Ryan Mauro, Clarion’s national security analyst, explains how United States policy must change to reflect the new reality brewing in the Middle East.
As a result of what happened at the Warsaw summit, Ryan analyzes the polarization occurring right before our eyes. An Iron Curtain is descending upon the Middle East and the U.S. needs to wake up to this new global dynamic.
Click here to watch Ryan explain this threatening Iron Curtain.
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Tom Fitton slams Schiff: "On February 25, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network to discuss the Mueller Probe’s expected report and Rep. Adam Schiff’s threat to subpoena Mueller.
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Hanson on 2019 America. (See 1 below.)
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And so it goes. (See 2 below.)
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Israel's Iranian nuclear document treasure trove is relevant.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Yes, ‘This Is America, 2019’
There have been so far about three general reactions to the concocted Jussie Smollett psychodrama.
One, and the most common, has been apprehension that Smollett’s lies will discredit future real incidents of hate crimes against gays and minorities. This could be a legitimate concern, given the tensions within a multiracial society.
Yet, in fact, there is no evidence in the past that false reports (some lists of such fake hate crimes put the number at around 400) have had such an effect—either on spiking real hate crimes, suppressing reporting, discouraging police investigations, or preventing even more race-crime hoaxes.
As Heather Mac Donald has recently once again noted, the 2017 upswing in reported hate crimes from the prior year may well be largely because an additional 1,000 police agencies were for the first time reporting such crimes. Mac Donald also notes that a “hate crime”—a micro percentage of reported violent crime—is narrowly defined not to include general interracial violent victimization, a category in which African-Americans on average commit 85 percent of such crimes.
From Tawana Brawley to the Covington kids, fictive accounts of race-based bias and violence have not stopped purported victims from believing that they, too, could invent such incidents and win credibility—to say nothing of profitable attention. After all, the publicity of the Duke Lacrosse or Covington hoaxes did not suggest to Jussie Smollett that he would not be found credible. In fact, the opposite may be true. The more we hear of fake hate crimes, the more we will likely hear of future fake hate crimes.
Nor did the spate of prior fake racist crimes discourage quite influential media and celebrity grandees from rushing to embrace the unlikely narrative. After all, Americans were asked to believe without evidence that two venomous white men, with red MAGA hats, hooded, and deliberately prowling about at 2 a.m. in subfreezing temperatures, in a liberal neighborhood of liberal Chicago (that went 83 percent for Hillary Clinton), were on the hunt for random minorities and gays, replete with customary ski-masks, lynching rope, and bleach.
And then, once the MAGA devils instinctively recognized a random early-morning passerby as a rather minor actor from a Fox TV series “Empire,” they would grow enraged and shout out racial and homophobic slurs and MAGA rah-rahs (“This is MAGA country!”)—incensed by their sudden recognition that their target was, in fact, the obviously world-famous Smollett (who said his white thuggish assaulters first yelled out “Empire!” then, to add clarity about their white fears of such a hit series, they added “F—ot Empire n—er!”).
Smollett, however, insists he stood defiant (“I don’t answer to Empire. My name ain’t Empire.”), in his role as a supposedly all-too-well known and despised actor in the alt-white world.
Further, we were asked to believe that in between blows from two much larger white demons, the relatively diminutive Smollett did not break off his phone call transmission. Instead, as he later described the fracas, he fought heroically back (“So I punched his ass right back. We started tussling”) and drove off the Trump-fueled monsters (“And I want a little gay boy who might watch this to see that I fought the f— back. I didn’t run off. They did.”), even as he was oblivious to the attempted lynching (“I noticed the rope around my neck and I started screaming”).
In addition, we were asked to believe that Smollett’s prior criminal conviction for providing police with false information during a DUI arrest, and the strange coincidence of receiving a recent death threat in the mail packaged with mysterious white powder (“In the letter, it had a stick figure hanging from a tree with a gun pointing toward it: ‘Smollett Jussie, you will die, black [bleep]. There was no address, but the return address said in big red letters, ‘MAGA.’“), would provide no useful context for these strange events.
Discrediting Hate Crimes?
Instead, Smollett fought off the racists for the greater good of America: “I have fought for love. I’m an advocate. I respect too much the people—who I am now one of those people—who have been attacked in any way. You do such a disservice when you lie about something like this.”
So do not dare question either the courage or the mettle of the crusading Smollett: “For me, the main thing was the idea that I somehow switched up my story, you know? And that somehow maybe I added a little extra trinket, you know, of the MAGA thing. I didn’t need to add anything like that. They called me a f—ot, they called me a n—er. There’s no which way you cut it. I don’t need some MAGA hat as the cherry on top of some racist sundae.”
Yet much of the nation believed all that and more. Politicians and celebrities did so within minutes. Many did not give up such credence, even as Smollett refused to hand over his cell phone records, which he had cited as electronic proof of the attack, given he supposedly was on the phone at the time with his manager, thus memorializing the attack. If you had any doubt about Smollett’s fiction, he reminds us again that such unbelief says more about you than him: “It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more. A lot more. And that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.”
Again, amen, it does say a lot, Jussie.
None of recent concocted racially motivated attacks have had any effect in demolishing public credibility about even the most improbable allegations of such assaults. Indeed, in our Orwellian world of racial melodrama, those who rushed to judgment to condemn Donald Trump and his supporters for Smollett’s suffering, turned 180 degrees on hearing the news of the Smollett fabrication. They now soberly and judiciously warned us not to do what they had just done. Instead America was “to wait for all the facts” and not “rush to judgement” in assuming that Smollett was guilty of fraud.
Smollett has shown that the most absurd narratives imaginable will continue to gain credence because they fill a deep psychological, cultural—and, yes, careerist—need for millions in the country to believe that hate crimes are epidemic, that they are the currency of the Right, and that they can only be addressed by more government scrutiny of a particular class of victimizers such as the Duke Lacrosse team, the Covington kids, or Smollett’s mythic red-hatted Trump racists.
(A cynic might have advised Smollett to have first checked that the anticipated surveillance cameras under which he staged the attack were pointing in the right direction, and that he should have ensured his “Empire”hirelings did not buy their sundry assault gear—masks, hats, etc.—all at the same store or at least not on film, and that Smollett himself should have not written them a traceable check for their services, and that he should have written into his script antifreeze dousing instead of household bleach that freezes at about 5 degrees.)
In 2019 America, the number of those likely victimized far outnumbers the shrinking pool of likely victimizers. The rewards and publicity for being a concocted victim of a frenzied Trump supporter far outweigh the possible downside of fabricating the entire incident.
As we saw with the Kavanaugh and Covington fiascoes, if a crime could or should be true, then it more or less is.
A second reaction was the far more legitimate worry that thousands of hours of careful police work were squandered, as resources were diverted from real crime investigations. Although so far, the overburdened Chicago police have been careful in downplaying this redirection in limited resources, it was no doubt gargantuan.Yet Smollett’s supporters almost immediately questioned the police department’s ethics when authorities ever so cautiously hinted that the facts and Smollett’s own behavior did not line up with a racist attack.
Smollett’s probable preemptive O.J. Simpson-like defense will run contrary to facts, but he has learned that ginning up popular furor against the police can, at worst, lead to leverage in plea bargaining and, at best, turn potential local jurors into nullifying social justice warriors.
In lieu of either defense, he could turn to fallback defenses that he acted in a drug-induced diminished capacity and was not responsible for his actions—or that his jealous “Empire”duo secretly scouted out his nocturnal routines, were all the time covert Trump/MAGA converts, and, as traitors to their race and class, in envy of Smollett’s success, and as ingrates pounced despite receiving such generous financial help from him in the recent past.
Racism Against “Racists” Is Not Racism
Yet the third, most important, and most ignored reaction was that in some sense Smollett himself was a racist and had committed a hate crime.
His farce is yet another example that it is now largely permissible to slur and smear millions of purported Trump supporters, as either defined by their stereotyped race and gender or their red hats (with or without a logo). As pundits and talking heads nearly wept on screen in their worries about future potential hate crimes that might now not be taken seriously, they abjectly ignored the real hate crime that had just occurred. In truth, Smollett had done his best to ignite some sort of popular racially driven vendetta against conservative white male voters, previously known as “clingers,” “crazies,” “deplorables,” and “irredeemables” who, our elites warn, smell up Walmart, gross America out with toothless smiles, and should be swapped out for new immigrants.
Or as courageous Smollett described the motives for the faux-attack of his two Nigerian-American contractors, supposedly dressed up as Donald Trump’s white ogres, “I come really, really hard against 45”—that is, Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States—“I come really hard against his administration, and I don’t hold my tongue. I could only go off of their words. I mean, who says, “f—ot Empire n—er,” “This is MAGA country, n—er,” ties a noose around your neck, and pours [frozen?] bleach on you? And this is just a friendly fight? I will never be the man that this did not happen to. Everything is forever changed.”
In fact, no one says that, Jussie, and no one ever did say that except you who scripted the dialogue.
Given that the Smollett myth followed so closely after the Covington kids fiction, we can surmise that Smollett counted on two popular reactions: the left-wing public was still thirsty for more “proof” of MAGA white hatred, even if poorly scripted and logically implausible; and, second, Smollett was not much worried about any serious consequences if he should be caught once again in a made-up hate crime.
To paraphrase CNN anchorwoman Brooke Baldwin, who in careerist fashion immediately sought to gin up popular outrage over the Smollett “hate crime” attack: “This is America, 2019.”
Baldwin is right in her inference that we really are suffering from a national illness—and her own fact-free, careerist-driven editorializing and others like it are the proof.
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2) Argentina’s Chief Rabbi Attacked Brutally at Home, Severely Injured
Argentina’s Chief Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich was brutally attacked by unknown assailants Monday night, according to the local Jewish community in Buenos Aires.
According to the report, the assailants entered the chief rabbi’s home at night, shouting, “We know you are the AMIA rabbi,” and began attacking him while his wife, who had been tied up, looked on.
AMIA stands for Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. On July 18, 1994, the center was bombed by Iranian agents, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds.
It was reported that Rabbi Davidovich’s assailants took valuables and money and fled the scene.
The Jewish community center said in a statement: “The community is with Rabbi Davidovich at this difficult moment and hopes for his speedy recovery.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett on Tuesday morning issued the following response:
“This terrible attack on the chief rabbi in Argentina must be condemned by everyone. All our thoughts and prayers are with Rabbi Davidovich for his full and speedy recovery – but thoughts and prayers are not enough. Enough is enough – it is time for action.
“Today the leaders of the world in Europe, in South America, all over are failing in their responsibility to learn the lessons of the past. But unlike the past, today we have Israel, and every Jew around the world must know they have a home here, we are waiting.
“But for Jews who want to live in Argentina, or France, or England, or the US or anywhere, we are also here. We will stand up against Antisemitism. A strong Israel is the only answer – our enemies should know, Jewish blood is not cheap.
“I call on Argentina’s government to make a very clear stand in words and actions – the criminals who did this must be found and brought to justice.”
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3)Institute for Science and International Security
Reports
The Iranian Nuclear Archive: Implications and Recommendations
by David Albright, Olli Heinonen [1], and Andrea Stricke
An unappreciated development over the last year was Israel’s seizure in Tehran of significant portions of a “Nuclear Archive” that contained tens of thousands of files and CDs relating to Iran’s past efforts at nuclear weapon design, development, and manufacturing. It is now apparent that the archive is extremely rich in new information about Iran’s substantial, rapidly advancing nuclear weapons effort in the early 2000s, which it codenamed the “Amad Plan.” Iran aimed to develop and manufacture five 10 kiloton nuclear weapons, develop and build a missile suitable to deliver them, and to be prepared to carry out an underground nuclear test. The archive documentation supports that rather than ending the Amad program in late 2003, Iran reoriented it to a more disguised, albeit smaller, nuclear weapons program.
After several months of study including the publication of more than six detailed technical reports available on our web sites, researchers at the Institute for Science and International Security and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies have shown that there is a wealth of new information on Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the archive and that this program was more developed than Western governments understood prior to the discovery of the archive. Moreover, this new information in the archive indicates that Iran might still be in breach of its nuclear nonproliferation undertakings.
More importantly, the archive information is in a form that is actionable in terms of: better carrying out inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities; challenging Iran’s prior incomplete and duplicitous statements about its nuclear weapons programs; more adequately understanding the threat Iran’s nuclear programs pose today and in the future; and better designing policies to address this issue. The archive also highlights the need to fix the shortcomings in the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in terms of inspections, the end of nuclear limitations or “sunsets,” and Iran’s continued work on nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles. It supports replacing the nuclear deal with a more comprehensive, long-lasting approach aimed at blocking Iran’s latent pathway to nuclear weapons.
The information in the archive confirms and adds significantly to documentation gathered over many years by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from member states and its own investigations. It suggests that the IAEA and the U.S. intelligence community, as exemplified by the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, underestimated the extent of Iran’s post-2003 nuclear weapons work. The archive materials suggest that Iran can produce deliverable nuclear weapons more quickly than earlier assessed.
Moreover, the Amad Plan reflected decisions taken at the time by Iran’s highest security officials, including now President Hassan Rouhani and Iran’s current National Security Advisor Ali Shamkhani. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the current commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, was an important player in the Amad program. Their continuity in high-level positions is a sobering reminder that key Iranian personnel involved in the Amad program have remained highly influential in the oversight of activities critical to maintaining a capability to make and deliver nuclear weapons.
The archive also includes minutes of detailed internal Iranian discussions about next steps after the Amad Plan. Faced with intrusive IAEA inspections exposing secret fuel cycle sites, as well as a growing diplomatic push by the E3 (Britain, France, and Germany), and fearful of a US invasion after the fall of Baghdad, Iran decided in the summer and fall of 2003 to downsize its nuclear weapons program, in particular to halt the Amad Plan and restructure it. The archive shows that Iran decided to reorient and conceal parts of its nuclear weapons program, but not to end them. The new information in the Iranian atomic archive provides a more complete picture of the transformation of the Amad program into successor activities, which were intended to allow Iran to continue to pursue key nuclear weapons-related work that had no plausible civilian justification in a more covert, dispersed manner. The information in the archive suggests that the nuclear weapons program never ended – and it could be continuing today.
It should be noted that as of today, the IAEA has been unable to answer the fundamental question about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program: do some activities continue? This absence of an answer is exemplified in its regular quarterly reports on the verification and monitoring of the JCPOA. For example, this oft-missed problem is in the IAEA’s November 2018 report: “Evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities for Iran remained on-going.”The IAEA has not yet been able to certify that Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful. Worsening the situation, the structure of the JCPOA and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 disincentivized Iran from cooperating with the IAEA to finish such an evaluation. For example, UN embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missiles and additional sanctions sunset even if the IAEA does not reach a conclusion that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.
There is considerable information in the archive that shows that Iran deceived the IAEA and the international community about its nuclear weapons activities throughout the 2000s and provided incomplete and misleading declarations. There are actually “deception folders” in the archive that catalogue Iran’s lies to inspectors, to enable it to be consistent from meeting to meeting.
The archive contains information about significant nuclear facilities not previously known to the IAEA and Western intelligence agencies. For example, the archive reveals for the first time the “Shahid Boroujerdi project,” which was a plan for an underground facility intended to build components of highly enriched uranium cores for nuclear warheads.
Post-Amad Plan, Iran reoriented some prior military nuclear sites to civilian ones, such as the Gchine mine and mill, and eventually, after its exposure in 2009, the Fordow uranium enrichment site. However, Iran’s intention was not to turn the program into a strictly peaceful one; rather, the archive materials show that Tehran sought to preserve its nuclear weapons capabilities for the future. Unanswered remains the question of these activities’ status today.
The archive contains many images of sensitive equipment vital to a nuclear weapons program, including that related to high explosive tests carried out at the Parchin military complex. Where is this equipment now? It could contribute to an on-going or future nuclear weapons program. Moreover, some of this equipment is controlled by an anti-nuclear weaponization provision of the JCPOA, called Section T. Its use even in non-proscribed activities would be a violation of this provision.
The existence and maintenance of an archive related to nuclear weapon design and manufacturing is not compatible with Iran’s legally binding nuclear nonproliferation commitments. It is difficult to see how storing and curating an extensive nuclear weapons archive focused on developing and building missile-deliverable nuclear weapons is consistent with Iran’s pledge under the JCPOA that under no circumstances will it ever seek nuclear weapons. Moreover, Iran failed to provide required design information on facilities it built, dismantled, or had under construction. There are also indications that Iran might have been undertaking activities involving nuclear material and did not report them to the IAEA. Overall, the new information raises fundamental doubts about whether Iran is complying with its comprehensive safeguards agreement, the associated Additional Protocol, the JCPOA, and even the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The new information derived from the Iranian Nuclear Archive adds more urgency to efforts to: create a full correct and complete history of Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts; obtain answers from Iran about the fate of the equipment, material, technology, and personnel discussed in the archive; and more broadly, to characterize the Amad Plan and its successor programs.
Iran may have had and still may have until now undeclared nuclear activities. It is therefore essential that the IAEA Board of Governors requests the Secretariat to verify the existence of the documents in the archive, their contents, and related equipment to ensure that all nuclear material and activities have indeed been declared to the IAEA, and all non-peaceful activities have been terminated and relevant capabilities dismantled.
The IAEA should be asked to verify sites, locations, facilities, documentation, equipment, and materials mentioned in the archive, question personnel involved, and report on that work. Iran should be urged to cooperate fully in these investigations.
A call rooted in past denuclearization practice is for Iran to destroy or render harmless, under IAEA supervision, its nuclear weapons archive, in particular nuclear weapons-related designs, materials, documents, and single nuclear-weapon use equipment. To do so would follow well-established international precedent where nuclear weapons documents and key equipment have existed and been destroyed in denuclearizing states such as Libya and South Africa. This was also done in the case where Switzerland came into the possession of such information during an investigation and prosecution of nuclear traffickers working for A.Q. Khan.
The revelations from the archive should motivate the United States and its allies to push harder to fix the flaws in the Iran nuclear deal or reach a replacement agreement. Iran will be well positioned to make nuclear weapons at a time of its choosing once the nuclear deal limitations end, and could also make them much more quickly than the world previously assessed. It is critical that the international community reach a new nuclear agreement that can replace or supplement the JCPOA and fix its weaknesses in terms of sunsets, inspections, and nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles.
[1] Olli Heinonen is Former Deputy Director General of the IAEA and head of its Department of Safeguards. He is a Senior Advisor on Science and Nonproliferation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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