Tag Archive for: nuclear weapons

Iran: The Nuke Deal will Help Us Target Israel

Zarif isn’t even bothering to hide Iran’s intentions. The deal is done. He knows he has John Kerry in his pocket, and that nothing can stop the mullahs now.

“Iran says the nuke deal will help it target Israel,” New York Post, August 13, 2015 (thanks to Eli):

President Obama says his nuclear deal with Iran is good not just for America, but also for US ally Israel. Iran’s foreign minister disagrees.

Mohammad Zarif was in Lebanon this week, meeting with the head Hezbollah terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah.

Hezbollah’s TV station al-Manar reported, “Zarif said from Beirut that the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers created a historic opportunity for regional cooperation to fight extremism and face threats posed by the Zionist entity.”

Translation: With a “signing bonus” to Iran of $100 billion or more, the nuke deal will empower the Islamic Republic to send more cash, rockets and other arms to Hezbollah and other anti-Israel terrorist groups.

It will also boost Tehran’s regional prestige — allowing it to bully other nations into greater hostility toward Israel.

Plus, the deal provides a glide-path for Iran to go nuclear in a decade or so, even without cheating. And Iranian nukes will drastically shift the regional balance of power in Tehran’s favor — and against Jerusalem.

No, this isn’t just spin from the Hezbollah station. Zarif told reporters that Iran’s top challenge in the region involves “confronting” “the Zionist and extremist regime.”…

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Washington, D.C. 1943: A Tragic History is About to Repeat Itself

On October 6, 1943, a delegation of American rabbis arrived at the White House for a personal audience with President Franklin Roosevelt. They planned to present to the president irrefutable proof that the Nazis were conducting a wholesale annihilation of European Jews.

As they arrived, the rabbis knew that this was a decisive moment—the last chance to stop the Holocaust before the last of European Jewry was extinguished.  They were denied a meeting.

The ensuing tragedy is, of course, well known. No coordinated Allied rescue was launched. The flames consumed six million Jews. Six decades later, America is ignoring the appeals of the state of Israel concerning Iran’s plans to wipe out the Jews with atomic bombs.

Today, you and I have been chosen by God to stand in defense of Israel. The Jewish people are under attack and facing threats on every side. They need to know that they are not alone, that their Christian friends around the world are standing with them.

The Jerusalem Prayer Team has made our support of Israel and the Holy City plain by building and opening the wonderful Friends of Zion Museum just 600 meters from the Temple Mount. Every day we are telling the true story of Christian love for the Jewish people to hundreds of visitors from all around the world.

We made the decision not to charge people to visit the museum in order to ensure that as many people as possible could be touched by this powerful witness. The operating costs are massive—electricity, maintenance, personnel and more—and we are continuing to improve the experience, including translating the presentation into still more languages. We need your help today so that the light of Christian love will not go out.

Your gift will allow us to continue the wonderful outreach of the Friends of Zion Museum…and feed hungry Holocaust survivors, encourage Believers to join us in prayer, and launch the new Friends of Zion Ambassador Institute. But none of this is possible without your help. Please stand with us in the gap for Israel and the Jewish people with your gift today.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the historic Rabbis’ March On Washington in 1943 to stop the Holocaust.

VIDEO: ‘Freedom Isn’t Free’ Security Briefing

The Hausman Memorial Speaker Series is proud to host three extraordinary individuals for the “Freedom Isn’t Free” Security Briefing, at Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, MA.

Frank Gaffney, president and founder of The Center for Security Policy, Clare Lopez, former CIA operations officer and current VP of Research and Analysis at The Center, and Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, former Commander of the USN Pacific Fleet and current President and CEO of Lions Associates LLC offer their insights on topics including jihad, the Islamic State and the dangers and consequences of a bad Iranian nuclear deal.

This straight forward presentation will undoubtedly reveal aspects of the Obama Administration’s policies that will leave you shaking your head!

Meet the U.S. Professors who love Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal

It isn’t surprising that Aslan and Cole would be cheer-leading for this disastrous deal, since they are both Board members of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC has been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said Michael Rubin: “Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, now appears to push aside any pretense that NIAC is something other than Iran’s lobby. Speaking at the forthcoming ‘Expose AIPAC’ conference, Abdi is featured on the ‘Training: Constituent Lobbying for Iran’ panel. Oops.” Iranian freedom activist Hassan Daioleslam“documented over a two-year period that NIAC is a front group lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.” NIAC had to pay him nearly $200,000 in legal fees after they sued him for defamation over his accusation that they were a front group for the mullahs, and lost. Yet Aslan and Cole remain on their Board.

Aslan also may genuinely like this deal, not simply because he is a subversive, but because he is an imbecile — a prime example of an empty-headed charlatan propped up by the mainstream media (and, no doubt, handlers who are far more intelligent than their front man) because he reflects currently acceptable thinking. But all too frequently, his true intellectual level shines through: he thinks Ethiopia and Eritrea are in Central Africa. He called Turkey the second most populous Muslim country, which was only about 100 million people off. He has also referred to “the reincarnation, which Christianity talks about” — although he later claimed that one was a “typo.” Aslan has claimed that Muhammad outlawed slavery (the Muslim prophet actually owned slaves). Aslan has asserted that Marx and Freud “gave birth to the Enlightenment” (both were born after it ended). He has insisted that the idea of resurrection “simply doesn’t exist in Judaism,” despite numerous passages to the contrary in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Video of Reza Aslan Dancing for Peace:

Aslan has also claimed that the Biblical story of Noah was barely four verses long — which he then corrected to forty, but that was wrong again, as it is 89 verses long. Aslan claimed that the “founding philosophy of the Jesuits” was “the preferential option for the poor,” but the Jesuits were founded in 1534, and according to the California Catholic Conference, “the popular term ‘preferential option for the poor’ is relatively new. Its first use in a Church document is in 1968.” He invoked Pope Pius XI as an example of how “historically, Fascist ideology did infect corners of the Catholic world,” apparently ignorant of the fact that Pius XI issued the anti-fascist encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

Similarly, Aslan has revealed that he can barely write English, indicating that his books are either ghostwritten or very heavily edited: he confuses “than” with “then”; apparently thinks the Latin word “et” is an abbreviation; and writes “clown’s” for “clowns.”

And as for the other academics listed here, Hatem Bazian actually pretends that “Islamophobia” as an academic discipline, issuing smears and libels in psuedo-academic dress of foes of jihad terror.

This is the intellectual caliber of American academia today.

“The Profs Who Love Obama’s Iran Deal,” by Cinnamon Stillwell, FrontPage, August 10, 2015:

Who supports the Obama administration’s increasingly unpopular Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aimed ostensibly at curbing Iran’s nuclear program? Many of its strongest proponents come from the field of Middle East studies, which boasts widespread animus towards the U.S. and Israel along with a cadre of apologists for the Iranian regime determined to promote ineffectual diplomacy at all costs.

University of California, Riverside creative writing professor Reza Aslan concedes that his generation of Iranian-Americans “feel[s] far removed from the political and religious turmoil of the Iranian revolution” before falling in line with the Iranian regime’s propaganda: the deal will “empower moderates in Iran, strengthen Iranian civil society and spur economic development,” and create “an Iran that is a responsible actor on the global stage, that respects the rights of its citizens and that has warm relations with the rest of the world.” “Warm relations” are the least likely outcome of the increase in funding for Iran’s terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah that even President Obama admits will follow the easing of sanctions.

Flynt Leverett, an international relations professor at Pennsylvania State University, whitewashes these terrorist groups as “constituencies” and “communities” which the Iranian regime “help[s] organize in various ways to press their grievances more effectively,” effective terrorism being, for Leverett, a laudable goal.  Characterizing the regime as “a rising regional power” and “legitimate political order for most Iranians,” he urges the U.S., through the JCPOA, to “come to terms with this reality.”

Diablo Valley College Middle East studies instructor Amer Araim’s seemingly wishful thinking is equally supportive of Tehran’s line: “it is sincerely hoped that these funds will be used to help the Iranian people develop their economy and to ensure prosperity in that country.” Meanwhile, Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American international relations professor at Rutgers University, attempts to legitimize the regime by delegitimizing the sanctions: “The money that will flow to Iran under this deal is not a gift: this is Iran’s money that has been frozen and otherwise blocked.”

Others deny the Iranian regime intends to build a nuclear bomb. University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole has “long argued that [Iran’s leader Ali] Khamenei is sincere about not wanting a nuclear weapon” because of his “oral fatwas or legal rulings” indicating that “using such weapons is contrary to Islamic law.” His unwarranted confidence in the regime leads him to conclude:

[T]hey have developed all the infrastructure and technical knowledge and equipment that would be necessary to make a nuclear weapon, but stop there, much the way Japan has.

Evidently, Cole has no problem with a tyrannical, terrorist-supporting regime that seeks regional hegemony on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power.

Likewise, William Beeman, an anthropology professor at the University of Minnesota, maintains that, “It was . . .  easy for Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program that never existed, and that it never intended to implement.” Like Cole, he uncritically accepts and recites the regime’s disinformation: “Iran’s leaders have regularly denounced nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.”

Beeman—who, in previous negotiations with the Iranian regime, urged the U.S. to be “unfailingly polite and humble” and not to set “pre-conditions” regarding its nuclear program—coldly disregards criticism of the JCPOA for excluding conditions such as the “release of [American] political prisoners” and “recognition of Israel,” calling them “utterly irrelevant.” No doubt the relatives of those prisoners and the Israeli citizens who live in the crosshairs of the regime’s continued threats of annihilation would disagree.

A number of academics have resorted to classic anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering to attack the deal’s Israeli and American opponents, calling them the “Israel Lobby.”Muqtedar Khan, director of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Delaware, accuses “the Israeli government and all those in the U.S. who are under the influence of its American lobbies” of obstructing the deal, claiming that, “The GOP congress is now being described as the [Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin] Netanyahu congress.”

Hatem Bazian, director of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, takes aim at “pro-Israel neo-conservatives,” “neo-conservative warmongers,” “AIPAC,” and (in a mangled version of “Israel-firster”) “Israel’s first D.C. crowd” for “attempting to scuttle the agreement.” Asserting a moral equivalence between the dictatorial Iranian regime and the democratically-elected Israeli government, Bazian demands to know when Israel’s “pile of un-inspected or regulated nuclear weapons stockpile” will be examined before answering, “It is not going to happen anytime soon!” That Israel has never threatened any country with destruction, even after being attacked repeatedly since its rebirth, is a fact ignored by its critics.

The unhinged Facebook posts of Columbia University Iranian studies professor and Iranian native Hamid Dabashi reveal in lurid language his hatred of Israel:

It is now time the exact and identical widely intrusive scrutiny and control compromising the sovereignty of the nation-state of Iran and its nuclear program be applied to the European settler colony of Jewish apartheid state of Israel and its infinitely more dangerous nuclear program! There must be a global uproar against the thuggish vulgarity of Netanyahu and his Zionist gangsters in Israel and the U.S. Congress to force them to dismantle their nuclear program–systematically used to terrorize and murder Palestinian people and steal the rest of Palestine!

Elsewhere, Dabashi attacks adversaries of the JCPOA, including “Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Neocons, and their treacherous expat Iranian stooges masquerading as ‘Opposition,’” calling them a “terrorizing alliance,” a “gang of murderous war criminals,” and “shameless warmongers.”

Willful blindness to Iran’s brutal, terrorist-supporting regime, moral equivocation, and an irrational hatred for Israel and the West characterize the fawning support enjoyed by the mullahs from these and other professors of Middle East studies. In place of objective, rigorously researched plans for countering Iran’s aggression and advancing the safety of America and its allies, they regurgitate the crudest propaganda from Teheran. Until their field of study is thoroughly reformed, their advice—such as it is—should and must be utterly ignored.

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Killing Babies – Betraying Israel – God Bless America?

Josh, in Israel, emailed me. He said they are “living under the specter of the Iran deal and see where this is all heading.” They are extremely concerned. Josh said,“For starters what even gave him the right to lead such “negotiations” on behalf of the world? Who anointed him king, anyway?” Josh concluded, Either Obama’s deal is insane or deliberate.” 

Well Josh, the U.S. mainstream media has for all intents and purposes made Obama king. Concerned Americans say we are starting to resemble a banana republic (with a dishonest government ignoring laws). The MSM aggressively promotes whatever Obama wants the public to know and blocks was he does not.

For example: Everyone knows about the shooting of Cecil the lion. Due to a MSM insidious blackout of the story, 70% of Americans do not know about the real-life horror movie happening behind the walls of Planned Parenthood. The vile butchers at PP are illegally black marketing baby body parts (mostly black). A cause for PP staff to high-five and celebrate is when they score an intact dead baby because the profit is higher

Think about that folks. The MSM has made sure the masses know nothing about Obama and Democrats supporting and covering up the PP illegal baby body parts chop shop scandal. And yet, everyone knows about the death of a lion.

The MSM also makes sure (King) Obama can lie with impunity. In my youth, I naively thought public officials cannot lie because we have video. If Obama lies to America and the MSM refuses to call him on it, does it make a sound?

Yo Morgan, I need you and that Black dude (Jack Black) to sell my nuke deal to my peeps. Whenever Obama wants to scam blacks his language becomes more urban. Black actor Morgan Freeman and other Hollywood liberals produced a video, “#Iran Deal is Awesome!” – to sell Obama’s nightmarish deal. The lie-filled video is an outrageous insult to Americans’ intelligence. 

Clearly, Obama knows the MSM will help sell his lies. The Iran ego-driven irresponsible nuke deal is Obama urinating on America and Israel’s head while his minions tell us his golden nectar is divine rain that will ultimately produce beautiful flowers of peace. Frustratingly, black race loyalists, white guilt ridden Obama sycophants and Leftists will sigh and say, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

My announcer will tell you how Obama’s deal screws everyone.

Thanks Lloyd, and hereeee’s what Iran gets – over one hundred billion dollars to further its role as the world’s greatest exporters of terrorism. That’s right folks. The U.S. will be funding terrorism against itself.

The guy Obama made the deal with, Ayatollah Khamenei, along with Iranian hardliners chant, “Death to America!” Ayatollah Khamenei’s new book, “Palestine” instructs how to outsmart the U.S. and destroy Israel. Obama says chill-out, Khamenei does not mean it

Obama says inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities to insure they are not making a bomb. Not true. The deal says inspectors must give Iran 24 days notice – which Iran can stretch even longer. Do I really need to elaborate on the absurdity of this Obama concession?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Obama’s nuke deal will spark a middle east nuclear arms race. Well duh! If the neighborhood bully gets a gun, doesn’t self-preservation dictate that neighbors rush to acquire guns to defend themselves from the bully? Is Obama that stupid or is he, as Josh suggested, “deliberately” endangering Israel?

But wait folks, there’s more. Everyone on the planet knows Iran will break the deal and immediately pursue a nuclear bomb. In 2013, Obama backed Israel’s right to use force to stop them. Unbelievably, Obama’s Iran nuke deal requires the U.S. to defend Iran against Israel. Can you imagine the U.S. actually fighting our ally to protect terrorism? How satanic is that?

Regarding Israel (Genesis 12:3): “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.” – God

And now, back to you, Lloyd!

To my fellow black Christians who are going along with Obama’s evil deal, you should be ashamed of yourselves; choosing skin-color loyalty over God’s chosen people.

The Bible says, “Before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb, I knew thee…” To provide intact dead babies for its clients, PP abortion doctors deliver the entire baby except for the head (partial birth abortion). Then, the doctor inserts scissors into the base of the baby’s skull and forces the scissors up into its brain to kill the baby. Whether you are a Bible believer or not, your gut tells you this is evil. This fall, congress will vote whether or not to continue giving PP billions of taxpayer dollars in support of this evil.

In less the 50 days, congress will vote thumps up or down on Obama’s insane Iran nuke deal. Thumps up equals officially turning our backs on our ally, Israel.

Brother and sister Americans, if congress fails us on either of these two crucial issues, how can we expect God to bless America?

Iran: Decision Time For Democrats

The British media traditionally refers to the month of August as ‘silly season’, but apart from the blanket coverage of the sad fate of Cecil the lion, this silly season has been notable for being remarkably un-silly. Received wisdom has it that with Parliament away there are no political stories for the media to report on. But nothing could be further from the truth this year.

The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and stretching to Calais shows no sign of letting up just because MPs are in their constituencies or on their holidays. And nor are the stories of the continuously emerging awfulness of the Iran deal slowing just because Parliament is not in session. The fact – not very surprising – is that politics goes on all the time as usual, whether Parliament is in session or not.

It must be hoped, however, that the break does some good to our political class. Standing back from the day-to-day running of Westminster can provide an opportunity to survey the real political landscape rather than getting bogged down in the procedural issues which take up so much of any politician’s day. Watching the ongoing political fight in Washington is a reminder of this.

At the time of writing a number of very significant leading Democrats look like they are going to come out against their own President’s deal with Iran. In doing so it is perfectly possible that they are performing career hara-kiri. It seems inevitable that whether Congress votes against the deal or not the President, and those around him, are unlikely to forgive or do much to support the future of those who have voted against them. Chicago politics can work just as easily in Washington.

But the Democrats in particular who choose to vote against the deal are doing so for an extraordinary and admirable reason: they are willing to put their concern for the future of their country and the future of the world ahead of concerns over the future of their careers. It is not too cynical to say that this order of priorities is not always present in politics. But this is an important moment. Even if the President gets his way with the deal, the rebellion of a large enough number of members of his own party could still succeed in signalling just what a mistake America and her allies are making.

New stories have emerged this week of the Iranian regime’s genocidal rhetoric against America and her allies. Perhaps people are so used to this that it has become background noise. But this background noise is going on whilst in the foreground the same regime is getting the biggest financial, diplomatic and military boost it could possibly ever have. If you stand back from everything else that is going on this is the big story. What would be silly would be not to recognise that.


mendozahjs

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK 

It is 70 years since the detonation of an atomic bomb at Hiroshima introduced the world to a terrifying new form of warfare in the form of nuclear weapons. Since that time much effort has been expended by nations seeking to obtain this technology, with Iran being but the latest example. Concurrently, equal attempts have been made to ensure further proliferation does not occur.

In recent weeks, I have spent a fair bit of time defending Britain’s own nuclear arsenal in the face of assaults from those who would wish to see us give up our independent nuclear deterrent when the time comes shortly to replace our ageing Trident capability. While no reasonable person could be against the idea of controlled multilateral disarmament – and great strides have been made in this direction since the peaking of nuclear arsenals in the 1980s – unilateral disarmament is quite a different prospect. It would strip the UK of the ultimate deterrent at a time of increasing, rather than decreasing, global instability, with any number of major threats on the horizon. Which British Prime Minister could credibly give up our nuclear weapons at a time when Mr Putin menaces Europe’s and NATO’s eastern borders, and the Middle East is at its most uncertain point in a century, for example?

I rather fear that the goal of ‘Global Zero’ – the push to physically eliminate nuclear weapons or to put them beyond possible use – is also doomed to failure. While noble in intent, the obvious flaw in this approach is that you cannot uninvent technology that has been invented and that as a consequence, the temptation to cheat and keep a small stockpile is just too great. Would we really trust Russia and China to give up all their weapons if we did, let alone Pakistan and North Korea?

Unfortunate as it may be, nuclear weapons are here to stay. The challenge remains to regulate their numbers, avoid their use and prevent dangerous states like Iran from acquiring them.

Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society
Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlanMendoza

Peace Processing Iran

The principle is similar: faced with an enemy that repeatedly declares its genocidal hatred, acts on it wherever possible, constantly strives to improve its ways and means, you peace process. Why was it successful with Iran and not with the “Palestinians”? Perhaps because the comical P5 + 1 applied the pressure to itself in the case of Iran, leaving no one to resist. The same pressure applied to Israel since 1993 has failed to produce total surrender. Drastic concessions were proposed but the enemy insisted on the right of return of “refugees” down to the third, fourth, and forever generations that would spell the elimination of the Jewish state. There were no significant limits to the concessions made by the P5+1 and no expectation that the deal will yield anything other than itself. The deal is that there’s a deal.

The devil is not in the details it is in the evil, the collusion with evil. Antisemitism in its modern form of antizionism is the ultimate perversion: choosing death over life, it reverses good and evil. The perverse subject embraces evil while proclaiming his goodness. The Iran “deal” is not the result of American government naiveté, faulty negotiating skills, or realpolitik. It has nothing to do with slowing Iran’s nuclear arms development. It is an international seal of approval for Iran’s genocidal project. A wink of complicity.

What better proof than the hasty visit of German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel accompanied by a regiment of businessmen? Germany of all nations, still heavy with the weight of the Shoah, had to demonstrate immediately that the deal is a practical matter of trade and polite relations. But the truth bled through the window dressing and, as befits perversion, was expressed in an outright lie: Gabriel reminded his Iranian counterparts that they must not question Israel’s right to exist. “That is unacceptable,” he declared, accepting it as if it were a second helping of ham hocks. Italy’s molto simpatico PM Matteo Renzi reassured his amico grandissimo that his country would always be there to defend Israel. With what? French MFA Laurent Fabius who distinguished himself during negotiations by taking a strong position—before caving in to pressure—waited an extra week for his sober visit, sans traveling salesmen but bearing a missive from President Hollande inviting President Rohani to visit him in November. What could be more grotesque, more obscene than these frantic gestures laced with hollow excuses?

Obama&Kerry are trying to force, cajole, intimidate, manipulate Congress and public opinion to approve the phony agreement that will, they claim, slow down Iran’s nuclear arms project while giving the Islamic Republic (they don’t pronounce its real name for good reasons) time to become the friendly partner they deserve. All the concrete evidence proves the contrary. So what have they really accomplished?

While talking up the deal domestically, with special emphasis on Jewish organizations, they sent Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to dangle yummy defensive military goodies in front of the Israeli government as a consolation prize. What have they wrought? Kerry, grilled by the Senate Foreign Relations committee, is scolded for being duped. If his only fault was a failure to get better terms from those crafty Persians, then the honor of America’s chief negotiator and aspiring Tour de France cyclist would be intact. Now, fearing the slick sale pitches will not do the trick, the Secretary of State has moved on to sinister threats. Invited by the Council for Foreign Relations to defend the deal, he warned that if Congress should vote against it, “Israel will be more isolated and more blamed [sic].”

So that’s the win-win? If the agreement is approved, Israel will be in greater danger, if it is rejected, Israel will be blamed. In fact, it doesn’t matter. The collusion agreement with Iran has nothing to do with foreign policy or non-proliferation of nuclear arms. It is a call to ratify the genocidal equation: Iran is deserving of trust, Israel can be thrown to the dogs. Good and evil are reversed. The damage is already done.

While Europeans were creeping to Iran like worker ants, each with a few crumbs to sell, the EU parliament was mulling over a measure that would stigmatize products from the Israeli “colonies.” Grotesque perversion. Iran, by virtue of the deal, instantly becomes a suitable trading partner while Israel, an apartheid state guilty of Occupation, is unfit for human consumption. Gays swinging from the hangman’s rope, political prisoners tortured to death, arms and treasure flowing to jihad forces that wreak havoc throughout the Middle East and sow subversion in the rest of the world… all disappear with the lethal narrative fed to global media by the wire services. After months of negotiation…a historic agreement…Iran forgoes nuclear arms development in exchange for removal of sanctions and the dawn of normal relations with the well-behaved world. Unprecedented inspections regime. Money-back guarantee. Snap-back sanctions. Diplomacy trumps war.

Death to America, Death to Israel. Our plan to erase Israel from the face of the earth is not negotiable. We will never abandon our right to develop nuclear arms and advanced delivery systems, we will arm our allies, no American will be included in the inspection teams, our military sites are forever off limits, allahu akhbar, flag burnings and raucous bloodthirsty cries… Secretary of State Kerry proves he’s a good sport by briefly admitting that if Death to Israel Death to America were actually a statement of policy, it would be worrisome. But it’s just rhetoric.

The once-free world, draped in virtue to exclude Israel from the concert of nations, mired in perversity to welcome Iran with open arms, dives into the abyss. And a significant percentage of American Jews, apparently, buy into this perversion. Out of the goodness of their hearts they become deaf, dumb, and blind to Iran’s words and deeds, and reserve their severity for an Israel they could accommodate if it would stop throwing monkey wrenches into the global jamboree.

Vainglorious President Barack Hussein Obama, displaying his major diplomatic exploit—bouncing up and down the stairs of Air Force One—makes his victory lap in Kenya, where he lectures the locals on, of all things, clean government, democracy, and homosexual rights. Tell it to yer mulla’, brotha’!

Though the personal responsibility of Obama, Kerry, Mogherini, and other grinning negotiators is enormous, it won’t help to blame them because they are upheld by populations that are themselves captive. People who sincerely believe in their own decency and wish to do no harm recoil at the very sound of the name “Israel.” Americans, who win all the polls for loving Israel, dumbly follow their twice-elected president though he made his intentions clear from the first step of the primaries. How many American Zionists repeat the absurd fairy tale about how Iran will be contained, mollified, and magically turned over to the freedom-loving youth they see on BBC news? British Prime Minister David Cameron interjects “Islam is a religion of peace” into a forceful defense of the nation against Islamist ideology. France, still reeling from the latest beheading/impalement incident sails into a new plot to behead a naval officer. The denial machine tries to photoshop the Chattanooga jihad attack against a military base. The body count in Syria rises inexorably, Bashir al Assad thanks Iran and Hezbollah for their invaluable support, the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, is being ethnically cleansed of Christians, and the good news is that Iran signed something? With disappearing ink.

“It starts with the Jews but it doesn’t end with the Jews.” This isn’t an incidental geopolitical fatality. It starts with the Jews because it is the triumph of evil and death over goodness and life. Judaism is the source of the ethics on which our civilization is founded. Antizionism, the contemporary variety of antisemitism, is a lethal perversion. When the genocidal hatred of the Islamic Republic is validated by an international agreement piloted by the United States of America, when every single concrete detail is clearly available for public information, when every public statement by governments that defend the deal is patently false, when the “alternative to war” is a virtual onslaught against Israel’s existence, when the immoral United Nations is invested with powers stolen from democratically elected governments, we have reached the catastrophic level of perversion.

Rational arguments will be useless unless this perversion is understood, exposed, and confronted.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Nidra Poller’s book Karimi Hotel is now available in English and Al Dura: long range ballistic myth is available in paperback and on Kindle.

Netanyahu: “Can you imagine giving a drug dealer 24 days’ notice before you inspect the premises?”

“We think this is not only a threat to us. We think this is a threat to you as well.” Indeed.

“Benjamin Netanyahu to Lester Holt: Iran Nuclear Deal Poses Threat to U.S., Israel,” by Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News, July 15, 2015:

The landmark Iran nuclear deal poses a threat to both Israel and the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NBC News’ Lester Holt on Wednesday.

“We think this is not only a threat to us. We think this is a threat to you as well,” Netanyahu said, a day after Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., reached the historic agreement. “Iran has killed more Americans than anyone other than al Qaeda.”

“They’re going to get hundreds of billions of dollars to fuel their terror and military machine,” he added.

The pact between Iran and world powers ends a decade-long dispute, and grants Tehran some relief from tough economic sanctions in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. President Obama said the accord ensures that “every pathway to a nuclear weapon” has been cut off.

But Netanyahu said Wednesday that he and Obama have a “real disagreement.”

“Iran is different. It’s a zealot country,” he said. “It’s killed a lot of Americans. It’s killing everybody in sight in the Middle East.”

Netanyahu contends Iran — long suspected of harboring enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon — cannot be trusted with any sort of nuclear program.

“I think Iran has two paths to the bomb: One if they keep the deal, the other if they cheat on the deal,” he said.

According to the terms of the agreement, United Nations inspectors will be able to check any suspicious facility in Iran within a period of up to 24 days.

“Can you imagine giving a drug dealer 24 days’ notice before you inspect the premises?” Netanyahu said. “That’s a lot of time to flush a lot of meth down the toilet.”

Israel, a strong U.S. ally, has been vocally opposed to any deal. In March, Netanyahu delivered an address to Congress blasting the negotiations as a way to empower Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there is still time to avert them,” he warned. “For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless.”…

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Obamadeal: Iran to gain $100 billion

That can finance a great deal of genocidal hatred.

“Historic nuclear deal: Iran set to gain $100 billion,” Reuters, July 14, 2015:

VIENNA: Iran would get access to more than $100 billion in frozen assets when the Iran nuclear agreement is implemented, which depends on when Tehran has curbed its nuclear program and the UN nuclear watchdog has certified this, US officials said on Tuesday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement of the deal, said that UN Security Council sanctions could be reimposed on Iran within 65 days in the event of Iranian noncompliance with the deal.

The accord includes a provision under which Iran can be required to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with access to suspected nuclear sites, including military sites, or with other means to address their concerns, within 24 days if a majority of a panel overseeing the deal insists….

If Iran refused to comply, one US official said that the major powers could then move to “snapback” or reinstate UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, a process that itself can take place within 65 days.

That’s one thing we can be sure will never happen.

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Best Arguments for an Iran Deal? No, not really!

Bret Stephens in his Global View column in today’s Wall Street Journal presents prolepsis arguments as to why the P5+1 deal with a nuclear Iran is a dangerous folly perpetrated by Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama on America, Israel and the World. It is a preview of the arguments that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry and their spokespersons will use to seal this deal in Press Conferences in Vienna and on Capitol Hill in Washington later this morning when the President meets with Democratic members of Congress.

Congress, under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, will now have  the daunting task of reviewing the 100 page agreement that emerged from feckless deliberations in Vienna.  That  despite the blandishments to be offered by President Obama to fellow Democrats on Capital Hill today  will likely be a very bad deal with the apocalyptic Mahdist regime in Tehran.  An Islamo fascist regime and state sponsor of terrorism  seeking the destruction of Israel , America and faltering Middle East allies.

Read Stephens’ cogent rebuttal of the misguided hopes and  faulty logic of what passed for diplomatic appeasement of Iran successfully retaining the capability to be come a nuclear threshold state under the terms of this final Joint Plan of Action.

The Wall Street Journal

The Best Arguments for an Iran Deal

The heroic assumptions, and false premises, of our diplomacy.

By BRET STEPHENS

In formal rhetoric, prolepsis means the anticipation of possible objections to an argument for the sake of answering them. So let’s be proleptic about the Iranian nuclear deal, whose apologists are already trotting out excuses for this historic diplomatic debacle.

The heroic case.Sure, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is an irascible and violent revolutionary bent on imposing a dark ideology on his people and his neighborhood. Much the same could be said of Mao Zedong when Henry Kissinger paid him a visit in 1971—a diplomatic gamble that paid spectacular dividends as China became a de facto U.S. ally in the Cold War and opened up to the world under Deng Xiaoping.

But the hope that Iran is the new China fails a few tests. Mao faced an overwhelming external threat from the Soviet Union. Iran faces no such threat and is winning most of its foreign proxy wars. Beijing ratcheted down tensions with Washington with friendly table-tennis matches. Tehran ratchets them up by locking up American citizens and seizing cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Deng Xiaoping believed that to get rich is glorious. Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, a supposed reformer, spent last Friday marching prominently in the regime’s yearly “Death to America, Death to Israel” parade.

If there is evidence of an Iranian trend toward moderation it behooves proponents of a deal to show it.

The transactional case. OK, so Iran hasn’t really moderated its belligerent behavior, much less its antediluvian worldview. And a deal won’t mean we won’t still have to oppose Iran on other battlefields, whether it’s Yemen or Syria or Gaza. But that doesn’t matter, because a nuclear deal is nothing more than a calculated swap. Iran puts its nuclear ambitions into cold storage for a decade. In exchange, it comes in from the cold economically and diplomatically. Within circumscribed parameters, everyone can be a winner.

But a transaction requires some degree of trust. Since we can’t trust Iran we need an airtight system of monitoring and verification. Will the nuclear deal provide that? John Kerry will swear that it will, but as recently as January Czech officials blocked a covert $61 million purchase by Iran of “dual-use” nuclear technologies. A month before that, the U.S. found evidence that Iran had gone on an illicit “shopping spree” for its plutonium plant in Arak. That’s what we know. What do we not know?

Also, how does a nuclear deal not wind up being Iran’s ultimate hostage in dictating terms for America’s broader Mideast policy? Will the administration risk its precious nuclear deal if Iran threatens to break it every time the two countries are at loggerheads over regional crises in Yemen or Syria? The North Koreans already mastered the art of selling their nuclear compliance for one concession after another—and they still got the bomb.

The defeatist case. All right: So the Iran deal is full of holes. Maybe it won’t work. Got any better ideas? Sanctions weren’t about to stop a determined regime, and we couldn’t have enforced them for much longer. Nobody wants to go to war to stop an Iranian bomb, not the American public and not even the Israelis. And conservatives, of all people, should know that foreign policy often amounts to a choice between evils. The best case for a nuclear deal is that it is the lesser evil.

Then again, serious sanctions were only imposed on Iran in November 2011. They cut the country’s oil exports by half, shut off its banking system from the rest of the world, sent the rial into free fall and caused the inflation rate to soar to 60%. By October 2013 Iran was six months away from a severe balance-of-payments crisis, according to estimates by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And that was only the first turn of the economic screw: Iran’s permitted oil exports could have been cut further; additional sanctions could have been imposed on the “charitable” foundations controlled by Iran’s political, military and clerical elite. Instead of turning the screw, Mr. Obama relieved the pressure the next month by signing on to the interim agreement now in force.

It’s true that nobody wants war. But a deal that gives Iran the right to enrich unlimited quantities of uranium after a decade or so would leave a future president no option other than war to stop Iran from building dozens of bombs. And a deal that does nothing to stop Iran’s development of ballistic missiles would allow them to put one of those bombs atop one of those missiles.

Good luck. Americans are a lucky people—lucky in our geography, our founders and the immigrants we attract to our shores. So lucky that Bismarck supposedly once said “there is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America.”

Maybe we’ll get lucky again. Maybe Iran will change for the better after Mr. Khamenei passes from the scene. Maybe international monitors will succeed with Iran where they failed with North Korea. Maybe John Kerry is the world’s best negotiator, and this deal was the best we could do.

Or maybe we won’t be lucky. Maybe there’s no special providence for nations drunk on hope, led by fools.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Dr. Peter Pry: On Iran’s Nuclear and Electro-Magnetic-Pulse (EMP) Weapons

One of the world’s top experts on nuclear weaponry and Electro-Magnetic-Pulse (EMP) weapons is our in-studio guest as we discuss a variety of critical issues including President Obama’s failure to negotiate successfully with Iran.

Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst details many complex issues in a very simple manner so that non-experts can understand the importance of prohibiting Iran from getting nuclear weapons. BUT, Dr. Pry is of the intellectual school which believes Iran, like North Korea, already has nuclear weapons and is simply “playing” the West to increase their nuclear capability!

Sooner or later, whether by man or nature, an EMP will hit the United States and many of us will die.

Sound crazy, it is, but even more crazy, it’s TRUE!

Obama’s Unrealistic View of Israelis

General Kuperwasser

Israel Gen Kuperwasser (Ret.) Former Director General, Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Source: Honest Reporting

Gen. (Ret.) Yossi Kuperwasser is an  Israeli Intelligence expert and former Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, these remarks following the latest Atlantic interview and Obama’s appearance at Goldberg’s synagogue in Washington, Adas Israel on Friday morning, May 22nd. The President  received applause from the 1,200 who attended  his address, a day prior to the Shavuot Jewish holiday. Shavuot  celebrates  the  reading of the law by “Moshe rabbenu’ (Moses the teacher) before the assembled Exodus multitude  gathered under the Mountain. Perhaps the President had that it mind on the occasion of his address to the assembly of Washington Jewish notables at Adas Israel who like Goldberg profess to be “progressives” like the President. After all, Obama said that many in the audience considered him  the equivalent of “the First Jewish President.”

Others distant from Washington, like our colleague  Dr. Richard l. Rubenstein; noted theologian, former university president ,author of seminal works on post holocaust period,including  Jihad and Genocide  consider Obama “the most radical President ever.”  To Goldberg’s credit, he published  in the latest edition of The Atlantic  Kuperwasser’s ‘realistic” views, as an Israeli expert of record, contrasting them with the President’s “optimistic” views . I have to thank my friend Pat Rooney here in Pensacola for sending me them.  Coming as they do before tonight’s airing of an interview with the President of Israel Channel 2 extolling  his view why the P5+1 deal with Iran is in Panglossian terms – the best of all possible options. A deal considered a bad one by a bi-partisan panel of former Senators, ex-CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and experts from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in an update from the Iran Task Force on Capitol Hill, yesterday.  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius ‘considers  the current P5+1 deal  “useless” as both he and Gen. Hayden know that nothing will be verifiable as the fissile material will be hidden at military sites that Iran’s Supreme Ruler has denied access to UN IAEA inspectors.

I posted on my Facebook page yesterday this comment that may reflect  what many Israelis and Gen. Kuperwasser may believe about the President:

Obama says there is no military option, but a tough verifiable deal for Iran’s nukes. When asked if PM Netanyahu would exercise a military option, he said “I wouldn’t speculate.” He also suggested he “understood the fears and concerns” of Israelis. When this airs on Channel 2 in Israel Tuesday night the silence will be deafening. This President does not have either Israel’s or this country’s back in dealing with an untrustworthy Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Goldberg prefaced Kuperwasser’s response by offering that he agreed with less than half of them.  Here are excerpts from The Atlantic article, A Critique of Obama’s Understanding of Israel.

President Obama’s anger toward Netanyahu is misplaced, especially given his extraordinary lack of criticism of Palestinians for far more egregious behavior. The Palestinians, after all, are the ones who refused to accept the president’s formula for extending the peace negotiations. It is Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) who have called for “popular resistance,” which has led in recent years to stabbings, stonings, and attacks with cars and Molotov cocktails against Israelis. Since the PA ended the peace negotiations, there has been a sharp increase in attacks and casualties in Israel. Hamas, for its part, openly calls for the extermination of Israelis and sacrifices a generation of children towards that goal.

In response to these threats, all the president had to say at Adas Israel was that “the Palestinians are not the easiest of partners.” Rather than recognizing how fundamentally different Palestinian political culture is, the president offered slogans about how Palestinian youth are just like any other in the world. This is a classic example of the mirror-imaging—the projection of his own values onto another culture—that has plagued most of his foreign policy.

This excerpt from the president’s speech in Jerusalem in 2013 is emblematic of his mirror-imaging, and the problems with that perspective:

“… I met with a group of young Palestinians from the age of 15 to 22. And talking to them, they weren’t that different from my daughters. They weren’t that different from your daughters or sons. I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those kids, they’d say, I want these kids to succeed; I want them to prosper. I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do. … Four years ago, I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young people—politically, religiously, I believe that they must seem a world away. But the things they want, they’re not so different from what the young people here want. They want the ability to make their own decisions and to get an education, get a good job; to worship God in their own way; to get married; to raise a family. The same is true of those young Palestinians that I met with this morning. The same is true for young Palestinians who yearn for a better life in Gaza.”

Yes, we want a prosperous life for our neighbors, but unlike the president’s daughters, there are some Palestinian children who are educated to have a completely different set of priorities. Our core values are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this world, but Hamas proclaims “We love death more than you love life.” Happiness will be reached in the next world, according to the Hamas ideology.

So why does Obama pick on Netanyahu and not on Abbas? The most likely reason is directly related to a conflict in the West between two schools of thought, both dedicated to defending democratic and Judeo-Christian values: Optimism and realism. Obama is a remarkable proponent for the optimist approach—he fundamentally believes in human decency, and therefore in dialogue and engagement as the best way to overcome conflict. He is also motivated by guilt over the West’s collective sins, which led, he believes, to the current impoverishment of Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular. He believes that humility and concessions can salve the wound, and Islamists can be convinced to accept a global civil society. “If we’re nice to them, they’ll be nice to us,” Obama thinks.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, is a realist. Due in part to Israel’s tumultuous neighborhood, he has a much more skeptical attitude of Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian President Rouhani’s government. Netanyahu does not see these groups as potential moderates, willing to play by the international community’s rules; instead, he acknowledges their radicalism, and their intent to undermine a world order they consider a humiliating insult to Islam. The major difference between the Islamists and the extremists, according to Netanyahu, is one of timing. The Islamists are willing to wait until the time is ripe to overthrow the existing world order.

Western realists worry that optimists are actively aiding Islamists in the naïve hope that they will block out the extremists. The realists believe that a resolute stance, with the use of military force as an option, is the best way to achieve agreed-upon Western goals. Obama both prefers the optimist approach and believes that his hopeful dialogues will achieve the best possible outcome. Netanyahu, on the other hand, whose nation would feel the most immediate consequences from Western concessions, does not have the luxury of optimism.

This helps explain why Obama targets Netanyahu for criticism. The prime minister’s insistence on the dangers of the optimist approach threatens to expose the inherent weakness of Obama’s worldview and challenge the president’s assumption that his policy necessarily leads to the best possible solutions. For Netanyahu and almost everybody in Israel, as well as pragmatic Arabs, the president’s readiness to assume responsibility for Iran’s future nuclear weapons, as he told Jeffrey Goldberg, is no comfort. The realists are not playing a blame game; they are trying to save their lives and their civilization. To those who face an existential threat, Obama’s argument sounds appalling.

          […]

Does it make sense for Israel—in the face of an aggressive Iran, the rise of Islamic terror organizations across the Middle East, and the fragmentation of Arab states—to deliver strategic areas to the fragile and corrupt PA, just to see them fall to extremists?

Should Israel at this moment aid in the creation of a Palestinian state, half of which is already controlled by extremists who last summer rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, while its leaders urge their people to reject Israel as the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people? Should it aid a movement that follows these five pillars: 1) There is no such thing as the Jewish people; 2) The Jews have no history of sovereignty in the land of Israel, so the Jewish state’s demise is inevitable and justified; 3) The struggle against Israel by all means is legitimate, and the means should be based simply on cost-benefit analysis; 4) The Jews in general, and Zionists in particular, are the worst creatures ever created; And 5) because the Palestinians are victims, they should not be held responsible or accountable for any obstacles they may throw up to peace?

In short, even though Israel, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, remains committed to the formula of “two states for two peoples, with mutual recognition,” the implementation of this idea at this point is irrelevant. The PA’s poor governance and the general turmoil in the Middle East render any establishment of a Palestinian state right now unviable. President Obama admitted as much, reluctantly, but continued to criticize Netanyahu instead of betraying his optimist paradigm. Netanyahu’s realism would stray too far from the path Obama, and other Western leaders, have set in front of them. But while Obama and the optimists offer their critiques, Netanyahu and the realists will be on the ground, living with the consequences the optimists have wrought.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

In Good Faith? No Nukes for Iran!

clarion project logoWatch this Clarion Project YouTube Video “In Good Faith?” Contrast President Obama’s Norwuz Greetings with pictures of crowds of Iranians cheering on Ayatollah Khamenei with calls for “Death to America”. Also note the comments by IAEA Director General Yukiyo Amano specifically saying that the Iranians have not come clean about their military applications research developing nuclear triggers and more.This weekend we learned that Iranian journalist and former aides to President Rouhani revealed that the U.S. is acting as a veritable shill for Iranian demands to other P5+1 members.

Rouhani is shown in the Clarion video gloating over fooling the U.S. about being able to increase the number of centrifuges. Today the U.S. and the rest of the P5+1 caved to Iran’s refusal to send enriched uranium to Russia for ‘processing”, as if the Russians under Putin would do much. A friend in Geneva Switzerland said that the EU members of the P5+1 are hungry for business deals with the Islamic Republic if sanctions are lifted. The “1” of the P5+1 contingent, Chancellor Angele Merkel’s Germany is hurting because of a huge drop in trade with Putin’s Russia given the sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

France? While Foreign Minister Fabius has said that the P5+1 needs a robust deal with Iran, the reality is he caved ultimately in the wee hours of the morning back in November 2013, when the joint Plan of Action was initialed. The P5+1 and Iran have until 11:00 PM CET to announce a declaration. That would be 5:00 PM EST in the U.S.

U.S. House Speaker Boehner and a delegation of Republican lawmakers arrive in Israel tomorrow. Perhaps, Israeli PM Netanyahu might suggest they appear at a joint press conference in Jerusalem condemning the cruelest April Fool’s Joke – a verbal agreement leading to a technical agreement with Iran by June 30th gifting the Islamic Republic with a future stockpile of nuke warheads and ICBMs to deliver therm. No wonder the Saudis and Arab allies are incensed at the faithless execution of responsibilities by the leader of the free world.

Perhaps you are outraged, as well?

Take the first step and write your Senators and Representatives to warn them about acquiescing to this sham and dangerous folly.

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Netanyahu in Washington: An Eleventh-hour Plea for Sanity by Jerry Gordon and Ilana Freedman

On Tuesday, March 3, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu laid out in an address before a joint meeting of Congress, a compelling rebuttal to the President’s case for the phased deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  He diplomatically paid court to President Obama for supplying both known and secret support for the Jewish nation of Israel.

We didn’t need Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come tell us how big a threat a nuclear enabled Iran will be. Well-informed Americans already know that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons production capability in the hands of an apocalyptic regime , will fan the flames of war in the Middle East and put the entire world at risk.

This is a regime whose rulers are sowing seeds of chaos in preparation for the coming of their messiah, the Twelfth Imam.

Netanyahu’s message to a packed house in a Joint Meeting of Congress was clear, concise, and spelled out starkly the issues and the choices we face.

Watch this C-span Video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s  address before the Joint Meeting of Congress on March 3, 2015:

An affronted delegation.   Visually absent from the joint meeting were 50 Democrat members of both Chambers, who chose to demonstrate their partisan loyalty to their party and the President. At issue was misplaced sense that the President had been slighted, represented by Netanyahu’s presence before the Joint Meeting  of Congress, because the visit was organized by House Speaker John Boehner without consultation with Obama. That no representative of the Obama administration was present as well showed how petulant partisan politicians, even at the highest levels, can be when faced with what they perceive as slights, real or imagined.

By avoiding the Prime Minister’s speech, they also missed the more than 40 rounds of standing ovations that punctuated his remarks.  More importantly they  failed to observe minimum protocols of courtesy due to a visiting head of state. In this case, when the object of their anger is the head of state of one of America’s closest allies, their lack of courtesy is shameful.

According to reports from reliable sources, the President was “infuriated” by Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. However,  because Netanyahu’s speech was full of praise for Obama and his generous assistance and support of Israel, all Obama could say was that Netanyahu didn’t present anything new or “any viable alternatives”. That became the veritable chorus from his White House spokespersons and in some quarters of the mainstream media. So bitter was the vitriol that one of Netanyahu’s detractors suggested that the Prime Minister’s speech was ‘racist’ because it was critical of America’s first minority President. A group of African American pastors responded by coming out in support of Netanyahu’s speech and went on record in a news conference to disagree with this bizarre comment, promising that they would stand with Israel.

The Prime Minister’s speech was framed in history.  Israel’s Prime Minister came to inform Americans about the seriousness of the threat represented by a nuclear Iran. He began the body of his speech by placing his remarks in an historical context.

He explained to the Congressional audience that the ancient Jewish Festival of Purim would begin the following evening. The holiday commemorates another Persian government, some 2,500 years ago, when Haman, Vizier to the Persian Emperor Xerxes (also known as Ahasuerus) singled out the entire Jewish population for slaughter.  They were saved by Queen Esther and her uncle, Mordechai, and given permission to defend themselves against the massive pogrom that had been planned against them. Netanyahu then drew the parallel between this ancient plot against the Jews of Persia and the current threats against the Jewish State of Israel by the mullahs of Iran, the current government in the modern-day land of ancient Persia.

Bringing history a bit closer to home, Netanyahu made copious references to the Holocaust.  He introduced, for recognition and applause, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel, who sat in the Speaker’s Box as an honored guest of the Prime Minister and his wife, Sara. Wiesel, who is a personal friend of the President, came nevertheless as Netanyahu’s guest. “Although he has deep affection for the President”, in the words of his friend, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “he didn’t feel saying that the Jewish people face danger would be an offensive message.”

These historical connections, creating links between the ancient threat of a Persian viceroy, the more recent catastrophe of the Holocaust, and the current threats of the apocalyptic reign of Shia Mahdists in Tehran, covered two thousand years of history of the Jewish experience. Today’s threat is hardly less significant. Whether from the Ayatollah Khamenei or the alleged moderates in his government, President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, they, like Haman, are determined to wipe Israel, ‘the Zionist Enterprise” off the map of the world. In the words of Hezbollah’s retired Brig. Gen. Walid Sakariya, the nuclear weapons Iran is developing are intended to “create a balance of terror with Israel” and “finish off the Zionist enterprise.”

Netanyahu also reminded his audience that Israel is the bastion for world Jewry under anti-Semitic assault in the West and throughout the Muslim world. He warned that it would, out of necessity, defend itself against both conventional and non-conventional threats by Iran and its proxies:

This is why — this is why, as a Prime Minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing: Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel.

Netanyahu also put in historical context Iran’s continuing war against the West. He referenced Tehran’s secret war against America, Israel, and Jews that began with the Islamic Revolution in 1979 with the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis that lasted 444 days, a war that still continues.

He spoke of the hundreds if not thousands of American soldiers and diplomats who were killed by Iranian Quds Force and their proxies, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in locations like Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He spoke of the hundreds if not thousands of Jews who were killed in actions across five continents. Witness as examples the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and 1994 AMIA Jewish Center blasts in Buenos Aires, Argentina and, more recently the bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria by Hezbollah operatives.

Netanyahu aptly pointed out that the Iranian Constitution crafted by these Mahdists said that the purpose of the Islamic Revolution was to export Jihad around the world. Unlike the US, he said, which was founded on the promise of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, Iran’s founding documents promised, “Death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad.”

Netanyahu also warned his Congressional audience and those watching live from around the globe that Iran’s apocalyptic version of militant Islam comes from the source and that their current assault against ISIS should not fool us into adopting the ancient Arab maxim, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  “When it comes to Iran and ISIS,” he said, “the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.”

Iran as the agent of global jihad.     Among the most egregious of Iran’s involvement in attacks against the US, was the connivance with Al Qaeda in facilitating the training of many of the 9/11 perpetrators by the late Hezbollah terrorist mastermind, Imad Maghniyah.  That was revealed in affidavits by  former Iranian intelligence operatives in the Federal Iran 9/11 links case.

More recently, we have the revelations of collusion between the Shia Iran and Sunni Al Qaeda in e-mails from the treasure trove of information captured by US Navy Seal Team Six during the assassination of the late Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

Then there is the evidence of Iran’s Quds Force assisting the launch of ISIS in Syria. This is ironic now that the IRGC is leading Iraqi military forces against ISIS in the attack on the late Saddam Hussein’s birthplace of Tikrit, which was captured by ISIS. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is placed in the precarious and unwelcome position of standing by while Iran expands its reach and forwards its agenda.

Open Source Intelligence as the basis for Netanyahu’s warning.   The heart of Netanyahu’s message was conveyed halfway through his speech. It was based, he said, on information available on many public open sources which he invited his audience to “Google”. This was intended to quell any concerns raised by Obama that he would release classified intelligence that could torpedo negotiations with Iran. Many of the details of the ‘deal’ had already been leaked and were in the public domain. So he continued.

“We’ve been told,” he said, “that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well this is a bad deal, a very bad deal.”  Instead, he pointed out, “this deal has two major concessions: one, leaving Iran with a vast nuclear program; and two, lifting the restrictions on that program in about a decade. That is why this deal is so bad. It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

So why would anyone make this deal? Netanyahu posited this theory: “Because they hope that Iran will change for the better in the coming years, or they believe that the alternative to this deal is worse?”

Netanyahu used the petard of Ayatollah Khamenei’s own tweets, echoed by Secretary Kerry in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the future chaos wrought by this worse deal. He said, “My long-time friend, John Kerry, Secretary of State, confirmed last week that Iran could legitimately possess that massive centrifuge capacity when the deal expires.”

The State Department immediately accused him of taking Kerry’s Congressional testimony out of context, but here is Kerry’s own testimony, which makes the point abundantly clear:

Iran’s Supreme Leader says that openly. He says, Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount — 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal and this in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision.

Netanyahu then painted a dystopian vision for the World and the Middle East region, should Iran, already a global sponsor of terrorism, become a nuclear threshold state and open the Pandora’s Box of nuclear proliferation:

Israel’s neighbors — Iran’s neighbors know that Iran will become even more aggressive and sponsor even more terrorism when its economy is unshackled and it’s been given a clear path to the bomb.

And many of these neighbors say they’ll respond by racing to get nuclear weapons of their own. So this deal won’t change Iran for the better; it will only change the Middle East for the worse. A deal that’s supposed to prevent nuclear proliferation would instead spark a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the planet.

This deal won’t be a farewell to arms. It would be a farewell to arms control. And the Middle East would soon be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires. A region where small skirmishes can trigger big wars would turn into a nuclear tinderbox.

If anyone thinks — if anyone thinks this deal kicks the can down the road, think again. When we get down that road, we’ll face a much more dangerous Iran, a Middle East littered with nuclear bombs and a countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare.

Netanyahu drew attention to the looming threat of Iran’s missile program and military nuclear developments, excluded from the proposed Memorandum of Understanding  being word smithed in Geneva by Secretary Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif:

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, said again yesterday that Iran still refuses to come clean about its military nuclear program. Iran was also caught — caught twice, not once, twice — operating secret nuclear facilities in Natanz and Qom, facilities that inspectors didn’t even know existed.

And by the way, if Iran’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program is not part of the deal, and so far, Iran refuses to even put it on the negotiating table. Well, Iran could have the means to deliver that nuclear arsenal to the far-reach corners of the earth, including to every part of the United States.

Iran’s Ongoing Progress Despite Negotiations.   To buttress Netanyahu concerns about Iran’s nuclear military applications and ICBM program, we have just heard from reliable sources that the Islamic Republic has achieved a technical breakthrough – the miniaturization of nuclear warheads – through technical support from both China and North Korea so that nuclear warheads will be able to be installed on their slender Shahab missiles.

Less certain is whether experiments with nuclear triggers have succeeded, given several explosions that have occurred at the Lavizan sites near Tehran and at Parchin, the military explosives test center. If this report is separately confirmed it means that Iran would have the ability to load ICBMs with nuclear warheads.

If tests conducted in Caspian Sea by Iran and the purchase of container-launched missiles from Russia are an indication may provide the capability to deploy small yield nuclear detonations off the American coasts. Those could produce an Electronic Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack, possibly disabling our less-than-secure power grid sending the country hurtling back to the pre-industrial age.

Even as the negotiations continue, the media ran a story about how Iran conducted cruise tetst attacks against a mock US aircraft carrier. Less covered but also last week, Iran launched a cruise missile from a submarine in the Persian Gulf. The missile has a range of 150 nautical miles and was designed to destroy a US carrier. So even as they sit at the negotiating table, the Iranians rattle their sabers and clearly demonstrate their animus.

Netanyahu’s Plan.   Contrary to Obama’s comment that there was ‘nothing new’, Netanyahu was clear in firmly stating that the lifting of sanctions and restrictions must be justified by Iranian action in three areas:

  • Stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East;
  • Stop supporting terrorism around the world; and,
  • Stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s plan was clear. Marco Rubio summed it up nicely:  “Iran can have an economy, or it can have nuclear weapons. But it can’t have both.”

A closing thought from the Bible.  Netanyahu concluded his address by pointing to the frieze of Moses high on the wall opposite from where he stood surrounding the House chamber.  He recited and translated from the Hebrew Moses’ instructions in his final address to the ancient Hebrews about to cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land:

Before the people of Israel entered the land of Israel, Moses gave us a message that has steeled our resolve for thousands of years. I leave you with his message today, “Be strong and resolute, neither fear nor dread them.”

My friends, may Israel and America always stand together, strong and resolute. May we neither fear nor dread the challenges ahead. May we face the future with confidence, strength and hope.

A warning to be heeded.  Netanyahu’s message in his address to Congress is not lost on Israelis and the preponderance of Americans, who view Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon as a clear and present damage to the world.  At issue is whether the Administration’s obsession with an agreement with Iran at all cost has blinded them to the consequences of a deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear power.

This is not the time for peevishness. No insults were intended and none should be interpreted. Netanyahu’s visit and his speech were timely – a last minute call for clarity and resolve against an implacable enemy masquerading as a negotiating partner.

There are many who fervently believe that any negotiations with Iran will lead us dangerously close to a nuclear precipice.  Perhaps,  Netanyahu’s comments before Congress where prescient. Apparently, Iran has rejected  the proposed phased deal placing negotiations in Geneva at an impasse.

Netanyahu’s ultimate message is clear:  Iran’s nuclear clock is rocketing towards midnight. Can we stop it in time or will our own Munich in Geneva lead us into a nuclear doomsday scenario that, once begun, no one will be able to stop?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Before Joint Meeting of Congress with Speaker John Boehner on left and Senate President Pro-temp Sen. Orrin Hatch on right on March 3, 2015.

Has Russia Joined the Axis of Evil?

On January 20, 2015, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signed an “cooperation”  agreement with Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan in Tehran.  Both countries are the targets of Western and US Sanctions. Both countries are afflicted with erosion of oil and energy revenues.  Both countries are seeking to blunt opposing US interests in  Eastern Europe and the Middle East.  That is reflected in a comment of Iranian State television by Dehghan reported by AFP, that Iran and Russia had a “shared analysis of US global strategy, its interference in regional and international affairs and the need to cooperate in the struggle against the interference of foreign forces in the region.”  There is also the matter of weapon systems deals  with proceeds  which might bolster Russia’s depleting foreign currency reserves, while combating America’s ally in the Middle East, Israel .

Moscow Times reported:

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Shoigu as saying the agreement hashed out a “theoretical framework of cooperation in the military sphere,” and also features an increase in naval cooperation, particularly visits by Russian and Iranian naval forces to each other’s ports.

Although Shoigu made no mention of a breakthrough in arms negotiations with the two countries — which have both come under Western sanctions — Iran’s Fars said that Moscow and Tehran would resolve problems with the delivery of the advanced missile system.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti confirmed the issue was under discussion.

“A step was taken in the direction of cooperation on the economy and arms technology, at least for such defensive systems such as the S-300 and S-400. Probably we will deliver them,” RIA Novosti quoted Colonel General Leonid Ivashov as saying.

Ivashov is the former head of the defense minister’s department of international cooperation.

UKRAINE-RUSSIA-UNREST-POLITICS-CRIMEA

Russian S-300 Air Defense System.

TAAS reported the U.S. studying the announced Russian –Iranian military agreement, but specifically objecting to possible shipment of the S-300/400 air defense system. Russia might finally ship Iran the advanced S-300 air defense system that both the U.S. and Israeli successfully lobbied former Russian President Medvedev in 2010 to cancel.  Immediate payment by Iran of $800 million for the S-300 system may have cemented the deal.  This defense cooperation deal is a prelude to a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a Central Asian republic location.

The Russian delivery of the S-300/400 air defense system to Iran  maybe a  possible counter  to  the IAF December 8, 2014 attacks at Damascus  International airport hangars  that destroyed  deliveries of missiles headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon and allegedly killed two senior  terrorist proxy operatives.   Note this unusual exchange between a Russian Foreign Ministry official and Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz reported by Ha’aretz:

“Moscow is deeply worried by this dangerous development, the circumstances of which demand an explanation,” Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

In a letter to the United Nations, Russia complained about Israel’s “aggressive action” and demanded that such attacks should not happen again, the spokesman said.

Syria also complained to the UN about the strikes, demanding that the Security Council “severely condemn the Israeli attack and impose punitive sanctions on Israel due to its support of Syrian terrorist organizations.”

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the reported strikes. “We have a firm policy of preventing all possible transfers of sophisticated weapons to terrorist organizations,” Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio.

Israel may be prepared to counter an Iranian S-300 threat. We commented in a 2010, Iconoclast Post:

In June 2008, Israel’s air force undertook massive air training exercises involving more than 100 aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean against Greek S-300 Russian air defense systems. That effort demonstrated the canny effectiveness of swarming attacks against the S-300 and later versions that upset the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards.

This geo-political deal between two regional hegemons comes on the heels of an Israeli helicopter missile attack on a convoy in Quneitra, Syria last weekend that saw the deaths of senior Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders.  The Guardian reported the deaths of  Jihad Mughniyah, son of the late Hezbollah terrorist mastermind,  and IRGC General Mohammed Allahdadi confirmed by both Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and Ayatollah Khamenei.  IDF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, former Israel National Security Adviser, now senior fellow Begin-Sadat Center commented:

The fact that a senior Iranian is involved, who was involved in planning actions against Israel, is on the benefit side. The presence of a senior Iranian must also come up on the price side. And if his presence was known to the decision-makers, this should have been on the table as part of the problem.

 Both Sheikh Nasrallah leader of Hezbollah and Supreme ruler Ayatollah Khamenei pledged “crushing revenge” for the deaths of these senior commanders in the Axis of Resistance that unites Assad’s Syria, Iran and its Lebanese Shiite proxy, Hezbollah.  Speculation centers that the Hezbollah and IRGC commanders were engaged in possible ‘imminent’  attacks on Israel’s Golan; Nasrallah had threatened in a recent speech on the Galilee using “sophisticated missiles”.  The Golan has seen activities by Hezbollah and Assad regime forces fighting Sunni opposition militias,  Al Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusrah Front and possibly Islamic State units.   The IDF has deployed an Iron Dome battery to the Golan, reinforced units and conducted artillery drills.

According to some Lebanese analysts, if Hezbollah was foolhardy enough to undertake revenge for Israel’s Sunday’s  attack, it might target the Shebaa Farms, an area disputed between Lebanon and Israel.   However, Israel analysts contend that Hezbollah is in no position to conduct a repetition of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, despite its sophisticated fortifications and tunneling capabilities.

Al Arabiya cited Lebanese analysts suggesting that the  Israeli attack represented “a colossal failure” for Hezbollah:

“This was a colossal failure … because they [Hezbollah] put this number of senior figures in one spot and at the same observation point and at the same time,” Wehbe Katicha, a former Lebanese army general, told Al Arabiya News.

They pointed to the admission by Nasrallah last Thursday that Israeli intelligence had penetrated Hezbollah leadership causing a major security breach:

A member of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s inner circle was recently reported to be spying for Israel. Local media identified the man as Mohammad Shorba. This is one of the most pressing and prominent breaches in the group since its formation.

Katicha noted Shorba’s case, saying the Shiite group was always vulnerable to such infiltration.

[…]

“Shorba was arrested by Hezbollah. He was a senior figure,” he said.

Whether the Russian Iranian military cooperation accord is simply the latest episode in the geo-political games impacting US international interests, or is tacit admission of Russia to the Axis of Resistance, Israel is taking no changes.  It is strengthening its northern frontier should Hezbollah with Iranian backing unleash a doubtful “crushing action” against the Jewish nation.  Given the latter’s success in Sunday’s attack in Syria and Intelligence breach of Hezbollah security, that prospect is doubtful.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Images provided by NER. The original title of this column was “Has Russia Joined the Axis of Resistance”, we have replaced the word resistance with evil. President George W. Bush stated that the Axis of Evil was Iraq, Iran and North Korea. That assessment has not changed.