+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++AOC, Waters and Pocahontas lead the way and if Democrats follow they will be diving off the cliff to their own drowning. Could not happen to a greater group of progressive radicals. Bless their hearts.. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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de Blasio's cup runneth over. Now he wants to ban skyscrapers made out of material that will not allow them to rise above 2 floors? (See 2 below.)
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If Democrats want to run on a campaign of identity politics and select a candidate based on gender and/or color instead of selecting the best of the worst and fight it out on issues they will lose handily.
Furthermore, if they continue to hawk issues that border on insanity and give away of free stuff they will also lose.
Frankly it is hard to see how losers can become winners.
Pocahontas has decided Trump must be impeached and has also suggested a way to rid student's of their loan obligations. Her idea is neither good politics nor policy though she believes having wealthy cough up wampum is the way to go.
Having obligations paid by others sends a wrong message and certainly discourages to those who have met their obligations or intend to do so. Second, a penalty on wealth is probably against our laws and constitution but since native Americans did not draft them, Pocahontas feels no obligation even though she is not much of one.
Her campaign in not gaining traction so the next best thing is make everything free.
Notwithstanding Pelosi's desire, the rush to impeach , according to Graham, will continue to gain momentum as the radicals take over starting with Waters (dingbat Edith) etc.
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The more I read about Mueller and his team of biased gum shoes the more I agree with Kim's analysis. The collusion conclusion part of his report is a credit to his professionalism but the second , obstruction, part of his report is a cop out and lamentably allows the bias of his gum shoe associates to prevail. The second part of the report serves as a lay up gift for Democrats who wish to pursue their political goal of impeaching Trump because they hope his "guilt" is an obvious slam dunk.
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Iran's economy is declining from an already weakened position. (See 3 below.)
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My friend, Avi, writes about a new bandage that applies more pressure on wounds. (See 4 below.)
And:
More articles on Israel, Iran and Palestinians. (See 4a and 4b below.)
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Dick
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1) AOC Joins Trump Impeachment Effort
Radical Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has now joined the Trump impeachment train following the release of the Mueller report.
According to Fox News:
Just a month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unequivocally stated her opposition to impeachment proceedings against President Trump, the Robert Mueller report has reignited the debate inside her caucus.
“Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted, announcing she’ll sign onto Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s, D-Mich., resolution urging the House Judiciary Committee to probe whether Trump committed impeachment-level offenses.
Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President.
It is our job as outlined in Article 1, Sec 2, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
As such, I’ll be signing onto @RashidaTlaib’s impeachment resolution.
The sprawling and detailed Mueller report released Thursday, while effectively clearing the president and his associates on the Russia collusion charge central to the probe, outlined a series of Trump actions that were investigated as part of the obstruction-of-justice inquiry. Mueller did not reach a determination on that issue, but provided a cornucopia of dramatic anecdotes showing the president trying to curtail the special counsel investigation.
Among them, the report said he directed then-White House Counsel Don McGahn in June 2017 to tell the acting attorney general that Mueller “must be removed.” McGahn refused.
Many have stated that the special counsel left the matter of prosecution up to Congress based on the long-standing tradition of the Justice Department not indicting a sitting president. It looks like Congress will not stop investigating anytime soon.
1a)Thoughts from a hipster coffee shop…
By Alyssa Ahlgren
I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me.
We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty- One Times.
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”
Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth.
Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true.
Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity.
I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Let me lay down some universal truths really quickly. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history.
Not only that, but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on.
However, these universal truths don’t matter.
We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality).
We are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history).
We are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity?
We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why?
The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones.
We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem.
We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.
My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution.
The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?
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2) Sanctuary City Mayor Doesn't Want Anymore Illegals
Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio took a page from washed-up celebrity Cher by completing a 180 and vowing to block President Donald Trump's intention to bus illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities.
De Blasio claims Trump's plan is illegal and vowed to fight him in court.
While Trump's move is politically savvy, it is not without risk. (Red State)
Mr. Trump regularly complains that apprehended illegal immigrants are released into society while awaiting their court dates. It’s a legitimate gripe, but shipping immigrants to sanctuary cities would only increase the odds that they don’t show up for their hearings. And it will make those cities even more of a magnet for fake asylum seekers and others who shouldn’t be in the country.
The frustration with cities that coddle illegal immigrants is understandable. Sanctuary policies make life easier for violent criminal immigrants and more dangerous for the law-abiding fellow immigrants on whom they prey most often. Yet the president seems more interested in punishing the Democratic politicians who typically run these cities, even if the results are counterproductive.
There’s also little doubt that the legality of such a move is questionable. Critics contend that the Department of Homeland Security is funded for certain actions — such as processing and detention of migrants — but that funds have not been appropriated for transporting illegals (which would be expensive) nor determining which cities would be landing spots.
...
It’s known that the Obama administration was releasing illegal immigrants randomly and not tracking their movements, and were reticent to provide information as to how many were let go. Trump’s plan, at the very least, will lend itself to tracking how many illegals are being released and where exactly they go, at least initially.
Moreover, if de Blasio moves to resist the administration in court, he'll effectively admit the conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border represent a genuine crisis.
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3) A Goal for Iran’s Oil Exports: Zero
President Trump wants to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran, which is why he is giving the sanctions screws another firm twist. Any country that imports Iranian oil will soon face U.S. penalties—with no exceptions. Last year seven nations and Taiwan were granted waivers through May 2, giving them time to adjust supply lines. These waivers won’t be extended, the State Department said Monday, helping to push the benchmark oil price to $74 a barrel, a nearly six-month high.
Israel was created to fulfill the ancient promise of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Your children will return to their own land”(31:17). Jews from 130 countries who speak more than 100 different languageshave immigrated to Israel. Nearly 70 years after its founding, Israel is a technological powerhouse, in part because it is one of the most diverse places on the planet, with citizens originating in the Middle East, Africa, Iran, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and with large numbers of Jews, Christians and Muslims.
One outstanding example of this diversity is a partnership between a Jewish Israeli medic who created a revolutionary bandage and a Bedouin Israeli factory owner who employs women to manufacture it.
Bernard Bar-Natan first started thinking about bandages in the 1980s, a few years after he moved to Israel from Brooklyn. When he enlisted in the medic corps of the Israel Defense Forces, he was shocked to learn that the army’s standard bandages were made around World War II and had not been modified since then. All the bandages had a pad in the middle and gauze strings on each side, and Bar-Natan was taught to grab a stone and add additional bandages over a wound to quell the flow of blood. Not only were these methods unsanitary, they required medics to carry large numbers of bandages.
After his military discharge, Bar-Natan began tinkering with alternatives and eventually came up with a bandage with a built-in handlebar (a substitute for a stone) that can provide up to 30 pounds of pressure to stanch bleeding, even with traumatic head injuries. He also invented a “reverse wrap” technique to exert more pressure without additional bandages.
By the early 1990s, Bar-Natan had a prototype. With the help of an Israeli government grant and accelerator program he launched his business, but he lacked a way to mass-produce his Emergency Bandage until he found an unlikely group to help him: Bedouins in northern Israel.
Bar-Natan met Ahmed Heib for the first time in 1996. An acquaintance in the garment industry made the introduction, thinking the two could help each other. Bar-Natan needed a manufacturer for his bandage, and Heib owned a factory. Their initial meeting was awkward. On the surface, the two had little in common: Bar-Natan was a cosmopolitan Jew from Brooklyn, while Heib was a Muslim who grew up in a rural backwater, infamous for its crime and gangs. “He didn’t know who this Ahmed guy [was],” Heib says. Bar-Natan seconds Heib’s assessment: “I thought tailors were only called Mr. Cohen,” he jokes.
Heib, with his low-cost business model and deep knowledge of tailoring, turned out to be the perfect partner for Bar-Natan. Heib initially worked with Bar-Natan through his small factory on the first floor of his house in Tuba-Zangariyya, a town of roughly 6,000 – mostly Muslim Bedouins – near the Jordan River.
The more Bar-Natan and Heib worked together, the more they developed a friendship – especially after two of Heib’s children died at birth. “He is a dear brother,” Heib says of Bar-Natan. “He was here and so was his wife, Gila. They were with us in sad times and good times. They were at the weddings of our three daughters.”
As Bar-Natan’s company grew, so did Heib’s business. He expanded his factory to three floors capable of producing millions of bandages a year. All 50 of his employees are women. “I know that if I didn’t have this factory here, these women would not be working,” Heib says. “Their kids would not have much.” Arij Kabishi, a Druze woman in charge of quality control at Heib’s factory, is grateful for the work and proud of her role. “I feel like I personally took part in the creation of this,” she says, “and [in] saving lives.”
Bar-Natan’s bandage has been a success. Today, the Australian military, the New Zealand military and most NATO countries have adopted it. It’s also standard issue for the U.S. Army, the Israel Defense Forces and the British Army. In addition, it is used by emergency responders and in hospitals around the world.
Diversity and innovation go hand in hand, so it should come as no surprise that Israel is producing some of the world’s most ground-breaking technology, or that Israeli innovations like the Emergency Bandage are saving lives and making the world a better place.
Avi Jorisch is the author of Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World (Gefen Publishing). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and The Israel Project
3) A Goal for Iran’s Oil Exports: Zero
American frackers can reduce the impact of higher crude prices.
President Trump wants to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran, which is why he is giving the sanctions screws another firm twist. Any country that imports Iranian oil will soon face U.S. penalties—with no exceptions. Last year seven nations and Taiwan were granted waivers through May 2, giving them time to adjust supply lines. These waivers won’t be extended, the State Department said Monday, helping to push the benchmark oil price to $74 a barrel, a nearly six-month high.
Italy, Greece and Taiwan have already ended their Iranian oil imports. That leaves five countries at risk of U.S. sanctions: China, India, Turkey, Japan and South Korea. Two are close allies, and no doubt their leaders will protest this stiff medicine. But the Trump Administration has given them enough warning, not to mention a six-month waiver. That’s plenty of time to make other arrangements.
By all accounts, Iran’s economy is in trouble. “To date, we estimate that our sanctions have denied the regime well north of $10 billion,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday. “The regime would have used that money to support terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and continue its missile development” and “it would have perpetuated the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.”
Mr. Pompeo reiterated the White House goal “to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds it has used to destabilize the Middle East for four decades, and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country.” To that end, the U.S. intends to drive Iranian oil exports to zero.
That’s a potential shock for global oil markets, but the Administration says it is working with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to fill any gap in supplies. American frackers will help, too, as they gear up in response to higher prices. The ability to increase sanctions on a major oil supplier without triggering a giant oil-price shock is another illustration that the U.S. energy boom offers strategic as well as economic benefits.
To the extent Iran sanctions push up oil prices, they won’t be pain-free for Americans. Gasoline in the U.S. is nearing an average of $3 a gallon—and surpassing $4 a gallon in the Progressive Republic of California. Oil supplies worldwide were already tightening. Amid a socialist collapse, Venezuela is now pumping only 732,000 barrels a day, less than a third of its output in 2015. Renewed fighting in Libya also has made oil analysts wary.
Mr. Trump’s Iran strategy thus involves some political risks, especially considering how tightly oil prices are linked with public feelings of economic well-being. No President wants to run for re-election with rising gasoline prices. Yet the Trump Administration, to its credit, shows no signs of backing down. If Iran wants sanctions eased, it can stop spreading terror and renegotiate the nuclear deal.
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4) United Colors of Bandages: Israel’s Secret Sauce
By Avi Jorisch
Israel was created to fulfill the ancient promise of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Your children will return to their own land”(31:17). Jews from 130 countries who speak more than 100 different languageshave immigrated to Israel. Nearly 70 years after its founding, Israel is a technological powerhouse, in part because it is one of the most diverse places on the planet, with citizens originating in the Middle East, Africa, Iran, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and with large numbers of Jews, Christians and Muslims.
One outstanding example of this diversity is a partnership between a Jewish Israeli medic who created a revolutionary bandage and a Bedouin Israeli factory owner who employs women to manufacture it.
Bernard Bar-Natan first started thinking about bandages in the 1980s, a few years after he moved to Israel from Brooklyn. When he enlisted in the medic corps of the Israel Defense Forces, he was shocked to learn that the army’s standard bandages were made around World War II and had not been modified since then. All the bandages had a pad in the middle and gauze strings on each side, and Bar-Natan was taught to grab a stone and add additional bandages over a wound to quell the flow of blood. Not only were these methods unsanitary, they required medics to carry large numbers of bandages.
After his military discharge, Bar-Natan began tinkering with alternatives and eventually came up with a bandage with a built-in handlebar (a substitute for a stone) that can provide up to 30 pounds of pressure to stanch bleeding, even with traumatic head injuries. He also invented a “reverse wrap” technique to exert more pressure without additional bandages.
By the early 1990s, Bar-Natan had a prototype. With the help of an Israeli government grant and accelerator program he launched his business, but he lacked a way to mass-produce his Emergency Bandage until he found an unlikely group to help him: Bedouins in northern Israel.
Bar-Natan met Ahmed Heib for the first time in 1996. An acquaintance in the garment industry made the introduction, thinking the two could help each other. Bar-Natan needed a manufacturer for his bandage, and Heib owned a factory. Their initial meeting was awkward. On the surface, the two had little in common: Bar-Natan was a cosmopolitan Jew from Brooklyn, while Heib was a Muslim who grew up in a rural backwater, infamous for its crime and gangs. “He didn’t know who this Ahmed guy [was],” Heib says. Bar-Natan seconds Heib’s assessment: “I thought tailors were only called Mr. Cohen,” he jokes.
Heib, with his low-cost business model and deep knowledge of tailoring, turned out to be the perfect partner for Bar-Natan. Heib initially worked with Bar-Natan through his small factory on the first floor of his house in Tuba-Zangariyya, a town of roughly 6,000 – mostly Muslim Bedouins – near the Jordan River.
The more Bar-Natan and Heib worked together, the more they developed a friendship – especially after two of Heib’s children died at birth. “He is a dear brother,” Heib says of Bar-Natan. “He was here and so was his wife, Gila. They were with us in sad times and good times. They were at the weddings of our three daughters.”
As Bar-Natan’s company grew, so did Heib’s business. He expanded his factory to three floors capable of producing millions of bandages a year. All 50 of his employees are women. “I know that if I didn’t have this factory here, these women would not be working,” Heib says. “Their kids would not have much.” Arij Kabishi, a Druze woman in charge of quality control at Heib’s factory, is grateful for the work and proud of her role. “I feel like I personally took part in the creation of this,” she says, “and [in] saving lives.”
Bar-Natan’s bandage has been a success. Today, the Australian military, the New Zealand military and most NATO countries have adopted it. It’s also standard issue for the U.S. Army, the Israel Defense Forces and the British Army. In addition, it is used by emergency responders and in hospitals around the world.
Diversity and innovation go hand in hand, so it should come as no surprise that Israel is producing some of the world’s most ground-breaking technology, or that Israeli innovations like the Emergency Bandage are saving lives and making the world a better place.
Avi Jorisch is the author of Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World (Gefen Publishing). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and The Israel Project
4a)
Who denied the Palestinians an independent state? Not Israel
Why does “The New York Times” continue to deny historical truth in its latest lament about the plight of the Palestinians?
According to The New York Times, the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left Palestinian families seeing “no light at the end of the tunnel.”
A feature published on the front page of Monday’s Times focuses on the despair felt by Palestinian families about the current stalemate in the peace process. They know that the Palestinian Authority that rules over their cities, towns and villages is horribly corrupt and unable to conclude a peace deal with Israel. And they understand that Israelis have no more faith in the prospects of peace than they do.
The piece shows that some Palestinians are rethinking the ideology that has fueled a century-long war on Zionism. But they also don’t mention a basic fact that defines the current situation: The Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected compromises that would have given them the statehood they claim to want. It’s interesting that nowhere in the 1,000-word article does the Times take notice of this fact.
This omission speaks volumes not only about the ignorance and obtuse nature of the criticism of Israel that emanates from the paper, but also about the chattering classes and foreign-policy establishment that take their cues about the Middle East from its pages.
Arabs living in the West Bank have good reason to distrust their current leaders. In a few moments of rare clarity about the situation that are mentioned only in passing, some of the piece’s sources admit that life was better for them before the Oslo peace process that created the Palestinian Authority.
Since it took power in the territories in 1995, it has autonomously and tyrannically ruled the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria in such a way as to crush dissenting views. As Dina Teeti, a Palestinian who attended high school and college in the United States put it, the P.A. taught people “not to question stuff.’” She only learned critical thinking in her studies abroad.
Others pointed out that the security checkpoints and separation barrier didn’t exist before Oslo, so before that they had far more freedom of movement. Unmentioned in the piece is why those checkpoints and the fence exist. They were only made necessary by the waves of violence inflicted on Israelis by the Palestinian terror groups that occurred afterIsrael ceded control of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestine Liberation Organization, not before.
But as Palestinians ponder the options open to them, there are a number of other things missing from this analysis of their situation.
The first problem is the characterization of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk about applying Israeli law to the settlements as depriving them of land for a state. That isn’t true since it would still leave Palestinians most of the West Bank and Gaza even if all the settlements, rather than just the blocs around the border and Jerusalem, were left in place.
More important is what was completely omitted from the article. Left out was any mention of the fact that throughout the history of the conflict, including the era before the West Bank came under Israeli control in 1967 or the birth of the State of Israel, Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly rejected any compromise that would countenance a Jewish state of any sort—even if it also meant an independent state for them.
Various proposals for partitioning the British Mandate for Palestine were put forward during that era, and each one was rejected by both the local Arab leadership and the rest of the Muslim world. That included the 1947 U.N. partition plan that proposed two states, including a tiny Jewish one that didn’t include any part of Jerusalem. Instead, they chose a war that led to hundreds of thousands of Arabs fleeing their homes in the vain hope that they would return once the Jews were driven out.
Nor was there much noise about creating an independent Palestinian state from 1949 to 1967, when Egypt controlled Gaza, and Jordan illegally occupied Judea, Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem.
But if that’s still too much ancient history for the Palestinians—or the reporters and editors at the Times—how is it that the events of the last 20 years escaped their attention?
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton offered P.A. head Yasser Arafat an independent Palestinian state in Gaza, almost all of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem at Camp David in 2000. He said no to that offer and to an even more generous one, responding with a terrorist war of attrition known as the Second Intifada. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, rejected an even sweeter deal in 2008, and refused to negotiate seriously over statehood during the eight years when President Barack Obama was hammering Israel and tilting the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction.
It’s encouraging that at least some Palestinians are willing to be quoted as wanting to “choose peace.” But doing so requires more than acknowledging the truth about the moral bankruptcy of the Fatah-ruled P.A. or the Islamists of Hamas who rule Gaza. It requires a willingness to admit to the legitimacy of a Jewish state and giving up a sense of national identity that has, to date, been inextricably tied to a century-old war on Zionism and the Jews.
Palestinians need to accept that Israel will never be conquered by terrorism or diplomacy, and that a one-state solution in which they could hope to transform it into another Arab-majority state is a non-starter. They also need to accept that there will be no mass eviction of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Jerusalem or the settlements. If that were to do that, then Palestinian statehood might be possible. However, if they can’t change their leaders or the policies that have left them in this current state of limbo, then they have no one to blame but themselves, in addition to an international foreign-policy establishment that is as willing to ignore historical facts just like The New York Times.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
4b) to Iranian media: Israel is stronger, future unpredictable
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Iran’s Tasnim news ran a long and important interview on Tuesday with a Palestinian named Ali Reza Soltan-Shahi. The interview is interesting because it gives a window not only into Palestinian thinking, but particularly because of the views conveyed to the Iranian regime via the interview.
Soltan-Shahi has appeared before at Iranian events. He was described by MEMRI in 2018 as secretary-general of the Organization for Aiding the Islamic Revolution of the Palestinian People in the Office of the Iranian Presidency. Tasnim describes him only as a former head of the Palestinian Center for Mental Health.
The interview begins with a discussion of the Israeli political parties that contested the election. Soltan-Shahi says the 2019 election was the culmination of a process that begin in 1977 and has seen the entrenchment of Likud and the Israeli right. He notes that Labor and Meretz have fallen in their number of seats. He describes Israel as more fundamentalist and religious, an irony considering that the Iranian regime is a fundamentalist theocracy. He argues that the right will gain more power in the future in Israel. He argues that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will form a new government successfully, his “popularity is at the lowest level internationally. Those countries that interact with the Zionist regime, such as the Europeans, their interaction is at its lowest.” He says Israel’s main ally is the United States and the Trump administration.
The interview notes that the privileges Israel enjoys in its relations with the US have made Israel’s policies more efficient and he points to US recognition of Jerusalem and the Golan. What does this unprecedented Israel-US coherence in policy mean going forward? He notes that due to the flexibility the US is showing in terms of more imaginative peace process concepts, tensions will increase in the West Bank and Gaza, which he refers to as the “occupied territories.” Unpredictability will increase and the “resistance may be strengthened.”
Israel is also seeking to “strengthen its relations with Arab countries, and as far as possible make these relations more explicit and clearer.” Israel is helping to cement an anti-Iranian alliance even as Iran’s role in the region increases. The interview calls this Iran’s “strong presence.” The interview does not point to direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, but rather Israel encouraging the US to be more tough on Tehran financially. “The Zionist regime will certainly use anti-Iran countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia.”
Soltan-Shahi then discusses the differences between Iran’s view and that of Europe. While European powers supports a two-state solution and Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders, “they are by no means like us, who demand the complete destruction of the Zionist regime.” Iran and Europe can only cooperate insofar as Iran seeks to highlight Israel’s abuses of international law and violation of international norms, the interviewee says. He indicates such examples as using UNESCO against Israel.
What about the rumors of an “Arab NATO” which would oppose Iran? Soltan-Shahi says that experience shows the Arab NATO has not worked well. Egypt, for instance, did not agree to be part of it. “It those that the Arab countries that have the most secret relations with the Zionist regime cannot actually bring Zionists against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In short, many Arab countries in the region are unwilling to make their relations with Israel public because they know such relations are unpopular at home and will cause protests against their rulers.
The interview ends with discussions of whether Trump will be re-elected. “The Jews in the US are financially, politically, economically and media-wise very influential, but it should be borne in mind that eve as the Jews are powerful in the US, the political system is rooted in four-year terms for the Presidency.” Soltan-Shahi says that if Trump is re-elected it would mean the US has changed a lot in the last four years.
The interview is interesting because this is the kind of information that Iranian media seeks to highlight and also what some Iranians read in Farsi. The knowledge of the goals of Israel and the current Israeli government, including the complexity of coalition politics, are laid bare. In general the interview seems to suggest that while Israel has cemented its power and relations with Arab states, as well as gaining from Washington’s policies, it is unable to take things to the next step. This is because, in the view of the interview, the Arab states will not ever actually form a real alliance with Israel. It is an alliance of convenience. With that knowledge a sophisticated regime like Iran’s can continue to insert itself into politics in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond. The interview also points to unpredictable Palestinian responses to any kind of US “deal of the century.” Defeated militarily, the Palestinian “resistance” has less options. But, isolated, it may be unpredictable. This is an important point because the US is pushing a deal that is reportedly in line with Israel’s interests and it is unclear how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza will react.
The astute Iranian regime reads the prevailing winds in the region carefully. It correctly understands that while the European powers may be critical of Israel in some international forums, that only Iran really seeks the destruction of Israel. Iran seems to understand that this cannot be achieved by direct confrontation either. Interviews like this point to what information the Iranian regime is receiving and propagating.
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