Iran Deal Grows Riskier!
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Did not realize Lynn scheduled us for the gym before we left for Nashville so this will be the last posting for a week.
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I posted this once before but for those who may have missed it, I believe it is worth posting again. Think about this and the Supreme Court when you go to vote. (See 1 below.)
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Iran not ISIS is America's greatest regional threat according to Robert Spencer. (See 2 below.)
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How about these charts? They tend to refute our lying president.
This is an absolutely hilarious posting on ZeroHedge that shows what happens when a Washington Post fact checker tries to do math.
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But what difference does it make? (See 3 below.)
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Is Trump correct about the election being stolen?
Click here: Hacking Democracy - The Hack - YouTube
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Marines train with Israelis. (See 4 below.)
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
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Is Pope Francis a naive innocent or is he seeking that which will never happen and is dangerous - faith that ISIS is not our enemy? You decide. (See 5 below.)
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The Iran Deal - the risk grows. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Clinton Mafia by Charles Krauthammer
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Recently, Charles Krauthammer alluded that he had no doubt some of the 30k emails Hillary deleted from her private e-mail server very likely had references to the Clinton Foundation, which would be illegal and a conflict of interest.
The Clinton Foundation is "organized crime" at its finest.
Here is a good, concise summary of how the Clinton Foundation works as a tax free international money laundering scheme. It may eventually prove to be the largest political criminal enterprise in U.S. History.
This is a textbook case on how you hide foreign money sent to you and repackage it to be used for your own purposes. All tax free.
Here's how it works:
1. You create a separate foreign "charity." In this case, the Clintons set it up in Canada .
2. Foreign oligarchs and governments, then donate to this Canadian charity. In this case, over 1,000 did – contributing mega millions. I'm sure they did this out of the goodness of their hearts, and expected nothing in return. (Imagine Putin's buddies waking up one morning and just deciding to send untold millions to a Canadian charity).
3. The Canadian charity then bundles these separate donations and makes a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.
4. The Clinton Foundation and the cooperating Canadian charity claim Canadian law prohibits the identification of individual donors.
5. The Clinton Foundation then "spends" some of this money for legitimate good works programs. Unfortunately, experts believe this is on the order of 10%. Much of the balance goes to enrich the Clintons , pay salaries to untold numbers of hangers on, and fund lavish travel, etc. Again, virtually tax free, which means you and I are subsidizing it.
6. The Clinton Foundation, with access to the world's best accountants, somehow fails to report much of this on their tax filings. They discover these "clerical errors" and begin the process of re-filing 5 years of tax returns.
7. Net result – foreign money goes into the Clinton's pockets tax free and untraceable back to the original donor. This is the textbook definition of money laundering. Oh, by the way, the Canadian "charity" includes as a principal one Frank Giustra. Google him. He is the guy who was central to the formation of Uranium One, the Canadian company that somehow acquired massive U.S. Uranium interests and then sold them to an organization controlled by Russia . This transaction required U.S. State Department approval, and guess who was Secretary of State when the approval was granted.
As an aside, imagine how former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell feels. That poor schlep is in jail because he and his wife took $165,000 in gifts and loans for doing minor favors for a guy promoting a vitamin company. Not legal but not exactly putting U.S. Security at risk.
Sarcasm aside, if you're still not persuaded this was a cleverly structured way to get unidentified foreign money to the Clintons , ask yourself this: Why did these foreign interests funnel money through a Canadian charity? Why not donate directly to the Clinton Foundation? Better yet, why not donate money directly to the people, organizations and
countries in need?
This is the essence of money laundering and influence peddling. Now you know why Hillary's destruction of 30,000 e-mails was a risk she was willing to take. Bill and Hillary are devious, unprincipled, dishonest and criminal and they are Slick!
Warning: They could be back in the White House in January 2017.
Don't let it happen.
Remember, most people are not well informed. We must inform and educate them.
2)
ROBERT SPENCER IN THE NEW YORK POST: THE MOST DANGEROUS ANTI-AMERICAN FORCE ISN'T ISIS, IT'S IRAN
In the New York Post this morning I explain why the larger long-term threat to the U.S. is not the Islamic State, but the Islamic Republic of Iran:
The greatest threat to national security today isn’t ISIS, or China, or Russia or even the administration’s favorite bogey, climate change. The greatest threat is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that has been on a war footing toward the United States since 1979, mandates chants of “Death to America” in every mosque in the country at Friday prayers, and now, thanks to President Obama and John Kerry, is on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons.
The greatest threat to national security today isn’t ISIS, or China, or Russia or even the administration’s favorite bogey, climate change. The greatest threat is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that has been on a war footing toward the United States since 1979, mandates chants of “Death to America” in every mosque in the country at Friday prayers, and now, thanks to President Obama and John Kerry, is on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons.
Iran is not as flashy as ISIS but is actively working now on numerous anti-American initiatives that could turn out to be even more lethal than anything ISIS has yet perpetrated. In June 2011 Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared: “Wherever a movement is Islamic, populist and anti-American, we support it.”
In 2012, Khamenei called for terror attacks in the West — but now, because of Obama, Iran is newly flush with billions of dollars in sanctions relief to finance such attacks.
As I show in my new book “The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran,” the nation is a breeding ground for terrorist activity: funding and controlling a global network of jihad terror organizations with a truly global reach, ready to do Iran’s bidding up to and including the killing of its perceived enemies.
Chief in this network is Hezbollah, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Most notoriously, Hezbollah was responsible for the murder of 241 US servicemen in the bombing of military barracks in Beirut in 1983.
Iran has also been implicated in the bankrolling of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which housed members of the US Air Force, and in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which over 200 people were killed.
Iran’s Hezbollah doesn’t just operate in Lebanon. It continues to target the United States through Mexico, where it has teamed with drug cartels along the US border. This partnership is mutually beneficial: Hezbollah gets massive amounts of cash to finance its jihad operations, and the drug cartels receive extensive training in ways to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. That is one principal reason why the Mexican drug cartels have adopted what up until recently had been two trademarks of jihad groups: kidnapping and beheading.
It’s not just Hezbollah that Iran bankrolls. Despite the Sunni/Shiite divide, the Sunni jihad groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Shiite Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi Shiite group Kata’ib Hezbollah are all funded by the Islamic Republic.
Nor does it work only through jihad terror groups: It has funded the Spanish left-wing populist party, Podemos — a vivid illustration of how the international left and the global jihad movement can and do make common cause against the West.
Iran was even involved in planning the 9/11 terror attacks: in the months leading up to the attacks, at least eight of the hijackers traveled repeatedly to Iran and met with Iranian agents there, who facilitated their travel to Afghanistan for training.
Their passports were left unstamped by Iranian border guards so that they would be able to enter the United States undetected.
Iranian adventurism has continued. In 2012, the government of Canada closed Iran’s embassy in Ottawa and recalled its own diplomats from Tehran in protest of subversive activities by Iranians in Canada, directed from the Embassy.
Former Iranian diplomat Abolfazl Eslami admitted that Iran had been plotting subversive activities through their embassies in Canada and other countries. And earlier this year, the US indicted seven Iranian hackers linked to the government of the Islamic Republic for cyber attacks on US banks and a dam in New York state.
As a result of Obama’s supine appeasement policy toward the Islamic Republic, Iran is bolder and more belligerent than ever — as evidenced by its capture and public humiliation of US Navy sailors last January.
But it is not too late. While a new president will not be able to recover the money that Obama has showered upon Iran, the next chief executive can and should repudiate the nuclear deal and put the Iranian regime on notice that not only its pursuit of nuclear weapons, but its global adventurism will no longer be tolerated.
The Iranian opposition, however imperfect, that Obama refused to support in 2009 must be given active aid of all possible kinds. And any future negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran should only be entered into with a clear-eyed understanding of that regime’s bloodthirstiness, willingness to deceive and unshakable hostility to the United States….
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6)
3)
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www.wsj.com
The U.S. secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward
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U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed
Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”
But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.”
“This break with longstanding U.S. policy [not to] put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said.
Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
At the time of the prisoner release, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House portrayed it as a diplomatic breakthrough. Mr. Kerry cited the importance of “the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks.”
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said they were certain Washington was going to lose the arbitration in The Hague, where Iran was seeking more than $10 billion, and described the settlement as a bargain for taxpayers.
Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment. The Iranian foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law. Sanctions also complicate Tehran’s access to global banks.
“Sometimes the Iranians want cash because it’s so hard for them to access things in the international financial system,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the January cash delivery. “They know it can take months just to figure out how to wire money from one place to another.”
The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars. Lawmakers have expressed concern that the cash would be used by Iran to fund regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. and United Nations believe Tehran is subsidizing the Assad regime’s war in Syria through cash and energy shipments. Iran has acknowledged providing both financial and military aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and deploying Iranian soldiers there.
But John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said last week that there was evidence much of the money Iran has received from sanctions relief was being used for development projects. “The money, the revenue that’s flowing into Iran is being used to support its currency, to provide moneys to the departments and agencies, build up its infrastructure,” Mr. Brennan said at a conference in Aspen, Colo.
The U.S. and Iran entered into secret negotiations to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Iran in November 2014, according to U.S. and European officials. Switzerland’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, offered to host the discussions.
The Swiss have represented the U.S.’s diplomatic interests in Iran since Washington closed its embassy in Tehran following the 1979 hostage crisis.
Iranian security services arrested two Iranian-Americans during President Obama’s first term. In July 2014, the intelligence arm of Iran’s elite military unit, the Revolutionary Guard, detained the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, and charged him with espionage.
A fourth Iranian-American was arrested last year.
The Swiss channel initially saw little activity, according to these officials. But momentum shifted after Tehran and world powers forged a final agreement in July 2015 to constrain Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of most international sanctions. A surge of meetings then took place in the Swiss lakeside city of Geneva in November and December.
The U.S. delegation was led by a special State Department envoy, Brett McGurk, and included representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to U.S. and European officials. The Iranian team was largely staffed by members of its domestic spy service, accorind to U.S. officials.
The discussions, held at the InterContinental Hotel, initially focused solely on a formula whereby Iran would swap the Americans detained in Tehran for Iranian nationals held in U.S. jails, U.S. officials said. But around Christmas, the discussions dovetailed with the arbitration in The Hague concerning the old arms deal.
The Iranians were demanding the return of $400 million the Shah’s regime deposited into a Pentagon trust fund in 1979 to purchase U.S. fighter jets, U.S. officials said. They also wanted billions of dollars as interest accrued since then.
President Obama approved the shipment of the $400 million. But accumulating so much cash presented a logistical and security challenge, said U.S. and European officials. One person briefed on the operation joked: “You can’t just withdraw that much money from ATMs.”
Mr. Kerry and the State and Treasury departments sought the cooperation of the Swiss and Dutch governments. Ultimately, the Obama administration transferred the equivalent of $400 million to their central banks. It was then converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane.
On the morning of Jan. 17, Iran released the four Americans: Three of them boarded a Swiss Air Force jet and flew off to Geneva, with the fourth returning to the U.S. on his own. In return, the U.S. freed seven Iranian citizens and dropped extradition requests for 14 others.
U.S. and European officials wouldn’t disclose exactly when the plane carrying the $400 million landed in Iran. But a report by an Iranian news site close to the Revolutionary Guard, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.
Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.
Among the Americans currently being held are an energy executive named Siamak Namazi and his 80-year old father, Baqer, according to U.S. and Iranian officials. Iran’s judiciary spokesman last month confirmed Tehran had arrested the third American, believed to be a San Diego resident named Reza “Robin” Shahini.
Friends and family of the Namazis believe the Iranians are seeking to increase their leverage to force another prisoner exchange or cash payment in the final six months of the Obama administration. Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials have been raising their case with Iranian diplomats, U.S. officials say.
Iranian officials have demanded in recent weeks the U.S. return $2 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in New York in 2009. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the money should be given to victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks.
Members of Congress are seeking to pass legislation preventing the Obama administration from making any further cash payments to Iran. One of the bills requires for the White House to make public the details of its $1.7 billion transfer to Iran.
“President Obama’s…payment to Iran in January, which we now know will fund Iran’s military expansion, is an appalling example of executive branch governance,” said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who co-wrote the bill. “Subsidizing Iran’s military is perhaps the worst use of taxpayer dollars ever by an American president.”
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4) The US Marine Corps joined Israel’s Navy Commandos in a drill aimed at strengthening cooperation between the two units and sharing tactics in countering Islamic terrorism in the Middle East.
The IDF and the US Marine Corps recently completed a joint exercise in southern Israel, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Thursday.
Code-named Noble Shirley 2016, this drill was the latest in a series of routine bilateral training exercises seeking to improve collaboration and interoperability between the Israeli and American forces.
The live-fire training drill, held last week, involved the Marines’ Battalion Landing Team, 6th Marine Regiment and 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which coordinated with Israeli ground, air and naval forces, including Israel’s elite Naval Commandos.
Special emphasis was placed on urban warfare and counter terrorism, Channel 2 said, adding that US troops were utilizing IDF counter terrorism expertise in the war on Islamic State (ISIS) in the Middle East.
As part of the exercise, troops performed urban and tunnel warfare tasks, drilled helicopter landings behind enemy lines and simulated extractions under fire. Various tactical formations, including by military medical personnel, were also among the scenarios included in the exercise.
According to Channel 2, the drill also included a scenario in which Israel was subjected to Hezbollah and Iranian missile salvos, which sought to test real-time integration of Israeli and American missile defense systems. Israeli defense officials used American radar systems deployed across the Middle East, as well as a satellite system capable of alerting of missile launches across the globe.
Israel’s David’s Sling medium- to long-range missile defense system was also deployed as part of the exercise.
“The test demonstrated the United States’ commitment for the protection of Israel as well as the interoperability between the United States and Israeli integrated defense system architecture,” the Defense Ministry stated after the drill.
Israel and the US have been collaborating in recent years in the development of anti-missile defense systems, and in June the US House of Representatives passed an appropriations measure that included $635.7 million earmarked for funding of Israel’s missile defense programs.
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5)
By Thomas Williams, PhDIslamic State Answers Pope Francis: Ours Is a Religious War and We Hate You
The Islamic State terror group has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.
The Islamic State terror group has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.
In the most recent issue of Dabiq, the propaganda magazine of the Islamic State, ISIS criticizes Pope Francis for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror are economically motivated.
“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”
The Islamic State directly attacks Francis for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence,” saying that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.
Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”
“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord,” it reads.
“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’”
The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s description of recent acts of Islamic terror as “senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing senseless about it.
“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,” they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian West is absolute and implacable.The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah [tax for infidels] and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.In a recent press conference, Pope Francis told journalists that the world is at war. “But it’s a real war, not a religious war,” he said.
“It’s a war of interests, a war for money. A war for natural resources and for the dominion of the peoples.”
“Every religion wants peace,” he said.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Listen to Dr. Williams discuss this article on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM:
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| When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to speak to Congress and the American people to warn of the danger of Iran’s nuclear program, and the shortcomings of the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton’s pick for her vice president, Senator Tim Kaine, was among the Democrats who boycotted his speech. Kaine followed that cowardly and shameful act by joining Congresswoman and head of the Democratic National Convention Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, my close friend Senator Cory Booker and other Democrats in the House and Senate who followed Obama’s lead like lemmings off a national security cliff when he demanded they support his catastrophic deal with Iran. In the Senate, Cory and others supported a filibuster that guaranteed there would not even be a vote. On the single most important vote affecting Israel’s security, one on which both the Israeli government and opposition agreed should be defeated, the Democrats chose political expediency over principle and the lives of Israelis. I singled out Booker and Wasserman-Schultz because they were among the most shocking supporters of the Iran deal, given the massive Jewish backing both had throughout their careers, and the repeated public promises both made to the Jewish community to protect Israel, which they betrayed when they voted to give the murderers in Tehran $150 billion. Thanks to the catastrophic deal Iran has the resources to escalate the destabilization of the region, further advance its nuclear ambitions, research and develop more deadly ballistic missiles and support global terrorism. The people around Cory apparently warned him that if he voted against the president and bucked his party on Iran, he would be committing political suicide. With this supporters eyeing the vice presidential spot on Hillary Clinton’s ticket, they persuaded him ultimately to support a deal that he clearly did not believe in and, after being passed over for VP, did not advance his career. In short, Cory was persuaded to look the other way on genocidal incitement that most targeted a community that has always loved and supported him in favor of political promises that amounted to zero. Of all the people to have betrayed Israel and the Jewish people over the Iran deal, however, Schultz was the most insincere. She had always traded on her Jewish identity to gain currency in politics and had massive Jewish financial backing. Her support of the Iran deal, amid Iran’s near daily genocidal incitement against her people, was the ultimate betrayal. It was downright embarrassing when she went on CNN to shed crocodile tears about how torn up she was about the deal. If she really cared about Israel’s security, she would have voted against the agreement. Period. Tears mean nothing. Action is everything. Now, the Democratic Party has discovered that anyone who betrays their people on issues of genocidal incitement is probably not going to be very trustworthy on lesser matters; Schultz abused her power as head of the DNC and attempted to undermine Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. I have long said that politicians who lack conviction in one important area will show they have no conviction in other areas either. Schultz demonstrated with the Iran deal that she would do anything – including selling out the security of her people – for political gain. Schultz’s political career is, for all intents and purposes, over. But Booker still potentially has a promising career ahead of him, despite losing the VP sweepstakes. He could still enhance that career and win back the supporters he betrayed if he would admit he made a mistake in supporting the nuclear deal and call for a response to Iran’s violations of the agreement and other UN resolutions. He can also give a speech on the floor of the Senate demanding that continued Iranian genocidal incitement against Israel should indefinitely delay the easing of sanctions until Iran finally stops. Contrary to the claims of the president, Iran has not changed its policies toward the United States. If anything, it may be more hostile, in part because it disrespects the weakness Obama displayed in the negotiations and his reaction to its provocations after reaching an agreement. As expected, Iran has increased its involvement in backing the tyrannical Syrian regime, continued efforts to destabilize its neighbors, and remains the patron of Hezbollah terrorists. Although Iran has not received the full economic windfall from the agreement yet, the billions of dollars that were released to Iran, combined with the rush by Western companies to make deals with Tehran (including the despicable decision by Boeing to sell planes to aid the radical Islamic regime), have strengthened the hardliners and given them more resources for sponsoring terrorism and mayhem. In just the past two weeks, we’ve learned the situation is even worse. Though it comes as no surprise to anyone with a scintilla of common sense and knowledge about Iran, the government is actively cheating on the agreement while President Barack Obama hides his head in the sand out of fear that enforcing the deal would cause his prize legacy achievement to unravel. Thanks to a leak from German intelligence – and surely Obama has the same information, but perhaps chose to keep it from the American people – we know there have been “extensive Iranian attempts” to acquire illicit materials, “especially goods that can be used in the field of nuclear technology.” This revelation was followed by the disclosure of a part of the nuclear deal that was never revealed to the public. Instead of Iran being precluded from engaging in nuclear activities for 15 years, we now know that after 11 years Iran can start replacing its current centrifuges with more advanced ones. As a result, instead of Iran having a one-year breakout time (which, absurdly, was considered a great achievement as opposed to destroying Iran’s capability altogether), the figure is actually six months or less. Worse, even after the news came out, Obama chose to ignore it. The Iran deal may not be one of the major issues in this campaign, but it is a test of the Democrats’ integrity and willingness to admit they made a mistake. It is even more important that Clinton and Kaine acknowledge the shortcomings of the disastrous deal they supported and pledge to reassert the original demands Obama had insisted upon before capitulating to Iranian threats. They should not want to be a party to the Obama legacy, which is not a great diplomatic breakthrough but the destabilization of the Middle East, the endangering of Israel and the growth of radical Islamic threats to the region and beyond. The author, “America’s rabbi,” whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous rabbi in America,” is executive director of The World Values Network, which promotes universal values in politics and culture, and is the international best-selling author of 30 books, including his forthcoming, The Israel Warriors Handbook. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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