank God, those who founded our nation were men of great stature in pursuit of idealistic goals and embodied them in a document called our Constitution which the current crop of weasels continuously seek to shred;even those who sit on The Supreme Court and certainly, this president, are eager participants.
No wonder our ship of state is taking on water and lists so far to the left! Can it be righted? At what Cost? If, God forbid, Hillary becomes the next skipper we are truly sunk?
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Why would Palestinians want to negotiate with descendants of pigs and apes? (See 1 below.)
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Leftist PC'ers continue their efforts to re-write history and demonize America.
There is a concerted effort on the part of leftist Democrats and those who wish to dominate the world to characterize America as the evil doer and thus gain an advantage over a weakened America. This has been Obama's goal and that of others like SOROS, radical Islamists, apologists like The Attack Wall Street Crowd etc., who capitalize on chaos.(See 2 below.)
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Just as we depart for Miami, news reports reveal enough progress ( read surrender) has been made to move the Iranian negotiations forward and thus, more crude will be released by Iran, bringing oil prices somewhat lower. Iran drills and America shuts down rigs. That should help Iran's economy while putting pressure downward ours.Go Kerry and Obama!
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Just back from family trip to Miami and will make a few postings before I send this.
Hope everyone had a Happy Easter and enjoyed their Passover Seder(s). We did!
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Has Israel begun to attack Iran? If not, I suspect they will before Obama's is finished throwing Israelis to the wolves. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Heartfelt - a must listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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I have belonged to AIPAC for many decades. Its goal is to strengthen the relationship between America and Israel. It is non-political in its work.
This is their response to Obama's 'giveaway.' (See 4 below.)
While I am at it I would like to make this observation.
Obama is deviously clever and understands how to maneuver the divide and conquer approach. He has used it time and again. Now he is using it against the Jewish Community. How so?
He has obtained the support of two Jewish Members of Congress and one Senator who have been constant in their attacks on Netanyahu. Their attacks give comfort to and provide an umbrella for those Jews whose allegiance to the Democrat Party, and their love of Obama, transcends their concerns for Israel's survival. One such lives at The Landings and recently wrote a LTE which I rebutted in the local paper and posted in a previous memo. I understand why they are apologists but I find it pathetically despicable as I would Christians who turn their backs and remain silent regarding the wanton killings being perpetrated by radical Islamists while our president wimps out and refuses to tag them for who they are. 150 Nigerian Christian college students were butchered and not a peep from Obama.
Let's hear it from Caroline Glick (See 4a below.)
and
from John Podhoretz. (See 4b below.)
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More political correctness from the Gay "Gays who play Monopoly are now refusing to land on Indiana.."
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Dick
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1)Palestinian debate: Should Jews be called descendants of apes and pigs?
Fatah Revolutionary Council member on PA TV:
Calling Jews "descendants of apes and pigs"
is "not part of our values"
Three weeks before in PA TV sermon:
Jews are "apes and pigs and slaves of deities"
Palestinian youth and young girls on PA TV:
"O Sons of Zion, O most evil among creations
O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs"
O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
A recent statement by a Fatah official may be the basis for cautious optimism regarding Palestinian ongoing demonization of Jews. For years, PA religious leaders, officials and even poems recited by children have presented Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs." However, after Fatah Revolutionary Council member Muwaffaq Matar, who is a Christian, was insulted by Hamas, who called him "a descendant of apes and pigs," he rejected the use of this religious hate speech that is normally directed at Jews, saying "it is not part of our values":
"They [Hamas] said: 'It seems that Muwaffaq Matar is a descendant of apes and pigs, physically and mentally.' This is racism... Naturally, they use this expression about the Jews. This is unfortunate. We also reject these expressions, because they are not part of our values, absolutely not."
[Fatah-run Awdah TV, Feb. 23, 2015]
This is a clear challenge to what has been a long-term PA policy. Palestinian Media Watchdocumented that the PA TV sermon broadcast just three weeks before Matar's statement includedthis Antisemitic statement, quoting the Quran:
"Many Muslims are being harmed these days by a group whose hearts were sealed by Allah. 'He made of them [Jews] apes and pigs and slaves of deities' (Quran, 5:60)."
[Official PA TV, Jan. 30, 2015]
Similarly, Palestinian education seems to promote this view, as youth and children recite poems describing Jews as descendants of apes and pigs on PA TV. A young man recited this last year on PA TV:
"O, you who were brought up on spilling blood
O, you [Jews] who murdered Allah's pious prophets
You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship
O Sons of Zion, O most evil among creations
O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs...
I will not fear your throngs.
O, you [Jews] who murdered Allah's pious prophets
You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship
O Sons of Zion, O most evil among creations
O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs...
I will not fear your throngs.
My belt is around my waist, and my rifle is on my shoulder."
[Official PA TV, Sept. 12, 2014]
Two very young girls on PA TV recited the same poem with this Islam-based hate speech against Jews:
Similarly, another young girl recited a poem with the phrase "Allah's enemies, the sons of pigs":
At a Fatah celebration in 2012, the moderator introduced the PA Mufti on stage with the following words:
"Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith. Long Live Fatah! [I invite you,] our honorable Sheikh."
[Official PA TV, Jan. 9, 2012]
The Mufti then quoted the Hadith (sayings and practices attributed to Islam's Prophet Muhammad) stating that Muslims' destiny is to kill Jews as a condition for the Resurrection.
For documentation of the long-term PA policy, see PMW's special section on Palestinians demonizing Jews as "apes and pigs".
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2)
The End of History, Part II
The new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam focuses on oppression, group identity and Reagan the warmonger.
President Reagan speaking in West Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate, June 12, 1987.PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
By LYNNE V. CHENEY
If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
—President Ronald Reagan, speech at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1987
President Reagan’s challenge to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev remains one of the most dramatic calls for freedom in our time. Thus I was heartened to find a passage from Reagan’s speech on the sample of the new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam that students will take for the first time in May. It seemed for a moment that students would be encouraged to learn about positive aspects of our past rather than be directed to focus on the negative, as happens all too often.
But when I looked closer to see the purpose for which the quotation was used, I found that it is held up as an example of “increased assertiveness and bellicosity” on the part of the U.S. in the 1980s. That’s the answer to a multiple-choice question about what Reagan’s speech reflects.
No notice is taken of the connection the president made between freedom and human flourishing, no attention to the fact that within 2½ years of the speech, people were chipping off pieces of the Berlin Wall as souvenirs. Instead of acknowledging important ideas and historical context, test makers have reduced President Reagan’s most eloquent moment to warmongering.
The AP U.S. history exam matters. Half a million of the nation’s best and brightest high-school students will take it this year, hoping to use it to earn college credit and to polish their applications to competitive colleges. To score well on the exam, students have to learn what the College Board, a private organization that creates the exam, wants them to know.
No one worried much about the College Board having this de facto power over curriculum until that organization released a detailed framework—for courses beginning last year—on which the Advanced Placement tests on U.S. history will be based from 2015 onward. When educators, academics and other concerned citizens realized how many notable figures were missing and how negative was the view of American history presented, they spoke out forcefully. The response of the College Board was to release the sample exam that features Ronald Reagan as a warmonger.
It doesn’t stop there. On the multiple-choice part of the sample exam, there are 18 sections, and eight of them take up the oppression of women, blacks and immigrants. Knowing about the experiences of these groups is important—but truth requires that accomplishment be recognized as well as oppression, and the exam doesn’t have questions on subjects such as the transforming leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.
The framework requires that all questions take up sweeping issues, such as “group identity,” which leaves little place for transcendent individuals. Men and women who were once studied as inspirational figures have become examples of trends, and usually not uplifting ones. The immigrant story that the exam tells is of oppressed people escaping to America only to find more oppression. That many came seeking the Promised Land—and found it here—is no longer part of the narrative.
Critics have noted that Benjamin Franklin is absent from the new AP U.S. history framework, and perhaps in response, the College Board put a quotation from Franklin atop the sample exam. Yet not one of the questions that were asked about the quotation has to do with Franklin. They are about George Whitefield, an evangelist whom Franklin described in the quote. This odd deflection makes sense in the new test, considering that Franklin was a self-made man, whose rise from rags to riches would have been possible only in America—an example of the exceptionalism that doesn’t fit the worldview that pervades the AP framework and sample exam.
Evangelist Whitefield, an Irishman who preached in the colonies, was a key figure in the Great Awakening, an evangelical revival that began in the 1730s. Here, however, he is held up as an example of “trans-Atlantic exchanges,” which seems completely out of left field until one realizes that the underlying notion is that we need to stop thinking nationally and think globally. Our history is simply part of a larger story.
Aside from a section about mobilizing women to serve in the workforce, the sample exam has nothing to say about World War II, the conflict in which the U.S. liberated millions of people and ended one of the most evil regimes in the history of the world. The heroic acts of the men who landed on Omaha Beach and lifted the flag on Iwo Jima are ignored. The wartime experiences that the new framework prefers are those raising “questions about American values,” such as “the internment of Japanese Americans, challenges to civil liberties, debates over race and segregation, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.”
Why would the College Board respond to criticism by putting out a sample exam that proves the critics’ point? Perhaps it is a case of those on the left being so confirmed in their biases that they no longer notice them. Or maybe the College Board doesn’t care what others think.
Some states are trying to get its attention. The Texas State Board of Education, noting that the AP U.S. history framework is incompatible with that state’s standards, has formally requested that the College Board do a rewrite. The Georgia Senate has passed a resolution to encourage competition for the College Board’s AP program. If anything brings a change, it is likely to be such pressure from the states, which provide the College Board with substantial revenue.
Some 20 years ago, as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, I made a grant to a group to create voluntary standards for U.S. history. When the project was finished, I had standards on my hands that were overwhelmingly negative about the American story, so biased that I felt obliged to condemn them in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal called “The End of History.”
I learned an important lesson, one worth repeating today. The curriculum shouldn’t be farmed out, not to the federal government and not to private groups. It should stay in the hands of the people who are constitutionally responsible for it: the citizens of each state.
Mrs. Cheney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about history. Her most recent book is “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered” (Viking, 2014).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)--- Game on? Qatar newspaper reports Israel air strike on weapons depot supplied by Iran
A report by Al Watan newspaper in Qatar indicates that Israel has conducted air strikes on a weapons depot supplied by Iran in southern Libya. Arutz 7 reports:
Arab news sources reported at week's end that an unidentified jet believed to be Israeli destroyed warehouses in southern Libya that held weapons bought by Iran for Hamas.
According to the reports in Al Watan and other news outlets, the warehouses were completely destroyed. The weapons that were inside them had allegedly been purchased by Iran, by means of weapons dealers in Sudan and Chad, and were supposed to be smuggled to Hamas through Egypt, by means of the smuggling tunnels between Sinai ands Gaza.
The report indicates that Egypt coordinated with Israel on the attack and opened its airspace to the Israeli jets flying to Libya.
Whatever else you may say about Iran, its active intervention into the Arab world has forced Sunni Arab countries into a de facto alliance with Israel. The ultimate consequences are impossible to fathom, but surely it is a historic moment when the majority body of Muslims finds itself allied with a former sworn enemy. Perhaps this is one crisis that won’t go to waste (if it doesn’t provoke Armageddon).
A report by Al Watan newspaper in Qatar indicates that Israel has conducted air strikes on a weapons depot supplied by Iran in southern Libya. Arutz 7 reports:
Arab news sources reported at week's end that an unidentified jet believed to be Israeli destroyed warehouses in southern Libya that held weapons bought by Iran for Hamas.According to the reports in Al Watan and other news outlets, the warehouses were completely destroyed. The weapons that were inside them had allegedly been purchased by Iran, by means of weapons dealers in Sudan and Chad, and were supposed to be smuggled to Hamas through Egypt, by means of the smuggling tunnels between Sinai ands Gaza.
The report indicates that Egypt coordinated with Israel on the attack and opened its airspace to the Israeli jets flying to Libya.
Whatever else you may say about Iran, its active intervention into the Arab world has forced Sunni Arab countries into a de facto alliance with Israel. The ultimate consequences are impossible to fathom, but surely it is a historic moment when the majority body of Muslims finds itself allied with a former sworn enemy. Perhaps this is one crisis that won’t go to waste (if it doesn’t provoke Armageddon).
3a) STEINITZ: IF WE HAVE NO CHOICE, WE WILL ATTACK IRAN
Author: Cynthia Blank
As Iran and the P5+1 world powers struggle to eke out a deal on Tehran's nuclear program in Switzerland, Israel says it will do everything possible to prevent a nuclear Iran.
Speaking on public radio Thursday, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said that all options were on the table in the face of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
This, he added, includes military action.
Iran has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. Most recently on Tuesday, senior Iranian military official, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, said “Israel's destruction is non-negotiable” and that the Jewish state should be “wiped of the map.”
Additionally, as noted by Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (Likud), while he toured the Golan Heights on Thursday, Iran has been opening a terrorism front against the Jewish state with the placement of its Revolutionary Guards and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.
Steinitz said Israel would seek to counter any threat through diplomacy and intelligence but “if we have no choice we have no choice… the military option is on the table.”
When asked about possible US objections, Steinitz named Israel's attack against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. “This operation was not carried out in agreement with the United States.”
According to Steinitz, there was no doubt as to what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's response would be to a nuclear armed Iran. “The Prime Minister has said clearly that Israel will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power.”
Indeed, Netanyahu, the leader of Steinitz's Likud party, criticized international powers on Wednesday for softening their stance on Iran's nuclear program.
“The concessions offered to Iran in Lausanne would ensure a bad deal that would endanger Israel, the Middle East and the peace of the world,” he stressed. “Now is the time for the international community to insist on a better deal.”
The Prime Minister added that Iran must “stop its threats to annihilate Israel. That should be non-negotiable and that's the deal that the world powers must insist upon.
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4)-
AIPAC Responses to Key Arguments Made in Favor of the Iran Framework
We have significant concerns about the framework for a nuclear deal with Iran announced by the P5+1 on April 2. The emerging deal could leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state and encourage a Mideast nuclear arms race.
We appreciate the work and laudable motives of the negotiators. However, proponents argue this deal is the best that could have been achieved, leaving the world now with only three choices: (1) accept this framework; (2) bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and start another war in the Middle East; or (3) abandon negotiations and hope for the best. These are false choices – the real choice is between a deal that would leave Iran on the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability 10 or 15 years from now, and a deal that present an opportunity to reach the stated goal of the negotiations: preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Here are AIPAC’s responses to arguments made by proponents of the framework deal:
Best Deal Argument: This is the best possible deal. Iran is not going to simply dismantle its program because we demand it to do so. That’s not how the world works or what history shows us.
- Response: This cannot be the best possible deal. As negotiations began in 2013, Iran’s economy was on the brink of collapse, and the clerical regime felt challenged at home. We failed to maximize our leverage and present Tehran with the choice of even more drastic sanctions unless it changed course. Instead, we eased sanctions and conceded its right to enrich uranium. We missed that opportunity, but there is still time to recreate it. If we don’t demand that Iran give up its most dangerous capabilities, Iran will be able to build nuclear weapons at a time of its choosing, truly confronting us then with the choice of bombing Iran or acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Good Enough Argument: While we did not achieve the objectives of nuclear and missile dismantlement, this agreement is good enough.
- Response: Good enough cannot be the standard, especially for something so consequential. As it is said, “Good enough never is.” An agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold state with a reinvigorated economy and missiles that could hit the United States is clearly not in anyone’s interest, except Iran.
No Role for Congress Argument: This will be an executive branch agreement, as are many foreign policy agreements, not requiring congressional approval.
- Response: Congress must have a role. An agreement with such profound national security implications as this one must be subjected to our constitutional system of checks and balances that is the bedrock of our democracy. If the agreement is as good a deal as the negotiators say it is, then it is likely to withstand congressional scrutiny, and the president should welcome congressional review. All of our most important arms control treaties have been supported by strong bipartisan majorities in the Senate.
Critics Want War Argument: Congressional critics, Israel, the pro-Israel movement, and the Sunni Arab neighbors of Iran all want war with Iran, not an agreement.
- Response: No one wants war. This argument is outrageous and meant to silence and delegitimize any critics of the deal. Each of these parties wants a diplomatic solution that truly guarantees Iran’s nuclear program can only be used for peaceful purposes. They all fear that an agreement based on the current framework’s parameters won’t meet that test and will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Increased Access Argument: International inspectors will have unprecedented access not only to Iranian nuclear facilities, but to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran cheats, the world will know it.
- Response: Iran has never provided complete access. It has always sought to hide its nuclear capabilities — and still does, preventing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to suspect sites and refusing to answer questions about its nuclear weaponization efforts. Moreover, a verification regime in which Russia and China can exercise a veto cannot be considered reliable. Everything we have discovered about Iran’s illicit nuclear program came through our intelligence or through evidence provided by defectors and dissidents. Inspections could add to our capabilities but cannot substitute for the security that would be achieved through dismantlement if we fail to move Iran away from its status as a nuclear threshold state.
Collapsing Sanctions Argument: Should negotiations collapse because it appears we rejected a fair deal, we will not be able to hold the current sanctions regime together.
- Response: American leadership can hold the international community together. Because of the absolute necessity for the world’s financial institutions to have access to the American financial system, we have unique leverage in seeking to maintain sanctions. We should dedicate our diplomatic efforts to holding the coalition together and stepping up the pressure on Iran.
Iran Can Be Trusted Argument: Iran has met all of its obligations under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA).
- Response: Iran’s leaders cannot be trusted. Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, which it continues to promote on a global basis; it has lied and cheated under its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations for three decades, building a whole nuclear infrastructure clandestinely. And it is actively cheating still. Iran continues to refuse to answer the IAEA’s questions about its efforts to weaponize, it continues to refuse access to IAEA inspectors, and it continues its illicit activity of importing sensitive nuclear technology. Until Iran comes clean, Iran can’t be trusted.
The Rush to a Bomb Argument: If we don’t go forward with this agreement, or if Iran walks away from the negotiating table, then Iran could rush to develop a nuclear weapon
- Response: A return to negotiations is more likely than immediate nuclear weaponization. Over the last 10 years, Iran walked away from the table on multiple occasions, only to return after facing increased sanctions. The risk of Iran walking away – and staying away – are low. Continued sanctions will bring them back, just as sanctions brought them to the table in the first place. Iran knows a rush to weaponize risks a military attack on the very infrastructure that it has spent billions of dollars to build.
Inevitable War Argument: Do you think a verifiable deal, if fully implemented, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?
- Response: This agreement would allow Iran to be a nuclear threshold state and will likely set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. If a verifiable deal achieves our objective of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, of course it would be better than another war. But a deal that fails to meet our most minimal objectives, as this one may, guarantees either that there will be military action in the near term or that Iran and several other nations in the region will develop nuclear weapons capability. Additionally, it threatens globally the survival of the NPT.
Preserving Options Argument: This framework enables the president to preserve all options for use against Iran in the future.
- Response: All options are not preserved if Iran gains a nuclear weapons capability. If the sanctions regime is dismantled and Iran’s economy recovers, Tehran can far more aggressively pursue its objectives in the region. It will be far more difficult to act in the future against a hegemonic nuclear-threshold Iran.
International Community Argument: The international community’s approval should suffice as the ratifying entity for the deal.
- Response: Members of the U.N. Security Council, such as Venezuela, Malaysia, and Angola, should not have greater say than the U.S. Congress. Recent polling data (Pew Research Center, Rasmussen Reports, and Quinnipiac University) show the American people overwhelmingly support congressional review of any deal. The way ahead is to encourage bipartisan support for congressional review. Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), announced on April 2 their intention to move forward with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee mark up and vote on the bipartisan Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. The markup and vote is scheduled for Apr. 14. The legislation reasserts Congress’ ability to accept or reject any nuclear deal and prohibits the president from suspending congressional sanctions for 60 days following an agreement.
I WONDER WHO IT MIGHT BE?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The diplomatic track
to war
By Caroline B. Glick
image: http://www.sampsoniaway.org/
Article Tools
The world powers assembled at Lausanne, Switzerland, with the representatives of the Islamic Republic may or may not reach a framework deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But succeed or fail, the disaster that their negotiations have unleashed is already unfolding. The damage they have caused is irreversible.
US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.
Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war.
In recent weeks we have watched the collapse of the allied powers’ negotiating positions.
They have conceded every position that might have placed a significant obstacle in Iran’s path to developing a nuclear arsenal.
They accepted Iran’s refusal to come clean on the military dimensions of its past nuclear work and so ensured that to the extent UN nuclear inspectors are able to access Iran’s nuclear installations, those inspections will not provide anything approaching a full picture of its nuclear status. By the same token, they bowed before Iran’s demand that inspectors be barred from all installations Iran defines as “military” and so enabled the ayatollahs to prevent the world from knowing anything worth knowing about its nuclear activities.
On the basis of Iran’s agreement to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, the US accepted Iran’s demand that it be allowed to maintain and operate more than 6,000 centrifuges.
But when on Monday Iran went back on its word and refused to ship its uranium to Russia, the US didn’t respond by saying Iran couldn’t keep spinning 6,000 centrifuges. The US made excuses for Iran.
The US delegation willingly acceded to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue operating its fortified, underground enrichment facility at Fordow. In so doing, the US minimized the effectiveness of a future limited air campaign aimed at significantly reducing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
With this broad range of great power concessions already in its pocket, the question of whether or not a deal is reached has become a secondary concern. The US and its negotiating partners have agreed to a set of understanding with the Iranians. Whether these understandings become a formal agreement or not is irrelevant because the understandings are already being implemented.
True, the US has not yet agreed to Iran’s demand for an immediate revocation of the economic sanctions now standing against it. But the notion that sanctions alone can pressure Iran into making nuclear concessions has been destroyed by Obama’s nuclear diplomacy in which the major concessions have all been made by the US.
No sanctions legislation that Congress may pass in the coming months will be able to force a change in Iran’s behavior if they are not accompanied by other coercive measures undertaken by the executive branch.
US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.
But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.
Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war.
In recent weeks we have watched the collapse of the allied powers’ negotiating positions.
They have conceded every position that might have placed a significant obstacle in Iran’s path to developing a nuclear arsenal.
They accepted Iran’s refusal to come clean on the military dimensions of its past nuclear work and so ensured that to the extent UN nuclear inspectors are able to access Iran’s nuclear installations, those inspections will not provide anything approaching a full picture of its nuclear status. By the same token, they bowed before Iran’s demand that inspectors be barred from all installations Iran defines as “military” and so enabled the ayatollahs to prevent the world from knowing anything worth knowing about its nuclear activities.
On the basis of Iran’s agreement to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, the US accepted Iran’s demand that it be allowed to maintain and operate more than 6,000 centrifuges.
But when on Monday Iran went back on its word and refused to ship its uranium to Russia, the US didn’t respond by saying Iran couldn’t keep spinning 6,000 centrifuges. The US made excuses for Iran.
The US delegation willingly acceded to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue operating its fortified, underground enrichment facility at Fordow. In so doing, the US minimized the effectiveness of a future limited air campaign aimed at significantly reducing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
With this broad range of great power concessions already in its pocket, the question of whether or not a deal is reached has become a secondary concern. The US and its negotiating partners have agreed to a set of understanding with the Iranians. Whether these understandings become a formal agreement or not is irrelevant because the understandings are already being implemented.
True, the US has not yet agreed to Iran’s demand for an immediate revocation of the economic sanctions now standing against it. But the notion that sanctions alone can pressure Iran into making nuclear concessions has been destroyed by Obama’s nuclear diplomacy in which the major concessions have all been made by the US.
No sanctions legislation that Congress may pass in the coming months will be able to force a change in Iran’s behavior if they are not accompanied by other coercive measures undertaken by the executive branch.
There is nothing new in this reality. For a regime with no qualms about repressing its society, economic sanctions are not an insurmountable challenge. But it is possible that if sanctions were implemented as part of a comprehensive plan to use limited coercive means to block Iran’s nuclear advance, they could have effectively blocked Iran’s progress to nuclear capabilities while preventing war. Such a comprehensive strategy could have included a proxy campaign to destabilize the regime by supporting regime opponents in their quest to overthrow the mullahs. It could have involved air strikes or sabotage of nuclear installations and strategic regime facilities like Revolutionary Guards command and control bases and ballistic missile storage facilities. It could have involved diplomatic isolation of Iran.
Moreover, if sanctions were combined with a stringent policy of blocking Iran’s regional expansion by supporting Iraqi sovereignty, supporting the now deposed government of Yemen and making a concerted effort to weaken Hezbollah and overthrow the Iranian-backed regime in Syria, then the US would have developed a strong deterrent position that would likely have convinced Iran that its interest was best served by curbing its imperialist enthusiasm and setting aside its nuclear ambitions.
In other words, a combination of these steps could have prevented war and prevented a nuclear Iran. But today, the US-led capitulation to Iran has pulled the rug out from any such comprehensive strategy. The administration has no credibility. No one trusts Obama to follow through on his declared commitment to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
No one trusts Washington when Obama claims that he is committed to the security of Israel and the US’s Sunni allies in the region.
And so we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. The disaster is that deal or no deal, the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. And they are in fact behaving in this manner.
They may not have a functional arsenal, but they act as though they do, and rightly so, because the US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.
As a consequence, all the regional implications of a nuclear armed Iran are already being played out. The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons. The path to a Middle East where every major and some minor actors have nuclear arsenals is before us.
Iran is working to expand its regional presence as if it were a nuclear state already. It is brazenly using its Yemeni Houthi proxy to gain maritime control over the Bab al-Mandab, which together with Iran’s control over the Straits of Hormuz completes its maritime control over shipping throughout the Middle East.
Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Eritrea, and their global trading partners will be faced with the fact that their primary maritime shipping route to Asia is controlled by Iran.
With its regional aggression now enjoying the indirect support of its nuclear negotiating partners led by the US, Iran has little to fear from the pan-Arab attempt to dislodge the Houthis from Aden and the Bab al-Mandab. If the Arabs succeed, Iran can regroup and launch a new offensive knowing it will face no repercussions for its aggression and imperialist endeavors.
Then of course there are Iran’s terror proxies.
Hezbollah, whose forces now operate openly in Syria and Lebanon, is reportedly active as well in Iraq and Yemen. These forces behave with a brazenness the likes of which we have never seen.
Hamas too believes that its nuclear-capable Iranian state sponsor ensures that regardless of its combat losses, it will be able to maintain its regime in Gaza and continue using its territory as a launching ground for assaults against Israel and Egypt.
Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq have reportedly carried out heinous massacres of Sunnis who have fallen under their control and faced no international condemnation for their war crimes, operating as they are under Iran’s protection and sponsorship. And the Houthis, of course, just overthrew a Western-backed government that actively assisted the US and its allies in their campaign against al-Qaida.
For their proxies’ aggression, Iran has been rewarded with effective Western acceptance of its steps toward regional domination and nuclear armament.
Hezbollah’s activities represent an acute and strategic danger to Israel. Not only does Hezbollah now possess precision guided missiles that are capable of taking out strategic installations throughout the country, its arsenal of 100,000 missiles can cause a civilian disaster.
Hezbollah forces have been fighting in varied combat situations continuously for the past three years. Their combat capabilities are incomparably greater than those they fielded in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There is every reason to believe that these Hezbollah fighters, now perched along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, can make good their threat to attack and hold fixed targets including border communities.
While Israel faces threats unlike any we have faced in recent decades that all emanate from Western-backed Iranian aggression and expansionism carried out under a Western-sanctioned Iranian nuclear umbrella, Israel is not alone in this reality. The unrolling disaster also threatens the moderate Sunni states including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The now regional war in Yemen is but the first act of the regional war at our doorstep.
There are many reasons this war is now inevitable.
Every state threatened by Iran has been watching the Western collapse in Switzerland.
They have been watching the Iranian advance on the ground. And today all of them are wondering the same thing: When and what should we strike to minimize the threats we are facing.
Everyone recognizes that the situation is only going to get worse. With each passing week, Iran’s power and brazenness will only increase.
Everyone understands this. And this week they learned that with Washington heading the committee welcoming Iran’s regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities, no outside power will stand up to Iran’s rise. The future of every state in the region hangs in the balance. And so, it can be expected that everyone is now working out a means to preempt and prevent a greater disaster.
These preemptive actions will no doubt include three categories of operations: striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; striking the Iranian Navy to limit its ability to project its force in the Bab al-Mandab; and conducting limited military operations to destroy a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear installations.
Friday is the eve of Passover. Thirteen years ago, Palestinian terrorists brought home the message of the Exodus when they blew up the Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 30, wounding 140, and forcing Israel into war. The message of the Passover Haggada is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it.
That war was caused by Israel’s embrace of the notion that you can bring peace through concessions that empower an enemy sworn to your destruction. The price of that delusion was thousands of lives lost and families destroyed.
Iran is far more powerful than the PLO. But the Americans apparently believe they are immune from the consequences of their leaders’ policies. This is not the case for Israel or for our neighbors. We lack the luxury of ignoring the fact that Obama’s disastrous diplomacy has brought war upon us. Deal or no deal, we are again about to be forced to pay a price to maintain our freedom
Moreover, if sanctions were combined with a stringent policy of blocking Iran’s regional expansion by supporting Iraqi sovereignty, supporting the now deposed government of Yemen and making a concerted effort to weaken Hezbollah and overthrow the Iranian-backed regime in Syria, then the US would have developed a strong deterrent position that would likely have convinced Iran that its interest was best served by curbing its imperialist enthusiasm and setting aside its nuclear ambitions.
In other words, a combination of these steps could have prevented war and prevented a nuclear Iran. But today, the US-led capitulation to Iran has pulled the rug out from any such comprehensive strategy. The administration has no credibility. No one trusts Obama to follow through on his declared commitment to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
No one trusts Washington when Obama claims that he is committed to the security of Israel and the US’s Sunni allies in the region.
And so we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. The disaster is that deal or no deal, the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. And they are in fact behaving in this manner.
They may not have a functional arsenal, but they act as though they do, and rightly so, because the US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.
As a consequence, all the regional implications of a nuclear armed Iran are already being played out. The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons. The path to a Middle East where every major and some minor actors have nuclear arsenals is before us.
Iran is working to expand its regional presence as if it were a nuclear state already. It is brazenly using its Yemeni Houthi proxy to gain maritime control over the Bab al-Mandab, which together with Iran’s control over the Straits of Hormuz completes its maritime control over shipping throughout the Middle East.
Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Eritrea, and their global trading partners will be faced with the fact that their primary maritime shipping route to Asia is controlled by Iran.
With its regional aggression now enjoying the indirect support of its nuclear negotiating partners led by the US, Iran has little to fear from the pan-Arab attempt to dislodge the Houthis from Aden and the Bab al-Mandab. If the Arabs succeed, Iran can regroup and launch a new offensive knowing it will face no repercussions for its aggression and imperialist endeavors.
Then of course there are Iran’s terror proxies.
Hezbollah, whose forces now operate openly in Syria and Lebanon, is reportedly active as well in Iraq and Yemen. These forces behave with a brazenness the likes of which we have never seen.
Hamas too believes that its nuclear-capable Iranian state sponsor ensures that regardless of its combat losses, it will be able to maintain its regime in Gaza and continue using its territory as a launching ground for assaults against Israel and Egypt.
Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq have reportedly carried out heinous massacres of Sunnis who have fallen under their control and faced no international condemnation for their war crimes, operating as they are under Iran’s protection and sponsorship. And the Houthis, of course, just overthrew a Western-backed government that actively assisted the US and its allies in their campaign against al-Qaida.
For their proxies’ aggression, Iran has been rewarded with effective Western acceptance of its steps toward regional domination and nuclear armament.
Hezbollah’s activities represent an acute and strategic danger to Israel. Not only does Hezbollah now possess precision guided missiles that are capable of taking out strategic installations throughout the country, its arsenal of 100,000 missiles can cause a civilian disaster.
Hezbollah forces have been fighting in varied combat situations continuously for the past three years. Their combat capabilities are incomparably greater than those they fielded in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There is every reason to believe that these Hezbollah fighters, now perched along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, can make good their threat to attack and hold fixed targets including border communities.
While Israel faces threats unlike any we have faced in recent decades that all emanate from Western-backed Iranian aggression and expansionism carried out under a Western-sanctioned Iranian nuclear umbrella, Israel is not alone in this reality. The unrolling disaster also threatens the moderate Sunni states including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The now regional war in Yemen is but the first act of the regional war at our doorstep.
There are many reasons this war is now inevitable.
Every state threatened by Iran has been watching the Western collapse in Switzerland.
They have been watching the Iranian advance on the ground. And today all of them are wondering the same thing: When and what should we strike to minimize the threats we are facing.
Everyone recognizes that the situation is only going to get worse. With each passing week, Iran’s power and brazenness will only increase.
Everyone understands this. And this week they learned that with Washington heading the committee welcoming Iran’s regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities, no outside power will stand up to Iran’s rise. The future of every state in the region hangs in the balance. And so, it can be expected that everyone is now working out a means to preempt and prevent a greater disaster.
These preemptive actions will no doubt include three categories of operations: striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; striking the Iranian Navy to limit its ability to project its force in the Bab al-Mandab; and conducting limited military operations to destroy a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear installations.
Friday is the eve of Passover. Thirteen years ago, Palestinian terrorists brought home the message of the Exodus when they blew up the Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 30, wounding 140, and forcing Israel into war. The message of the Passover Haggada is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it.
That war was caused by Israel’s embrace of the notion that you can bring peace through concessions that empower an enemy sworn to your destruction. The price of that delusion was thousands of lives lost and families destroyed.
Iran is far more powerful than the PLO. But the Americans apparently believe they are immune from the consequences of their leaders’ policies. This is not the case for Israel or for our neighbors. We lack the luxury of ignoring the fact that Obama’s disastrous diplomacy has brought war upon us. Deal or no deal, we are again about to be forced to pay a price to maintain our freedom
4b)
If you look at what happened today between the U.S. and Iran through the lens of domestic American politics, Barack Obama has made a very clever play here—because what might be called “the agreement of the framework of the possibility of a potential deal” gives him new leverage in his ongoing battle with the Senate to limit its ability to play a role in the most critical foreign-policy matter of the decade.
The “framework” codifies the Obama administration’s cave-ins but casts them as thrilling reductions in Iran’s capacities rather than what they are—a pie-in-the-sky effort to use inspections as the means by which the West can “manage” the speed with which Iran becomes a nuclear power.
Obama’s tone of triumph this afternoon was mixed with sharp reminders that the deal is actually not yet done—and that is entirely the point of this exercise from a domestic standpoint. The triumph signals his troops and apologists that the time has come for them to stand with him, praise the deal sheet and pretend it’s a deal, declare it historic, and generally act as though the world has been delivered from a dreadful confrontation by Obama and Kerry.
But since the deal is not yet done, it could still be derailed. And that is where Obama’s truly Machiavellian play here comes in: He may have found a way to put the Senate in a box and keep Democrats from melting away from him on Iran and voting not only for legislation he doesn’t want but also to override the veto he has promised.
The Senate has two provisions at the ready with which it could go ahead any time. One, called Kirk-Menendez, imposes new sanctions on Iran. Obama promised a veto of this bill should it pass, and after today, one ought to presume that it’s dead.
The other, Corker-Menendez, requires the administration to submit any deal to the Senate within 60 days of its signing. This is a key provision because, of course, what the Iranians want—and what they said today they got—was the lifting of all sanctions. The president, in his statement, vowed to lift the “nuclear” sanctions (there are others involving human rights) if the Iranians comply by the terms of the deal.
Existing sanctions legislation features waivers the president can arguably use to do that. But those sanctions were put into place specifically to make it incredibly painful for Iran to retain any nuclear-weapons capability—not as a means of acceding to Iran’s retention of a nuclear capability.
For this reason, and for the reason that the president is essentially negotiating an arms-control treaty with Iran, the Senate should approve any final deal. Obama disagrees and claims this is merely a nuclear-agreement, not a treaty, and therefore Congress has no role.
That’s a very nervy argument. It is not only disrespectful of the Senate but it misrepresents the nature of what’s being negotiated. And that’s why it’s an argument it appeared the president would lose—that senators would not only vote for Corker-Menendez but would override his veto of it.
Which is why the deal-that’s-not-yet-a-deal works in his favor. Talks are now to continue until the end of June. Obama can and will argue to Democrats that they owe it to him, to their base, and to their governing ideology to give him all the room he needs to get to June 30.
Of course, if the legislation does not pass by June 30 and Obama signs a final deal, the game is up; the Senate can’t retroactively insist in July he bring it to them for a vote.
Will there be a deal by June 30? Maybe, maybe not; maybe they’ll finish, maybe they won’t; maybe the Iranians will say they didn’t agree to this or that and blow up the whole thing; who knows. Probably the total collapse, after all this, would bring the Kirk-Menendez sanctions back to life. Which is why there will never be a total collapse—because these talks can simply go on…
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