Viruses Often Resurface. Soros Versus Trump and America Loses. The U.N That Pitiful Hypocrite!

Those who protest against Hillary.
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De-ja-vu all over again?  Viruses have a way of resurfacing.

Will the 2016 election come down to a battle between Soros and Trump? If so, there will be no winner and America will lose again. The goons Soros supports are stalking horses for chaos because that is the atmosphere in which radicals make progress. Hillarious is a beneficiary of chaos but would never disavow the support she gets from the Soros crowd while she piously criticizes Trump for causing it all. (See 1 below.)

As for the Republican Party, it has been a go along get along  Party for decades and its Establishment wing, whomever they may be, have no legitimacy when complaining about the rise of Trump within their ranks. Their feckless support of their avowed principles provided the breeding ground for Trump's meteoric success.  "Methinks thou dost protest too much for you enter the court room with unclean hands.
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Will the U.S Military support Hillarious' campaign? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Can Lebanon survive?  (See 3 below)

And

Now for some interesting and objective reports on Iran. (See 3a, 3b and 3c below.)
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The U.N is an hypocritical threat to word peace because it's various working agencies are controlled by morally corrupt and non-Democratic nations who wrap themselves in its cloak of credibility while professing to carry out its virtuous missions.

Yes, The U.N serves as a debating arena allowing heat to be dissipated but it is also a cover for the false messages from equally false prophets. The U.N reminds me of a kennel of well fed dogs who do a lot of yelping but when push comes to shove stick their tails between their legs, always blame Israel for everything under the sun and give passes to the real thugs who threaten world stability and peace starting with many of their own members.

Would the world be better without The U.N? We will never know but America's continued contribution to its survival is way beyond the benefits derived and we have allowed The U.N. to subvert our own destiny, independence and adherence to our Constitution.

We should support only those U.N  entities that serve our purpose, truly carry out their espoused mission and use the remaining funds to reduce our deficit.
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Commentary from one of my oldest friends and fellow memo reader: "Dear Dick,

I have often noticed that sharp comments from others often solidify my thoughts when before, although my thoughts were the same, they were amorphous and coalesced only after heard expressed by others.  So your concise, precise, and concrete expression resonated in me and solidified my thought when you wrote:

As I have said before, if Republicans destroy Trump in order to select what The Establishment want, so as to distance themselves from the stench surrounding Trump's candidacy, they will go down in flames because Trump supporters are loyal and already feel aggrieved, cheated and unheard.

As you know, I abhorred Trump when we had many great alternatives, but, now that Trump is our man, I feel we must rally around him whole heartedly and concur with your assessment that should The Establishment sabotage Trump they will take the Republican Party down in flames.

Well said.  Keep up the good fight.

S------."

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Comforting humor from my British girl friend.  (See 4 below.)

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Dick
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1)

There’s an air of menace about this campaign

By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer March 17 at 7:57 PM

By international and historical standards, political violence is exceedingly rare in the United States. The last serious outburst was 1968 with its bloody Democratic-convention riots. By that standard, 2016 is, as yet, tame. It may not remain so.

The political thuggery that shut down a Donald Trump rally in Chicago last week may just be a harbinger. It would be nice, therefore, if we could think straight about cause and effect.

The immediate conventional wisdom was to blame the disturbance on the “toxic environment” created by Trump. Nonsense. This was an act of deliberate sabotage created by a totalitarian left that specializes in the intimidation and silencing of political opponents.

Its pedigree goes back to early-20th-century fascism and communism. Its more recent incarnation has been developed on college campuses, where for years leftists have been taunting, disrupting and ultimately shutting down and shutting out conservative speakers of every stripe — long before Donald Trump.

The Chicago shutdown was a planned attack on free speech and free assembly. Hence the exultant chant of the protesters upon the announcement of the rally’s cancellation: “We stopped Trump.” It had all of the spontaneity of a beer-hall putsch.

Given the people, the money and the groups (including MoveOn.org) behind Chicago, it is likely to be replicated, constituting a serious threat to a civilized politics. But there’s a second, quite separate form of thuggery threatening the 2016 campaign — a leading candidate who, with a wink and a nod (and sometimes less subtlety), is stoking anger and encouraging violence.

This must be distinguished from what happened in Chicago, where Trump was the victim and for which he is not responsible. But he is responsible for saying of a protester at his rally in Las Vegas that “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that . . . ? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”

He told another rally that if they see any protesters preparing to throw a tomato, to “knock the crap out of them . . . I promise you I will pay for the legal fees.” Referring in an interview to yet another protester, Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up.”

At the Vegas event, Trump had said, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Well, in Fayetteville, N.C., one of his supporters did exactly that for him — sucker-punching in the face a protester being led away. The attacker is being charged with assault.

Trump is not responsible for the assault. But he is responsible for refusing to condemn it. Asked about it, he dodged and weaved, searching for extenuation. “The man got carried away.” So what? If people who get carried away are allowed to sucker-punch others, we’d be living in a jungle.

Trump said that it was obvious that the cold-cocker “obviously loves his country.” What is it about punching a demonstrator in the face that makes evident one’s patriotism? Particularly when the attacker said on television, “Next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”

Whoa! That’s lynch talk. And rather than condemn that man, Trump said he would be instructing his people to look into paying his legal fees.

This from the leader of the now strongest faction in the Republican Party, the man most likely to be the GOP nominee for president. And who, when asked on Wednesday about the possibility of being denied the nomination at the convention if he’s way ahead in delegates but just short of a majority, said: “I think you’d have riots,” adding “I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

Is that incitement to riot? Legally, no. But you’d have to be a fool to miss the underlying implication.

There’s an air of division in the country. Fine. It’s happened often in our history. Indeed, the whole point of politics is to identify, highlight, argue and ultimately adjudicate and accommodate such divisions. Politics is the civilized substitute for settling things the old-fashioned way — laying your opponent out on a stretcher.

What is so disturbing today is that suffusing our politics is not just an air of division but also an air of menace. It’s being fueled on both sides: one side through organized anti-free-speech agitation using Bolshevik tactics; the other side by verbal encouragement and threats of varying degrees of subtlety.

They may feed off each other but they are of independent origin. And both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.

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2)

Will the Military Answer Hillary's Call in 2016?

By Chris J. Krisinger

When Barack Obama kicked off his first presidential campaign in 2008 as a junior first-term senator from Illinois, it became a political imperative for the greenhorn candidate to obtain the endorsements of retired – but still influential – senior military officers to apply a veneer of credibility to his objectively thin national security credentials.  Gaining those same endorsements could again be an engaging subplot to this year's election theater, particularly for the 2008 understudy, Hillary Clinton.

At a Chicago news conference in March 2008, then-senator Obama rolled out ten retired admirals and generals to counter claims by his opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton, that he had not "crossed the threshold to serve as commander in chief."  During that flag-draped event, several, such as "Tony" McPeak, the former Air Force chief of staff and a four-star general, stepped forward to offer assurances that they were "comfortable with [Obama's] ability to lead the military."  The event was to counter Senator Clinton's claim that she could better "answer the 3 a.m. phone call" that had entered the 2008 presidential race lexicon.

Once Obama was the Democrat nominee, with two wars raging and national security a hot-button issue, those endorsements became indispensable for the run against Republican Senator John McCain, the Navy veteran, Vietnam prisoner of war, and defense hawk.  The Obama campaign would eventually exploit the names of more than 70 retired generals and admirals from all four services to burnish his national security qualifications in the eyes of American voters.

Eight years later, national security is once again near the forefront of voter concerns with a long list of pressing issues – terrorism, ISIS, Syria, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China (among others).  While still the presumptive Democrat nominee, but with persistent questions of integrity and honesty hounding her, Mrs. Clinton will need the patronage of such a group to publicly sanction her record on national security and diplomacy, act as proxy character references, and thwart opponents' attempts to gain advantage doing the same.

Considerable obstacles stand in the way of attracting such support, because Clinton's close ties to ill-fated Obama administration foreign policy initiatives, as well as her own record as a senator and secretary of state, are under intense scrutiny and do not sit well with large blocs of voters.

The situation is not unlike 2008.  Then, each senior officer would likely have confided he supported Barack Obama for his own personal reasons.  In reality, most were driven not so much by any strong confidence in him, but rather by fervent disagreement with the Bush administration, including a Rumsfeld-led Pentagon, over the Iraq war and other decisions related to the broader war on terrorism.  One general, representative of that group, was then on record saying the country was "on the wrong course," while another felt that the country "needed a fresh approach to national security."

That same group, now including officers who were on active duty during that period, may recall that Senator Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq war and, in fact, did very little to advance legislation to end the Iraq war.  None of her war-related proposals – which often mirrored measures introduced by other senators – ever came up for a vote.  Not only did she not develop any policies to mandate a pullout deadline, but she actually opposed such actions until early 2007.  Although vocal in her party's criticism of the Bush administration, she was not one of the leaders in Congress to legislate an end to the Iraq war.

Today, ISIS, Syria, and refugees roughly substitute for the Iraq war, and when compounded with Russia, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Middle East, the Keystone pipeline, Cuba, Libya, China, North Korea, trade deals, and immigration, these subjects add to a still longer list of national security issues that large numbers of voters hold the current administration and Clinton – by close association – responsible for.  Her public scenes – e.g., her Sunday talk show discussion of Assad as a "reformer," the embarrassingly awkward "reset" with Russia, and the often replayed Benghazi hearing sequence ("What difference at this point does it make?") – only reinforce her ties to Obama administration foreign policy.

A mounting sense that chaos is supplanting order around the world in ways that directly threaten the U.S. appears to be bringing public sentiment full circle back toward a more muscular defense and foreign policy than the current administration – where Clinton had a prominent role – has pursued.  Late 2015 polling shows by significant percentages that voters believe that the Obama administration is weak on foreign policy, has no strategy for Syria or ISIS, and projects weakness to our enemies.

Similar criticisms, like those of the Bush-era generals calling for a major change in direction away from administration policy, will vex Clinton's (and the Democrats') campaign.  She has already had to tread a fine line to distance herself from Obama administration foreign policy (to include her own actions as his secretary of state) to parry attacks the she would simply be a third Obama term, yet not go so far as to alienate her base and core Obama supporters.

Further confounding her securing any such group's support are the unavoidable conversations about her telling personal lapses.  Ranging from the serious (Benghazi with its fallout and the active, still deepening FBI investigation into her handling of classified materials) to the trifling (her claim she dodged sniper fire on an airport tarmac in Bosnia), she runs afoul of a group that still collectively holds the values of integrity, character, and honesty in highest regard.

If polling is any indicator, Mrs. Clinton has few fans in the military from whom to find that support.  A late 2015 Rally Point/Rasmussen national survey of active and retired military personnel finds that only 15% have a favorable opinion of her, and just 3% view the former secretary of state "very favorably."  She is seen unfavorably by 81%, including 69% who share a "Very Unfavorable" impression.  Thirty-one percent of voters say they trust Clinton, with little difference between active service members and veterans when it comes to opinions about her.  Other polling suggests that military personnel have also not been dissuaded from backing her main opponents (dubbed the "outsider candidates") by those who contend they have weak foreign policy credentials and do not have recognized experts as national security advisers.

As the military's most senior leaders, these retired admirals and generals all presided over promotion boards for more junior officers to decide on their potential and suitability to serve in higher ranks.  Basic military promotion board thinking is to dispassionately evaluate an individual's potential to serve in a higher grade based on his record of capabilities, performance, and results.

After similarly appraising Mrs. Clinton's track record on national security and diplomacy, accompanied by those unavoidable conversations over her integrity and honesty, will that group "promote" her in 2016?  Will members of that company of retired senior military leaders answer her call?  Given the military's performance-based ethos, coupled with the ideals and standards U.S. military members are held to account for, it seems increasingly likely that few among them would publicly offer up their names and professional reputations for her political fortunes.

Colonel Krisinger retired from the Air Force after 30 years of service.  He served two tours as a senior military adviser at the State Department.

2a) Gates: Obama Went Against ‘Entire National Security Team’ on Egypt Coup

BY: Aaron Kliegman 

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Fox News that President Barack Obama ignored the advice of his “entire national security team” during the Egyptian coup in 2011 that ousted Hosni Mubarak, the country’s former president.

Gates made his comments to Fox News’ Bret Baier during an interview for the network’s upcoming special, “Rising Threats – Shrinking Military,” and the preview clip can be seen on The Blaze’s website.

Gates, who headed the Pentagon during the Egyptian coup, lamented that, while he and the rest of the president’s national security experts advised Obama to handle the situation in Egypt cautiously, the president chose to listen to three junior officials instead and called for Mubarak’s immediate ouster.

“Literally the entire national security team recommended unanimously handling Mubarak differently than we did,” Gates said. “And the president took the advice of three junior backbenchers in terms of how to treat Mubarak.”

The former Pentagon chief also described how the analysis of the three “backbenchers” was based on lofty idealism rather than facts on the ground.

“One of them [said], ‘Mr. President, you got to be on the right side of history,’” Gates explained before adding with a smile, “And I would be sitting there at the table and I would be saying, ‘Yeah, if we could just figure that out, we’d be a long way ahead.’”

Baier noted that when it became clear Mubarak could not stay in power and the Egyptian military “urged caution,” Obama “pushed for his immediate removal.”

Egypt became swept up by the popular protests of the Arab Spring in 2011, with massive crowds pouring into Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest the rule of long-time president Mubarak, who many thought to be an authoritarian ruler. Some Egypt observers, however, argued Mubarak’s rule was not as oppressive as those of other leaders in the region.

Mubarak was an important strategic ally for the United States, according to analysts, who point out that he granted U.S. warships priority access to the important Suez Canal, granted unrestricted flights to American military aircraft, and maintained peace with Israel.

Gates and most of the National Security Council thought Obama should not abandon such an ally right away and look into other resolutions to avoid any destabilization, but Obama, along with Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting, thought his ouster could make room for a more democratic government.

The president supported the protestors and forced Mubarak out of power, causing the Muslim Brotherhood to soon take control of the country with Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi was overthrown by the Egyptian people and military in 2013, one year after he was democratically elected to office, for trying to centralize power completely under him and the Brotherhood.

One consequence of Obama’s push for Mubarak to step down is that it alienated Washington’s other primary Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which had a good relationship with the Egyptian leader and saw the speed with which America was willing to dispose of him as a betrayal of sorts.

This is not the first time Gates has criticized his former boss for failing to listen to his advisers.

Earlier this year on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Gates said that Obama always believes he is the smartest guy in the room and has trouble developing and implementing strategy.

“You know, the president is quoted as having said at one point to his staff, ‘I can do every one of your jobs better than you can,’” Gates told the Morning Joe panel. He then added, “One of the greatest weaknesses of the [Obama] White House is implementation of strategy, is difficulty in developing strategy and then implementing that strategy.”

Gates has served eight U.S. presidents in a variety of senior national security roles, including as secretary of defense for both Obama and George W. Bush, as well as the director of central intelligence in the early 1990s.

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3)U.N. Report: Hezbollah’s Weapons Threaten Lebanese Sovereignty and Stability 

Asharq Al-Awsat 

Beirut- Secretary General of the United Nations (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon issued a 

report on Wednesday exhibiting Hezbollah and Israeli exercised violations 

against the U.N. resolution 1701 on different occasions. 

He said that Hezbollah’s weapons do not ensure Lebanon’s protection; instead 

they negatively affect the Lebanese decision-making process. Hezbollah’s 

armed presence in Lebanon compromises and threatens Lebanon’s stability and 

sovereignty. 

Nabil de Freige Lebanese MP considers the U.N. issued report a result of the 

series of decisions taken by Gulf countries against Hezbollah’s approach in 

Lebanon. The militant party controls governmental lawmaking offices which 

tipped off Lebanon’s political balance. 

De Freige told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that Hezbollah’s armaments no 

longer serve national interest the way they did before 2000. 

“Ever since southern Lebanese grounds were liberated onward, Hezbollah’s 

armed presence affected the country’s institutional work negatively”, de 

Freige said. 

“We are fully aware that Hezbollah will not take any resolutions or reports 

into consideration, because the party’s decision on matters is in Iranian 

hands,” he added. 

The report also highlighted the attacks staged by Hezbollah against Israeli 

vehicles and the launching of missiles towards Israel during 2015, on the 

4th of January and 20th of December respectively. 

The UNGS report also emphasized that the incidents, along with the Israeli 

retaliating response, present dangerous violations to the U.N. resolution 

1701 and ceasefire. 

The report presented by Ban Ki-moon covers the implementation of resolution 

1701 for the duration between November 5 2015 and February 26, 2016. 

Ban Ki-moon stressed that arms possessed by Hezbollah and other off-board 

militias in Lebanon infringe the country’s commitments on employing U.N. 

resolutions 1559 and 1701. 

He also expressed his deep concern regarding Hezbollah’s readiness to employ 

its capacity to violate resolution 1107. Ban also warned that the group’s 

possession of weapons and attempts to procure evolved artilleries further 

fuels the conflict, leading to grave consequences both Lebanon and the 

region will have to confront.

3a)

Foundation for Defense of Democracies
The IAEA’s Latest Report Falls Short

Olli Heinonen

Executive Summary: The International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent report on Iran’s nuclear activities provides insufficient details on important verification and monitoring issues. The report does not list inventories of nuclear materials and equipment or the status of key sites and facilities. Without detailed reporting, the international community cannot be sure that Iran is upholding its commitments under the nuclear deal. Over the longer term, this will hamper efforts to reach a “broader conclusion” that all nuclear material and activities are accounted for and for peaceful use.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its first report last week since implementation in January of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. The report indicates that Iran is complying with its commitments under the deal, yet lacks relevant details to explain how the IAEA draws its conclusions. The United States has stressed that the JCPOA depends on robust verification and transparency, making detailed reporting on Iran’s implementation of its commitments all the more important.

An Incomplete Report

The IAEA’s first report since the JCPOA’s January 16 “Implementation Day” offers surprisingly scant information on key issues:

Uranium Enrichment: The report does not provide inventories of low-enriched uranium Iran has declared, let alone the actual inventories the IAEA has verified. In its own response to the IAEA report, the Institute for Science and International Security draws attention to the lack of information on uranium inventories enriched to 3.67-percent and 20-percent U-235. As of December 2015, Iran had substantial inventories of the aforementioned nuclear materials as “holdup” – namely a build-up of leftover nuclear material in process equipment, as well as liquid and solid wastes, and scrap.

Given the JCPOA’s requirement that Iran stockpile no more than 300 kilograms of 3.67-percent enriched uranium and no 20-percent enriched uranium, the IAEA should have delineated Iran’s efforts to recover both 3.67-percent and 20-percent materials through decontamination, solidification, and packing for shipment outside the country (to Russia). A precise accounting of the amount of enriched uranium shipped to Russia should have also been included in the report to demonstrate that these nuclear materials are no longer in Iran’s stockpile but rather part of Russia’s nuclear material inventory. Separately, under its own safeguards agreement with the IAEA, Russia is required to report receipt of any nuclear material shipped from Iran.

Other Uranium Inventories: Nuclear material inventories are a staple of IAEA verification. The IAEA monitored the stocks, production, and imports of uranium ore concentrate in Iran in 2003 and 2004, and again since the implementation of the interim nuclear deal in 2014. Since 2014, it has not, however, provided any information on declared inventories and verification coverage, or on inspection visits to mines and uranium concentration plants. Incidentally, Iran has in the past voluntarily submitted relatively detailed information to the IAEA and OECD’s “Red Book” (a biennial report on worldwide uranium stocks) concerning its uranium mines and operations.

Furthermore, the JCPOA stipulates that for 15 years Iran will forego uranium and plutonium metallurgy and reprocessing. Concerning reprocessing, IAEA reporting would have to include the current status of irradiated uranium targets for its early reprocessing experiments still stored in Iran – information that has not been reflected in IAEA reports in the last few years. Similarly, the IAEA has not reported in recent years on any activities (or lack thereof) at the once-active uranium metallurgy laboratories in Tehran and Isfahan, which still possess relevant equipment. Such laboratories, even if they no longer store nuclear material, are sites at which the IAEA should be granted so-called “complementary” access aimed at confirming the absence of undeclared uranium metallurgy research and development.

Centrifuge Components: The IAEA report also does not provide information about the numbers and types of centrifuge rotors and bellows in Iran’s inventory. These components are essential in assessing breakout times, and reinstallation of previously removed advanced centrifuges or installation of new ones can directly affect the one-year breakout time that proponents of the JCPOA maintain it enforces. An accounting of this inventory is also important as a baseline for further monitoring.

Additional Protocol Implementation: The report does not indicate whether the IAEA has conducted complementary access under the Additional Protocol (AP). Access, cooperation, and the ability of inspectors to gain prompt entry are crucial tools in confirming the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities.

Contextualizing Issues: The IAEA report states, “Iran has continued to permit the Agency to use on-line enrichment monitors and electronic seals which communicate their status within nuclear sites to Agency inspectors, and to facilitate the automated collection of Agency measurement recordings registered by installed measurement devices.” A reading of this paragraph could suggest that monitoring is satisfactory. However, the activities outlined in this paragraph represent only one facet of monitoring objectives. Online enrichment monitors and electronic seals have been part of the IAEA safeguards approach for decades. In Iran’s case, Tehran did not permit the use of such equipment until recently, and still does not allow transmission outside of Iran.

The report also implies that the use of enrichment monitors is an enhanced transparency measure, when in fact, it should be viewed as a routine verification tool. Newly developed online enrichment monitors in Iran are more precise in measuring enrichment levels than the earlier equipment. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that these new instruments indicate only that enrichment of uranium is occurring; they do not tell how much enriched uranium is being produced. The instruments by themselves do not detect, for example, unreported excess production of low and high enriched uranium that is siphoned off before reaching the enrichment monitors – a serious diversion and misuse concern. Unannounced IAEA inspections remain cornerstones of the verification processes, as does the monitoring of the uranium feed, withdrawal stations, and centrifuge cascade areas; environmental sampling; and complementary access.

Implications

Insufficient reporting does no favors for the IAEA or P5+1 international negotiators. For years, Tehran has advocated for less-detailed IAEA safeguards reports, citing concerns ranging from confidentiality matters to IAEA inspection authorities under the comprehensive safeguards agreement. The IAEA has consistently refuted these arguments. Less-detailed reporting, after all, fails to provide the transparency required for the JCPOA’s verification. Over the longer term, this will only hamper efforts to reach a “broader conclusion” that all nuclear material and activities are accounted for and for peaceful use.

In order to instill the international community’s confidence in its full compliance with the JCPOA, Iran will have to stake a starkly different course. If, as it insists, it is in compliance with the deal, then Tehran should favor much more detailed IAEA reports that document that compliance and explain its nuclear aspirations, both in terms of past and future work. It is in the interest of Iran, the P5+1, and the IAEA to demonstrate, with full transparency, that Iran is in full compliance with its Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA and its other international commitments.

3b) Commentary

Iran Has Never Started a War?

MICHAEL RUBIN

That Iran hasn’t invaded anyone or, indeed, started a war in more than two centuries has become a talking point for those advocating trust and outreach to Iran.

Here’s University of Michigan professor and polemicist Juan Cole, for example:

Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders

Retired Congressman Ron Paul likewise declared, “There’s no history to show that Iran are aggressive people. When’s the last time they invaded a country? Over 200 years ago!” Richard Falk, an emeritus Princeton professor and early advocate for Ayatollah Khomeini and later a UN official (and 9/11 conspiracy theorist), likewise repeated the trope.

The Iranian regime knows when it has got a good thing going. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday tweeted, “Iran hasn’t attacked any country in 250 years. But when Saddam rained missiles on us and gassed our people for 8 yrs, no one helped us.”

But is it true that “Iran hasn’t attacked any country in 250 years” as Zarif and his fellow travelers insist? Not quite.

Between 1804 and 1813, Iran and Russia fought a bloody conflict in the Caucasus which ended with the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan. Iran’s Qajar dynasty leader, Fath Ali Shah, admittedly at the goading of the British and tempted by promised aid, broke the treaty and re-invaded the territory 13 years later. It was a disastrous move; Russia pushed back Iranian forces and ended up taking what now is Armenia and the southern portion of independent Azerbaijan.

Then there was the Anglo-Persian War of 1856-1857. Persian forces invaded western Afghanistan to press their claim to Herat. British-Indian forces invaded Iran at Bushehr to compel the withdrawal of Persian forces, which they successfully did. (One of the what-if’s of history is what might have happened if the India Mutiny had occurred a year earlier; after all, the British utilized forces which had been in Persia the previous year and cannons seized during the campaign to put down the 1858 revolt in their prize colony). In addition, border skirmishes at the southern tip of the Shatt al-Arab were common in the first decade of the twentieth century as Iranian forces sought both to consolidate control over their territory and, at times, push into Basra, southern Iraq’s major city.

But that’s ancient history, right? After all, isn’t it quibbling to say that Iran actually hasn’t waged aggressive war in 150 years rather 250 years? Maybe Zarif was just confused.

Alas, Iranian aggression has a longer history. In 1968, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that Britain would withdraw “from east of Suez” within a few years. As the British Navy pulled back from the Persian Gulf in 1970, Iranian forces seized Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tonbs, islands that legally belonged to Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. At the time, the United States turned a blind eye toward Iranian aggression. After all, under the Nixon Doctrine, Iran was a pivotal state through which the United States hoped to bring stability to the Middle East. The Islamic Republic has only doubled down on that occupation, transforming those islands—and Abu Musa in particular—into Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases. Indeed, in the course of talk about returning Abu Musa (though not its waters) to the United Arab Emirates, it transpired that the IRGC has used the island as a chemical weapons depot.

Then, there’s the case of Bahrain. Let’s put aside the current sectarian struggle. As Britain prepared to withdraw from the Persian Gulf, the shah laid claim to the entirety of Bahrain, which it considered a wayward province that should return to the fold. The shah agreed to abide by a referendum to determine whether Bahrainis sought to be part of Iran or have their independence. They overwhelmingly chose the latter. Iranian revolutionary leader Khomeini was not so magnanimous, however. As Bahrain approached its tenth anniversary as an independent state, Iran sought to use a proxy group it trained—the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB)—to overthrow the monarchy and return Bahrain to Iran. Lest any apologist dismiss Iranian involvement as Arab propaganda, the Library of Congress has a full set of IFLB magazines with photo essays depicting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards training the group and IFLB officials swearing allegiance to Khomeini.

Then there’s Hezbollah. About a decade ago, the Islamic Republic’s first two ambassadors to Lebanon gave a lengthy interview to Asharq al-Awsat, the largest circulation pan-Arab newspaper, in which they detailed Iranian involvement in the creation of Hezbollah. In its initial years, Hezbollah focused just as much on attacking other Lebanese groups as it did Israel. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 (and the United Nations certified its withdrawal) but Hezbollah precipitated a war in 2006 by staging a cross-border raid into Israel. While Hezbollah has constantly framed itself as a resistance organization, it turned its guns on fellow Lebanese in 2008 in a fight for control over revenue. More recently, it has carried out aggressive ethnic and sectarian cleansing inside Syria on behalf of the Assad regime. It is an Iranian proxy through and through. I’ve been to Hezbollah bunkers before at Mlitta, in southern Lebanon. That they are decorated with posters of Khomeini and Khamenei, rather than any Lebanese figures, should put to rest the notion that Hezbollah is a Lebanese nationalist organization.

And, of course, there’s the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein certainly started that conflict, but the Islamic Republic sought more than to return to the status quo. In 1982, Iran had more or less pushed the Iraqi invaders out of its territory. Khomeini was considering a ceasefire but, according to former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s memoirs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pressured/convinced Khomeini to keep the war going until they met the goal of “liberating Jerusalem.” There followed six more years of bloodshed at the cost of perhaps a half million more lives. And, while pedantic, Zarif might want to remember that the missiles flew both ways during the Iran-Iraq War, as did the chemical weapons (although, admittedly, Iraq used them first).

Then there’s the issue of “Export of Revolution,” defined in both the Iranian constitution and the founding statute of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as an essential part of the Islamic Republic. In 2008, according to the Iranian newspaper Emruz (Today), former President Mohammad Khatami suggested “Export of Revolution” was just a call to utilize soft power to show the superiority of the Islamic Republic’s system:

What did the Imam [Khomeini] want, and what was his purpose of exporting the revolution? [Did he wish that] we should export revolution by means of gunpowder or groups sabotaging other countries?” Khatami asked, in effect acknowledging that Iran had used violence to undermine other countries. He answered his own rhetorical questions, declaring, “He meant to establish a role model here, which means people should see that in this society, the economy, science, and dignity of man are respected….

That would be all well and good if the matter dropped there. But the IRGC was outraged and protested Khatami’s remarks. Three weeks later, Ayatollah Shahroudi, one of the Supreme Leader’s closest associates, ended the debate once and for all, declaring to a group of IRGC, “Know your worth since today you are the hope of Islamic national and Islamic liberation movements.”

Then, of course, there’s the fact that not only has Iran become the largest state-sponsor of terrorism, but it also continues its efforts to attack Israel with a declared goal of eradicating the Jewish state. This isn’t simply the case of the most recent Iranian ballistic missile launch. Years ago, despite Juan Cole’s mistranslation, Iranian leaders did call for “wiping Israel off the face of the world.” Don’t take my word for it: take Iran’s. And when the father of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program died in an explosion at an IRGC missile base, the Iranian press revealed that his will requested his epitaph read, “The man who enabled Israel’s destruction.”

So is it true that Iran hasn’t invaded anyone in the last 200 or 250 years? No. Zarif has long had trouble with the truth. And Juan Cole has always looked at tenure as security to engage in political polemic unencumbered by fact. But even if that statement were to be amended to 150 or 100 or 45 years, to suggest Iran hasn’t been the aggressor is to ignore its sponsorship of terrorism and insurgency.

It’s one thing to pursue deals with Iran. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) probably won’t stand the test of time any more than did the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, but elections matter as do Congressional compromises. It’s quite another, however, to whitewash if not outright falsify Iran’s historical record in order to justify trust where none is deserved. Certainly, over the centuries, Iran has been a victim of imperialism but it has also been the aggressor. Indeed, since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has been perhaps the most aggressive state in the Middle East, launching more attacks against neighbors and deploying its military far more widely and aggressively than any other country. It’s time to get real.

3c) 

The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

Six hours in Gaza: a first-person account by Jackson School Professor Joel Migdal

In this first-hand account, Jackson School of International Studies Professor Joel S. Migdal observes the political, social and economic situation in Gaza based on his visit there in winter 2016. Dr. Migdal is currently on sabbatical in Israel, and is the founding chair of the University of Washington International Studies Program.

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a day in Gaza with Andy Dwonch, the head of Mercy Corps in Palestine. Mercy Corps is a large nonprofit organization based in Portland, with offices and missions in 45 countries. My trip was part of a brief advisory consultancy I am carrying out with the organization. Despite some vociferous lobbying by my family against visiting Gaza, I decided to do it.

Andy and I left Jerusalem at 6:30 am in order to be at the border crossing when it opened at 8:00. There are actually three stations to the crossing. The Israeli officials at the first station seemed most concerned about me. Although Andy had secured me a permit from the Israelis, the young woman at the crossing saw something that disturbed her and made about four phone calls and checked the computer repeatedly before finally letting me through. The next two stations, staffed by Palestine Authority and Hamas clerks, respectively, proceeded without incident. We had a car and driver waiting for us at the end to take us into Gaza City.

A word more on Mercy Corps. It receives a large percentage of its funding from the US government and is forbidden by law from having any contact with Hamas, meaning with anyone in the entire Gazan government. One can only imagine how this restriction complicates its dual mission of humanitarian relief and development.

The day was packed, especially because we had to leave by 3:00 pm, which would give just enough time to return to the Israeli border station before it closed at 3:30. That gave me exactly six hours in the city itself. Actually, Andy suggested on the way back to the border that we stop and take some pictures. The result of taking those few extra minutes was that I almost missed getting back into Israel. I was the last one through.

I was flooded with impressions as we drove into the old city of Gaza. The first was, unexpectedly, that it looked nothing like India. Given the severe poverty, even humanitarian crisis, that Gaza as a whole is experiencing, I had expected the obvious and wrenching poverty that I had seen in some Indian cities or many other Third World countries, for that matter—collapsing infrastructure, rickety shacks, a surfeit of beggars, children in rags, adults sleeping on the sidewalks. At least in this part of the city and others that I saw later in the day, none of that was visible. Instead, I saw hordes of children going to school, university students walking in and out of the gates of the two universities—both the children and the university students reasonably dressed. I observed morning shoppers buying vegetables and fruits from stands, shopkeepers opening their shops, and people walking purposefully to wherever they were going for the start of the day. There were cranes and construction workers everywhere, with lots of uncompleted buildings being worked on. A garbage truck, with a UN sign on it, was making its rounds.

I saw almost no signs of authority on the streets. No police. No guns. No moral police. One person commented to me that in 2009 Hamas was omnipresent, with lots of moral policing on the streets. Since then, such surveillance has fallen off, but people have learned to be self-policing in their behavior in public, he said, just to be safe and not harassed.

There was the occasional bombed out building, from the 2014 War. One had the entire top of the building, several stories, simply blown off. But other than those, most buildings were in decent shape, and some apartment buildings were downright nice. There were definitely some junkers on the road, but most of the cars looked like late-model varieties. Some of the side streets were pocked and broken up; the main thoroughfares, though, were in good shape. There were almost no traffic lights, and traffic was a bit chaotic. I must add again that I was in Gaza City (both the old and new parts of the city) only and did not go to some of the outer areas and refugee camps where the bombing in the 2014 war was the heaviest and where, I understand, destruction was massive.

People were certainly not in rags. Men were mostly in chino-type pants and button-down shirts. With very few exceptions, women were covered with the hijab and burka. Perhaps 10-20 percent of them were in black with their faces totally covered. Incidentally, this sort of veiling was not a traditional practice in Palestinian society; it is very much a product of the “new fundamentalism.”

What struck me initially about all these people was that they were not hanging their heads; they did not look defeated and dejected. At the end of the day, I commented on this to Andy who said that this was his impression from his many trips to Gaza, as well, that people seem to remain hopeful in spite of it all. This is a very different dynamic from what he observes in the West Bank. I hope to go to Ramallah soon (again with Mercy Corps) and get some sense of this myself. I have been at a loss to explain this difference in mood. The best explanation I have heard—from an acquaintance who works often in the West Bank—is that, while under siege by the Israelis, Gazans do not experience the almost daily raids by the IDF that occur in the West Bank. Also, they no longer live in close proximity to settlements or have to deal with daily challenges posed by checkpoints and access restrictions. The more obvious presence of the occupation in the West Bank may account for a greater sense of helplessness.

The fascinating people I met during the day actually related to Israel in what I considered a very interesting fashion. In conversation after conversation, there was a kind of by-the-way acknowledgment of the destructiveness of Israel’s policies and, for sure, a general hatred for Israel. But what was striking was how everyone quickly went on from those sorts of almost off-handed comments to criticize how the Hamas government or the people themselves are also responsible for the state of affairs. There was no obsessing about Israel, which I found interesting. Indeed, there might even be a general acceptance of Israel in terms of realizing that Israel will long be part of their future.

Besides riding through and around Gaza City, I was ushered to four meetings in the city. All the Gazans I met did not talk politics explicitly. But, in the first and last meetings, those I met with went out of their way to express their objections to Hamas policies and outright opposition to Hamas generally.

The first meeting was with Omar Shaban, the director of a think tank, Pal-Think for Strategic Studies. Here is how Pal-Think describes itself: “Pal-Think for Strategic Studies is an independent and non-profit think and do tank, based in Gaza, Palestine. It was established in March 2007. Pal-Think’s mission is to promote rational thinking , peace, freedom, and prosperity through dialogue on public issues, as well as producing policy recommendations for the decision-makers in Palestine and the Middle East. The main objective of Pal-Think is to conduct research on thematic issues that serve as a basis for policy debates on matters that are important to the Palestinians, the region, and the international community.”

The offices were in an apartment/office building—quite nice. It partners with, and receives funding from, at least nine outside institutions, practically all of which are European. My friend Elie Podeh, a professor at the Hebrew University and, I should add, author of a fascinating new book, Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, recommended that I meet with Shaban.

Omar is a fascinating man. Despite the blockade, he manages to travel widely in the Arab World, Europe, and the United States. He also writes extensively, including pieces for the likes of the Brookings Institution. In his report published by Brookings, he wrote of the languishing efforts to rebuild Gaza (my impression is that efforts at rebuilding have picked up considerably in the year since he wrote his Brookings report, in part because of the easing of the blockade on building materials, according to a UN briefing I attended before the visit). One of his suggestions for getting the reconstruction effort on track was to create a collaborative Gaza Reconstruction Council, which would oversee the building. A major theme in Omar’s thinking is greater involvement of civil society.

Certainly, a running refrain through the day was Hamas’s stymying the growth of independent actors and institutions in society not under its direct control. Actually, I think that the idea of such a Council also makes sense for a reason not stated in Omar’s report—the ability of an internationalized independent group to put Israelis’ minds at ease that construction materials would not be used to build tunnels and other military installations.

As an aside, there have been persistent rumors and reports that Turkey and Israel are engaging in reconciliation talks and that an agreement is near. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at the moment seems more favorable to resuming relations than Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who fears pushback from Greece, Egypt, and probably most important, Russia. In any case, the rumors also indicate that a central Turkish demand in the negotiations is the ending of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Of course, the Israelis must be asking for mechanisms and guarantees to prevent imports from being used for military purposes in the event that the siege is lifted. I raised the possibility of a reconciliation agreement with the accompanying lifting of the blockade with people throughout the day to elicit their thoughts. Most expressed a wait-and-see attitude. I think a certain understandable cynicism pervades the thinking of most Gazans. The blockade, in force now for almost a decade, looks all but permanent to them.

In speaking of conditions and government policy in Gaza, Omar did not seem constrained at all in expressing his opinions, at least in the confines of his office. There was a bit of weariness to him. I imagine that he has spoken numerous times to outsiders like me and expressed his opinion in print—all without significant changes on the ground.

From Pal-Think, we drove to the massive UNRWA compound in the city. UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which provides assistance and relief to some five million Palestinian refugees around the region. There I met with Siobahn Parnell, the deputy director of UNRWA Gaza (she actually left that position shortly after my visit). Siobahn is from Virginia and held the job for a number of years. She described UNRWA’s scope in Gaza, which is massive. It has a staff of 12,500, by far the biggest non-government employer in Gaza. It runs 21 health centers, and a quarter of a million students attend its 257 schools. The Agency feeds 960,000 of the 1.3 million refugees in Gaza. Services also include relief and social services, microfinance, and camp infrastructure and improvement. UNRWA maintains much of Gaza’s infrastructure inside the eight refugee camps, which may help explain both the building boom and the decent shape of many roads and buildings.

Siobahn remained upbeat, despite the extraordinary challenges UNRWA faces and the large number of portfolios she held. She expressed clear awareness about UNRWA’s need to be transparent to both donors and the community, including the United States, the biggest government donor to UNRWA with a total contribution of over $380 million in 2015. That meant, in particular, strong oversight of all materials coming in for UNRWA building projects.

The next stop was a Mercy Corps-sponsored project, Gaza Sky Geeks. The project is an incubator for fledgling companies, largely Internet-based. I met with about a dozen male and female CEOs of these startups, all in their late twenties or early thirties. The session, in which I interacted with each of them as they described their projects, was undoubtedly the highlight of the day.

My favorite project was one called Walk and Charge. It involved a device connected to one’s smart phone, which straps onto one’s arm while walking. It then uses the energy expended by the body to charge the phone. It also has an app, which has several functions including telling walkers how far they have to go to fully charge the phone. Several other companies produced electronic games for the Arab world, one of which explicitly aimed to become the Zynga for Arabic speakers. One project was a website addressing the serious issue of obesity of women in the Arab world. It included menus of traditional foods but with low-calorie versions and fitness programs for women. Another app turned shopkeepers’ smart phones into cash registers, allowing them to track their inventories. One CEO described the creation of an AirBnB-like company but for office space. Yet another was an interactive comic book site in Arabic for creators and consumers.

I found most of the companies truly inventive. The blockade has ironically increased the value of the Internet and sophisticated computer skills, as these young people see the Internet as a way to leapfrog the siege. For most, their market is the Arab world but some have global ambitions. The high value on schooling in Gaza—there is near-universal literacy, I was told—and the high number of students going to universities result in youth with ideas and sophisticated skills. The dearth of other job opportunities—unemployment, including for university graduates, is massive in Gaza—may also lead them into the startup world. I thought how unfortunate it is that these young people, who seek to make Gaza into the Silicon Valley of the Arab world, live a stone’s throw from Israel, which calls itself Startup Nation, but with no contact at all with Israeli startups and software engineers.

My final meeting was with a fascinating character, Atef Abu Saif. Atef holds a Ph.D. in political science from the European University Institute in Florence, having worked with a friend of mine, Professor Phillipe Schmitter. Atef is also a novelist. He now teaches political science at Al-Azhar Gaza University and writes frequently, including for the New York Times and Slate. An open member of Fatah (although critical of the Fatah leadership), he has clashed with Hamas on a number of occasions, landing him in jail for short stints.

Atef’s main contention is that there are actually two Gazas. One is the one run by Hamas and includes its supporters. He noted, for example, that there has been a mosque-building binge, leading to a total of 879 mosques in the Strip by 2014, as compared to two public libraries. In his words, “Gaza has become one huge mosque.” The second Gaza consists of the Palestinian public in Gaza, engaged in all sorts of cultural and social activities outside Hamas’s orbit. If not quite a civil society, he intimated, there is a lot that goes on beneath the radar.

Saif lived in relative obscurity until his latest novel, A Suspended Life, was short-listed for last year’s International Prize for Arabic Literature, popularly called the Arabic Man Booker Prize. Immediately, he was thrust into the role of celebrity throughout the Arab world. Not yet translated into English, the story pushes his idea of two Gazas. The book did not go over well with Hamas authorities in Gaza and, at one point, he was seized traveling to the award ceremony. The entire scene was photographed while he was holding a copy of the book. The picture spread virally throughout the Arab world, and since that time he has not been bothered by the authorities. The Israeli press reported on the book, eager to know what kind of literature would come out of Gaza and, indeed, surprised that such cultural products actually emanate from Gaza. What was remarkable too, he said, was that interviewers from the Arab media discovered it was not just breaking news that could come out of Gaza; a notable novel recognized, widely in the Arab world, could emanate from Gaza as well.

My day ended with a drive through the city and a mad dash to the Israeli bordering crossing. The six hours in Gaza were definitely insufficient, and I hope I have an opportunity to return this spring.

 ZIONISM - The right of the Jewish people to live in their Jewish homeland in peace.

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4)  The Royal Navy is proud to announce its new fleet of Type 45 destroyers

Having initially named the first two ships HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless, the Naming Committee has, after intensive pressure from Brussels, renamed them HMS Cautious and HMS Prudence.

The next five ships are to be HMS Empathy, HMS Circumspect, HMS Nervous, HMS Timorous and HMS Apologist.

 Costing £850 million each, they comply with the very latest employment, equality, health and safety and human rights laws.

The Royal Navy fully expects any future enemy to be jolly decent and to comply with the same high standards of behaviour.

The new user-friendly crow's nest has excellent wheelchair access.

Live ammunition has been replaced with paint balls to reduce the risk of anyone getting hurt and to cut down on the number of compensation claims.

Stress counsellors and lawyers will be on board, as will a full sympathetic industrial tribunal.

The crew will be 50/50 men and women, and will contain the correct balance of race, gender, sexuality and disability.

Sailors will only work a maximum of 37hrs per week as per Brussels Rules on Working Hours, even in wartime.

All the vessels are equipped with a maternity ward, a crèche and a gay disco.

Tobacco will be banned throughout the ship, but recreational cannabis will be allowed in wardrooms and messes.

The Royal Navy is eager to shed its traditional reputation for; "Rum, sodomy and the lash"; so out has gone the rum ration, replaced by sparkling water. Sodomy remains, now extended to include all ratings under 18. The lash will still be available on request.

Saluting of officers is now considered elitist and has been replaced by "Hello Sailor".

All information on notice boards will be in 37 different languages and Braille.

Crew members will now no longer have to ask permission to grow beards and/or moustaches.

This applies equally to female crew.

The Ministry of Defense is inviting suggestions for a "non-specific" flag because the White Ensign may offend minorities.

The Union Jack must never be seen.

The newly re-named HMS Cautious will be commissioned shortly by Captain Hook from the Finsbury Park Mosque who will break a petrol bomb over the hull. She will gently slide into the sea as the Royal Marines Band plays "In the Navy" by the Village People.

Her first deployment will be to escort boatloads of illegal immigrants to ports on England 's south coast.

The Prime Minister said, "Our ships reflect the very latest in modern thinking and they will always be able to comply with any new legislation from Brussels ."

His final words were,              "Britannia waives the rules."

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