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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; deal</title>
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		<title>Sanction Relief Empowering the Mullahs, Not Citizens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/sanction-relief-empowering-the-mullahs-not-citizens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sanction-relief-empowering-the-mullahs-not-citizens</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:10:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248109</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A year later, the verdict is in on Obama's dirty deal with Iran. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/iran_2677161b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248111" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/iran_2677161b-450x350.jpg" alt="iran_2677161b" width="319" height="248" /></a>There has always been an argument claiming that economic sanctions normally do not yield any result due to the notion that economic sanctions do not target the ruling elite and governmental official, but the ordinary people. This argument is partially accurate.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, we need to remember that some targeted economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic (particularly the sanctions in oil and gas sectors and financial and bank institutions) did endanger the hold on power of the ruling cleric in Iran, particularly the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That was the primary reason behind pushing the Iranian politicians to come to the negotiation table in nuclear talks.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the other side of the argument is that if economic sanctions are lifted, the major beneficiaries would be the ordinary people and the civilians. This argument would be accurate if the political and economic system of the given state is democratic, allows open opportunities for all, encourages the private sector, allows transparency, and holds those corrupt officials who commit illegal economic dealings accountable.</p>
<p>The Iranian political and economic system is devoid of the aforementioned standards. In fact, in states which the political system is mainly authoritarian or theocratic, and the economic system is monopolized by few people at top and is state controlled, any increase of wealth or flow of money will inevitably strengthening the ruling elite rather than the ordinary people.</p>
<p>To substantiate this argument, let us take a look on the ground in the Islamic Republic after the sanctions relief.</p>
<p>At the beginning, a majority of Iranian people were hoping that economic sanctions relief would alleviate their suffering, improve their standards of living, and push many families above the poverty line. Almost a year has passed since the Iranian government has been receiving sanctions relief.</p>
<p>After the interim nuclear deal and extension of the negotiations between the six world powers (known as the P5+1: China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the Islamic Republic, the Iranian government had received an estimated $7 billion.  Iran continues to receive approximately $700 million every month under the extension deal.</p>
<p>In addition, there has been some sanction suspension with respects to some of Iran’s major industries, including Iran’s auto sector, gold and precious metals, as well as Iran’s petrochemical exports. The Iranian currency, the rial, has appreciated due to the sanctions relief, Iran’s oil and non-oil exports have <a href="http://ameinfo.com/blog/finance-and-economy/irans-non-oil-exports-increase-28-per-cent/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">increased</span></a>, its economy is showing signs of stabilization, Tehran’s stock exchange has soared and Iran’s exports and business dealings with several countries have ratcheted up.</p>
<p>The suspension of sanctions has definitely given both psychological and financial support to the Iranian government.  But the real question is how this money is being spent and which institutions benefit primarily from this sanctions relief. Are ordinary people benefiting from these sanctions relief and flow of money?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, some Iranian civilians have begun to believe that even economic sanctions relief or even the lifting of the whole economic sanctions regime from the Iranian government are not going to assist civilians, their financial day-to-day activities, or bring concrete changes on the ground.</p>
<p>Four major institutions are benefiting mostly from the economic sanctions relief: Iran’s military-industrial complex, the Office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a few top business figures who are connected with the government, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), through either legal and <a href="http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=20355:irgcs-dominance-over-irans-politics-and-economy--part-1&amp;catid=29&amp;Itemid=121"><span style="color: #0433ff;">illegal</span></a> imports and exports.</p>
<p>For example, the IRGC controls and owns a considerable amount of shares in the aforementioned industries which have witnessed sanctions relief. In the petrochemical industry, The IRGC military-industrial complex <a href="http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=20355:irgcs-dominance-over-irans-politics-and-economy--part-1&amp;catid=29&amp;Itemid=121"><span style="color: #0433ff;">owns</span></a> Zagros Petrochemicals; 40% of Pars Petrochemical Company, part of Arak Petrochemicals; 25% of Kermanshah Petrochemicals; as well as 19% of the shares of Maroun Petrochemicals.</p>
<p>This phenomenon of the monopolization of the economy applies in other sectors of Iran’s economy as well.  When it comes to Iran’s economic system, the Supreme Leader and IRGC do have a considerable amount of control and shares in almost all industries <a href="http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=20355:irgcs-dominance-over-irans-politics-and-economy--part-1&amp;catid=29&amp;Itemid=121"><span style="color: #0433ff;">including</span></a> financial institutions and banks, the transportation industry, automobile manufacturing, mining, commerce, and oil and gas sectors.</p>
<p>As a result, these types of sanctions relief will mostly benefit the ruling elite, primarily the Supreme Leader and Iran’s military-industrial complex, IRGC. Iranian people will hardly observe any benefits from this economic sanctions relief or lifting of economic sanctions.</p>
<p>It appears that the easing of sanctions are strengthening the ruling elite without any sign of redistribution of wealth. This is predominantly due to the fact Iran’s economic system is a state and military controlled system, it lacks transparency, as well as the reality that it is crippled with <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1144661.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">widespread corruption</span></a> by the ruling elite and few on top.</p>
<p>If the intention of economic sanctions relief is to assist the Iranian people and alleviate their suffering, there ought to be more efficient approaches to develop some types of targeted sanctions relief (for example, being directed at Iran’s educational system, health care, etc.) which aim at empowering Iranian civilians and primarily the middle class.</p>
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		<title>Obama Helps Terror Go Nuclear</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/obama-helps-terror-go-nuclear/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-helps-terror-go-nuclear</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245719</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's desperate drive to achieve a deal with Iran at any price. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/hi-obama-iran-852-03932845.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245720" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/hi-obama-iran-852-03932845.jpg" alt="hi-obama-iran-852-03932845" width="354" height="286" /></a>Last Tuesday’s terror attack on a Jerusalem synagogue killed five people: four rabbis (including three born in the USA) and a Druze police officer. Two Palestinians entered during morning prayers and attacked worshipers with knives, meat cleavers, and a handgun. <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-washington-terror-attack-focuses-lens-on-pa-incitement/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Congress showed moral clarity when blaming the horrors on Hamas and Palestinian Authority incitement</span></a>, but Obama’s statements were perfunctorily “balanced.” <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?322810-2/president-obama-remarks-jerusalem-synagogue-attack-ebola"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Obama warned of a “spiral” of violence</span></a> – an obtuse refrain of those suggesting <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/dershowitz-rips-obama-on-synagogue-slaughter/">moral equivalency</a> between terrorism and the fight against it. Obama also misleadingly claimed that “President Abbas&#8230;strongly condemned the attacks” omitting that <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Analysis-Abbas-forced-by-Kerry-condemns-attack-382225"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Abbas did so only after pressure from the administration and with equivocation</span></a> (Abbas suggested a link between recent terrorism and visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, as if to justify the attacks). It’s also worth noting that <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21571"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Palestinians celebrated the massacre</span></a> (as they did <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/palestinians-cheer-while-america-mourns/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">after the 2013 Boston bombing</span></a> and <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&amp;x_issue=17&amp;x_article=265"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the 9/11 attacks</span></a>).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama’s weak reaction is consistent with his mostly <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/10/president_obama_s_campaign_against_isis_lacks_a_strategy_the_united_states.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">impotent response to ISIS terrorists who behead Americans</span></a> and <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-beheads-7-men-and-3-women-in-syria-us-led-airstrikes-hit-stronghold-127367/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Mideast Christians</span></a> and grow their Islamist empire by the day. Frighteningly, his approach to Iranian nukes follows the same meek pattern, but the stakes are exponentially higher, because when Iran goes nuclear, so does terrorism.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/sites/default/files/Iranian-Support-For-Terrorism.pdf">Iran is already the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism</a></span>, without nuclear weapons. <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/07/10/day-of-bombardment-in-israel-nears-nuclear-reactor/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Iran-supported Hamas has already tried to commit nuclear terror</span></a>: last summer, Hamas launched rockets at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. How much more dangerous will Iran become when it has nukes? Even if Iran doesn’t directly commit nuclear terrorism, an Iranian nuclear umbrella will embolden the regime and the terrorist organizations it sponsors.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama has a long record of weakness towards Iran. In 2009, when Iran’s Basij paramilitary force brutalized demonstrators protesting Iran’s fraudulent presidential election, <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/10063438/the_iranian_election_barack_obamaas_cowardly_silence/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Obama kept his response irrelevantly mild</span></a> for the sake of “engaging” Iran. That surely helped Iranian voters understand the risks of protesting the “free” election of 2012 (<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113324/iran-elections-2013-khameneis-engineered-elections-become-reality"><span style="color: #1255cc;">involving eight regime-picked candidates</span></a>). It was indeed a very orderly rubberstamp.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">In 2011, when a U.S. <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/12/13/iran-mocks-obama-after-he-asks-for-downed-drone-back-says-he-begs-to-give-him-back-his-toy-plane/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">drone went down on Iranian soil</span></a>, Obama cordially requested it back. The regime recently scoffed at such impotence by <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/iran-claims-video-shows-reverse-engineered-us-drone/story?id=26858830">showcasing its knock-off based on that drone</a> <span style="color: #222222;"><span style="color: #333333;">and some <a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-firm-displays-us-made-helicopters-103647430.html" target="_blank">U.S.-made helicopters that it purchased</a>, highlighting just how useless sanctions have become</span></span></span>.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">President Hassan Rouhani’s election vastly improved the public face of Iran’s nuclear program, and Obama was charmed too. Obama has <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/08/obama-is-lying-about-iran-sanctions/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">been unilaterally weakening the sanctions against Iran</span></a> by not enforcing them. He has threatened to thwart any Congressional attempt to limit his nuclear generosity by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/politics/obama-sees-an-iran-deal-that-could-avoid-congress-.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">simply lifting sanctions without Congressional approval</span></a>. Yet despite these concessions and Rouhani&#8217;s smiles, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360775656/after-acid-attacks-and-execution-iran-defends-human-rights-record"><span style="color: #1255cc;">human rights abuses in Iran have actually worsened.</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama declared in 2012 (while running for reelection) that <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/obama-to-iran-and-israel-as-president-of-the-united-states-i-dont-bluff/253875/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">he doesn’t bluff when it comes to stopping Iranian nukes</span></a>, and that containment was not an option, unlike military force. But the credibility of that statement collapsed after Obama shrunk away from his “red line” against Syrian chemical weapons use. In 2013, Basher Assad gassed his own people and Obama took no military action. So if Obama cowers against a disintegrating state, what are the chances that he’ll militarily prevent Iranian nukes?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">And Obama has dangerously undermined the only military threat to Iranian nukes that anyone still takes seriously: Israel. On the Iranian nuclear issue, Obama has <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-denies-israel-and-us-disagree-on-iran-bomb-timeline/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">isolated Israel on how close Iran is to a nuclear capability</span></a> with estimates that are far laxer. And as long as Obama continues negotiating (even if Iran is clearly playing for time as <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/20/gop-rejects-obama-s-creative-iran-nuclear-compromises.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the U.S. offers ever more desperate proposals</span></a>) or reaches a deal allowing Iran to become a threshold nuclear weapons state, an Israeli military option to defang Iranian nukes appears less legitimate.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://tabletmag.com/scroll/185121/former-ap-reporter-confirms-matti-friedman-account">The media’s anti-Israel bias</a></span> is well known (they <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/A-Dose-of-Nuance-Can-we-please-stop-talking-about-hasbara-381004"><span style="color: #1255cc;">can’t even get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct</span></a> (compare how <i>The Guardian</i> writes accurate headlines when <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/canada-soldier-convert-islam-hit-and-run-quebec"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Canada suffers an Islamist car attack</span></a> but <a href="http://honestreporting.com/the-guardians-car-crash-headline/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">not when Israel does</span></a>). So if Obama accepts Iran’s nuclear program and Israel then attacks it, the media will be even harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Downgrading US-Israel relations seems to be part of Obama’s détente with Iran. Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei recently <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-supreme-leader-touts-9-point-plan-to-destroy-israel/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tweeted his plan for destroying Israel</span></a>, but Obama grows even more determined to reach an accord that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program. And the Obama administration’s diplomatic abuse of America’s closest Mideast ally is unprecedented – from <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/president-allegedly-dumps-israeli-prime-minister-dinner/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">his humiliation of Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2010</span></a>, to Secretary of State <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/john-kerry-the-betrayal/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">John Kerry’s betrayal of Israel during Operation Protective Edge</span></a>, to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/29/weinstein-5-takeaways-from-top-obama-official-calling-netanyahu-chickenst/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit”</span></a> a few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/10/29/white-house-distances-itself-from-chickenshit-insult-leveled-at-netanyahu-stops-short-of-apology/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">without even apologizing later</span></a> (note the irony of calling Netanyahu a coward anonymously). Obama seems far more concerned by <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-rejects-netanyahus-dismissal-of-e-jerusalem-housing-criticism/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israeli construction of apartments in Jerusalem</span></a> than a nuclear Iran. And he has been pressuring Israel to retreat from more disputed territory, effectively rewarding Palestinians for launching the third missile war against Israel from Gaza in five years last summer and now <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/third-intifada-jerusalem-violence-temple-mount-religious-war.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the third Intifidah inside Israel</span></a> in 17 years. That puts Obama just behind <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.626383"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the European appeasers who think Palestinian bellicosity merits statehood</span></a>. They all naively think &#8212; at Israel&#8217;s peril &#8212; that peace is possible with <a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/jerusalems-new-holy-war" target="_blank">raw hatred</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama indeed appears desperate to get a nuclear accord with Iran at any price. He has written <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/11/13/iran-responds-to-barack-obamas-letter-about-fight-against-isis-and-tehrans-nuclear-ambitions/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">letters</span></a> asking for Iran’s help against ISIS after they <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/26/iran-hints-at-interest-in-nuclear-trade-off-for-isis-help/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hinted at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange</span></a>, and has pursued an agreement at all costs. Obama’s top aide, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-coming-detente-with-iran/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Ben Rhodes, was caught saying how a nuclear accord is as important to Obama as “healthcare”</span></a>; at least there’s a fitting slogan to sell the deal to Americans: “If you like your nukes, you can keep them.”</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Russia, the serial spoiler, suggested extending <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/13/us-russia-iran-nuclear-idUSKCN0IX1H420141113"><span style="color: #1255cc;">nuclear talks past the November 24th deadline</span></a>. Iran will undoubtedly agree to more enrichment time (while it keeps <a href="http://www.thetower.org/1097oc-western-officials-iran-stonewalling-iaea-investigation-endangering-talks/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">stonewalling the IAEA’s investigations into it nukes</span></a>), as it did last July. For Obama, a bad agreement or an extension looks far better than concluding that talks have failed and issuing more empty threats to stop Iran militarily. And so U.S. foreign policy will continue its freefall, as the world’s bad actors will want to see what they can extort from a leader even weaker than President Carter. While Carter permitted Iran to hold 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days, Obama may allow Iran to hold the world hostage with nuclear terrorism. It&#8217;s now dreadfully obvious: without massive public pressure, Obama will help Iran get nukes; anyone concerned about nuclear terrorism should sign this petition: <a href="http://www.nobombforiran.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">http://www.nobombforiran.com</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></span></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama Midwifes a Nuclear Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obama-midwifes-a-nuclear-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-midwifes-a-nuclear-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:45:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The president's Munich moment draws near. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244883" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-419x350.png" alt="obama" width="340" height="284" /></a>The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei––apparently promising concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS–– is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood the Iranian Revolution. During the hostage crisis of 1979, Jimmy Carter sent left-wing former Attorney General Ramsay Clark to Tehran with a letter anxiously assuring the Ayatollah Khomeini that America desired good relations “based upon equality, mutual respect and friendship.” Khomeini refused even to meet with the envoys.</p>
<p>Such obvious contempt for our “outreach” should have been illuminating, but the same mistakes have recurred over the past 4 decades. But Obama has been the most energetic suitor of the mullahs, sending 4 letters to Khamenei, none directly answered. In May of 2009 he sent a personal letter to Khamenei calling for “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations.” Khamenei’s answer in June was to initiate a brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting the rigged presidential election. Obama’s response was to remain silent about this oppression lest he irritate the thuggish mullahs, who blamed the protests on American “agents” anyway. Even Carter’s phrase “mutual respect” has been chanted like some diplomatic spell that will transform religious fanatics into good global citizens. In his notorious June 2009 Cairo “apology” speech, Obama assured Iran, “We are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.” This latest letter repeats the same empty phrase.</p>
<p>But our president is nothing if not persistent. In October of 2009, it was revealed that Iran had failed to disclose a uranium enrichment facility in Qom. Obama commented on this obvious proof of Iran’s true intentions, “We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran,” and promised that the “offer stands” of “greater international integration if [Iran] lives up to its obligations.” Iran answered by increasing the pace of enrichment, helping the insurgents in Iraq kill our troops, and facilitating the movement and communications of al Qaeda with other jihadists.</p>
<p style="color: #272727;"><span style="color: #000000;">Indeed, every concession and failure to respond forcefully to Iranian intransigence and aggression confirm its belief that Iran is strong and America weak. As Khamenei has said, </span>“The reason why we are stronger is that [America] retreats step by step in all the arenas [in] which we and the Americans have confronted each other. But we do not retreat. Rather, we move forward. This is a sign of our superiority over the Americans.”</p>
<p>Given this long sorry history, how long will it take for our foreign policy geniuses to figure out that Iran’s theocrats don’t want better relations, or “mutual respect,” or “international integration,” or anything else from the infidel Great Satan and its Western minions, other than capitulation? The mullahs and their Republican Guard henchmen may lust for wealth and power as much as anyone, but the foundation of their behavior is a religious faith that promises Muslims power and dominance over those who refuse the call to convert to Islam and thus by definition are enemies of the faithful to be resisted and destroyed.</p>
<p>Given these spiritual imperatives, the material punishment of the regime through economic sanctions, particularly limited ones, is unlikely to have much effect. During the hostage crisis, mild sanctions and the threats of more serious ones were brushed away by Khomeini. The <i>Economist</i> at the time pointed out the obvious reason why: “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” Khomeini made this same point after the humiliating disaster of Carter’s half-hearted attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980, when mullahs were televised worldwide poking their canes in the charred remains of 8 dead Americans. Speaking of the sandstorm that compromised the mission, Khomeini preached, “Those sand particles were divinely commissioned . . . Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing and what school of thought he is playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.”</p>
<p>With their eyes on Allah’s intentions for the faithful, the leaders of Iran see the acquisition of nuclear weapons as the most important means of achieving the global power and dominance their faith tells them they deserve as “the best of nations produced for mankind,” as the Koran says. Thus duplicitous diplomatic engagement and negotiation are tactics for buying time until the mullahs reach “nuclear latency,” the ability quickly to build a bomb. Every concession or offer of bribes from the West are seen not as an inducement to reciprocate in order to meet a mutually beneficial arrangement, but rather as signs of weakness and failure of nerve, evidence that the mullahs can win despite the power and wealth of the West. That’s because the Iranian leadership views international relations as resting not on cooperation or negotiation, but on raw power. As Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institute <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/iran-at-saban/posts/2014/11/06-letter-khamenei-ayatollah-iran-obama-nuclear-isis"><span style="color: #0433ff;">quotes</span></a> from a hardline Iranian newspaper, “Our world is not a fair one and everyone gets as much power as he can, not for his power of reason or the adaptation of his request to the international laws, but by his bullying.” And the Iranians believe that their power politics serves the will of Allah.</p>
<p>Obama is not the first president who has completely failed to understand the true nature and motives of his adversary. FDR misunderstood “Uncle Joe” Stalin, and George Bush misread the eyes of Vladimir Putin. This mistake of diplomacy reflects the peculiar Western arrogant belief that the whole world is just like us and wants the same things we want––political freedom, leisure, material affluence, and peaceful relations with neighbors. Some Iranians may want those things too, but a critical mass wants obedience to Allah and his commands more. Obama’s endemic narcissism has made this flaw worse in his relations with the rest of the world, for he can’t believe that the leaders of other nations, many of them brutal realists indifferent to the opinions of the “international community,” aren’t as impressed as he is with his alleged brilliance and persuasive eloquence.</p>
<p>As a result we are on the brink of a dangerous realignment of the balance of power in the Middle East. Despite Iran’s continuing defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and its long record of lies and evasion, Obama allegedly has offered to raise the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from 4000 to 6000, bringing the mullahs closer to “nuclear latency”––in a regime that has officially been designated the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism; that has threatened genocide against Israel, our most important strategic asset in the region; and that for the last 40 years has stained its hands with American blood.</p>
<p>Rather than the ornament of his foreign policy legacy, as Obama hopes, his pursuit of a deal that will make Iran a nuclear power will be remembered as his Munich.</p>
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		<title>The End of Obama&#8217;s Bad Deal with Iran &#8212; What&#8217;s Next?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/adam-turner/the-end-of-obamas-bad-deal-with-iran-whats-next/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-end-of-obamas-bad-deal-with-iran-whats-next</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:35:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Adam Turner]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[More Obama "smart diplomacy" for the Mullahs?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/357455_Iran-Hassan-Rouhani.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234204" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/357455_Iran-Hassan-Rouhani-450x338.jpg" alt="357455_Iran-Hassan-Rouhani" width="309" height="232" /></a>Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/WATCH-LIVE-Steinitz-to-discuss-Iranian-threat-at-Herzliya-Conference-355732"><span style="color: #0463c1;">expressed</span></a> his hope that the U.S. would not make a “bad” deal with Iran regarding the nuclear negotiations.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there can be no doubt about what is going to happen.  The Obama Administration released five senior Talibani terrorists – and perhaps some additional <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/state-department-still-wont-say-if-bergdahl-ransom-was-paid/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">ransom money</span></a> – to the Taliban/Haqqani Network in return for one captured American serviceman, who may have been a deserter.  Any nuclear deal between the U.S. (and others) and Iran, including an extension of the current one, produced by President Obama and his team of “<a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/020714-689345-obama-names-series-of-incompetents-to-key-diplomatic-posts.htm"><span style="color: #0463c1;">smart diplomats</span></a><span style="color: #0463c1;">,</span>” will <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379920/mocking-obama-tehran-mona-charen"><span style="color: #0463c1;">inevitably be bad</span></a>.</p>
<p>This is <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/article/2013/08/embracing_the_costanza_doctrine.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">President Costanza</span></a> we are talking about, after all.</p>
<p>On July 20, 2014, the P5 + 1 nations’ Joint Plan of Action (JPA) with Iran officially ends.  The JPA was the bad deal promoted by President Obama that <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/an-israeli-assessment-of-the-iran-deal"><span style="color: #0463c1;">recognized</span></a> Iran’s right to enrich nuclear material and <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/president_costanza_and_the_nuclear_deal_with_iran.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">gave</span></a> it relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for almost nothing of any real significance to restrict Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.  Under the JPA, Iran was allowed to keep every one of its 19,000 plus centrifuges spinning, and was even able to continue to construct more.  Some limited caps were placed on Iran’s ability to enrich, but nothing was done to prevent it from expanding its stockpile of uranium.  Meanwhile, the JPA gave the Iranian regime an economic windfall of well over $20 billion.</p>
<p>It must be understood that the JPA was not just a bad deal, but it was, in fact, an exceptionally bad deal from the perspective of the U.S., Israel, the Arab states, and the Western World democracies.</p>
<p>• According to The Tower, “Iran is now mathematically certain to have <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0461oc-amid-new-evidence-of-sanctions-busting-congress-moves-for-greater-role-on-iran/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">busted</span></a> through the caps on energy exports set by the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA), which had eroded the sanctions regime, despite months of promises and ongoing declarations from administration officials insisting that violations of the remaining sanctions would not be tolerated.”</p>
<p>•While the Iranian concessions <a href="http://www.thetower.org/top-iran-negotiator-iranian-nuke-concessions-reversible-one-day/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">are</span></a> easily reversible, the Western concessions in the JPA are likely irreversible, meaning the existing sanctions regime was gutted with no realistic prospect of restoring those sanctions to previous levels.</p>
<p>•The JPA promised Iran the right to nuclear enrichment simply for good conduct over a relatively small period of time, ignoring the fact that the Iranian regime is inherently aggressive and dangerous.</p>
<p>•The JPA deal <a href="http://makeadifference.cufi.org/?m=20131203"><span style="color: #0463c1;">did</span></a> nothing to stop Iran from using its new installments of cash and time to advance the weakest parts of its nuclear program &#8212; bomb technology and the ballistic missiles needed to deliver such bombs to Israel, Europe or the U.S.</p>
<p>•The JPA deal was in <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/01/14/Iran-Celebrates-American-Surrender-Obama-Says-Give-Peace-a-Chance"><span style="color: #0463c1;">direct contravention</span></a> of six U.N. resolutions, all of which stated that Iran had no right to nuclear enrichment and required that Iran dismantle its vast nuclear infrastructure.</p>
<p>•The JPA deal actually <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/text-of-iran-implementation-agreement-sent-to-congress"><span style="color: #0463c1;">included</span></a> a provision allowing the Iranians to veto reports of their own violations of the interim agreement.</p>
<p>•The JPA <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/13/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSBREA0C11C20140113"><span style="color: #0463c1;">increased</span></a> the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s access in Iran to monitor the agreement, but not enough.  It still falls short of what the IAEA says it needs, and it is less than the wide-ranging inspection powers the IAEA had in Iraq in the 1990’s.</p>
<p>•The JPA <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/congress-wont-budge-iran-sanctions-nuclear-program.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">did not</span></a> allow the West access to such places like the Parchin military base in Iran, which is believed to be used as a covert nuclear weapons development site.</p>
<p>•Soon after the JPA’s announcement, Iranian President Rouhani – a <a href="http://politichicks.tv/column/guest-writer-sarah-n-stern-geneva-betrayal/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">supposed</span></a> moderate – gloated on <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/irans-rouhani-world-powers-surrendered-iranian-nations-will_774616.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Twitter</span></a> (later <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iranian-president-rouhani-deletes-wests-surrender-boast-twitter-feed-1432434"><span style="color: #0463c1;">removed</span></a>) and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=14757"><span style="color: #0463c1;">video</span></a> about the world powers capitulating to Iran.</p>
<p>Now the question becomes, what will replace the JPA? <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/09/us-iran-nuclear-idUSKBN0EK1LL20140609"><span style="color: #0463c1;">According</span></a> to the press, the negotiations to craft a more permanent agreement between Iran and the P5 + 1 are going nowhere, fast.  Bilateral talks are <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0498oc-worries-grow-of-divide-and-conquer-tactics-as-iran-announces-bilateral-talks-with-u-s-russia-france/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">springing up</span></a> to complicate the negotiations.  Many observers <a href="http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINKBN0EF0BK20140604?irpc=932"><span style="color: #0463c1;">expect</span></a> that the President and his team will simply agree to an extension of the interim agreement for another six months, as is provided for in the JPA.</p>
<p>In other words, these observers believe that the JPA will be replaced by the JPA.  The same bad agreement currently in existence.</p>
<p>The Obama Administration will eagerly sign onto an extension, so as to prevent yet another obvious foreign policy fiasco on their watch.  After all, they currently face <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/11/al-qaeda-rebels-take-tikrit-force-500000-to-flee-mosul/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Iraq</span></a>, where a jihadist group too violent for al-Qaeda is carving out its own state and the U.S. can do nothing about it, because all of the American troops were removed by President Obama.  They face <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/05/20/if-presidential-candidates-records-mattered-this-would-destroy-hillary-clintons-chances/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Libya</span></a>, where the U.S. “led from behind” to oust the dictator Gaddafi, which resulted in the collapse of the Libyan nation, the <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/06/obama-foreign-policy-successes-not-libya.php"><span style="color: #0463c1;">spread</span></a> of U.S. weapons to jihadists groups throughout the Middle East, the seizure of parts of Mali by jihadist groups armed with American weapons that prompted French intervention, and the death of the U.S. Ambassador by elements of al-Qaeda on the anniversary of 9/11.  They face <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/05/14/assad-races-across-obamas-red-line/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Syria</span></a>, where the Administration blustered with its red line against the use of chemical weapons before caving, and the dictator Assad continues to use those weapons against civilians in the bloody civil war.   And there are so many more foreign policy disasters under the current Administration.</p>
<p>Perhaps even more importantly, the Obama Administration will sign onto an extension of the JPA as a way to <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/06/obama-seeks-to-leverage-his-iraq-debacle-into-rapprochement-with-iran.php"><span style="color: #0463c1;">facilitate</span></a> plans to “open direct talks with Iran on how the two longtime foes can counter the insurgents” in Iraq. (More “smart diplomacy” in action.)</p>
<p>The Mullahs in Iran will also probably agree to an extension of the JPA.   As we know, they are giving up almost nothing regarding their nuclear research, and getting huge benefits in time and money in return.  Plus,  the JPA does not seriously infringe, in any way, with the Iranian leaderships’ ability to threaten the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639812/Jihad-end-society-rid-America-Irans-supreme-leader-Ayatollah-Khamenei-chilling-threat-U-S.html?ITO=1490&amp;ns_mchannel=rss&amp;ns_campaign=1490"><span style="color: #0463c1;">U.S.</span></a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097252/Kill-Jews-annihilate-Israel-Irans-supreme-leader-lays-legal-religious-justification-attack.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Jews</span></a>, support <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/225328.htm"><span style="color: #0463c1;">terrorists</span></a> and/or wars of aggression in <a href="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/hezbollah-threatened-iran%E2%80%99s-financial-woes"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Lebanon</span></a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raghida-dergham/syria-a-bargaining-chip-i_b_5456720.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Syria</span></a>, <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4343/iran-egypt"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Egypt</span></a>, <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-31/news/sns-rt-us-yemen-iran-20140330_1_last-month-hadi-abd-rabbu-mansour-hadi-yemen-president"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Yemen</span></a> etc. and/or <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/12-ways-rouhani-is-no-human-rights-moderate/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">oppress</span></a> its own people.</p>
<p>So why would the Iranians not take advantage of President Obama, if they can?  Every other bad actor is doing it.</p>
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		<title>The Taliban Got Back Their Terrorists – Now Castro Wants His</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/the-taliban-got-back-their-terrorists-now-castro-wants-his/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-taliban-got-back-their-terrorists-now-castro-wants-his</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2014 04:25:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Alan Gross/Cuban-Five deal?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/cf.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233504" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/cf.jpg" alt="cf" width="292" height="148" /></a>It didn’t take long. Exactly two days after the announcement of the Berghal/Taliban-Five deal, Cuba’s Terror-Sponsoring (official classification by U.S. State Dept.) regime started clamoring for an Alan Gross/Cuban-Five deal.</p>
<p>Alan Gross is a Jewish American held hostage by the Castro regime since December 2009 when he was arrested while distributing computers and satellite phones to Cuba’s microscopic ( and mostly regime-collaborationist) Jewish community while on assignment for USAID (United States Agency for International Development.) After a “trial,” the Castro regime formally sentenced Gross to fifteen years in prison.</p>
<p>“The Cuban Five” are Cuban terrorist/ spies nabbed in south Florida in 1998 and convicted in U.S. federal courts of 26 counts of espionage along with conspiracy to commit murder&#8211; of three U.S. citizens. Two of the five communist spies have already had their sentences reduced and been returned to heroes’ welcomes in Cuba.</p>
<p>To add grotesque insult to Alan Gross’ injury, the very people he was attempting to help, “testified” against him in Castro’s kangaroo court almost <em>en masse</em>. You have to be very careful when entering a snake pit like Castro’s Cuba.</p>
<p>Alan Gross’ heart seemed in the right place, but the wisdom of his Cuban mission can be debated. The people he was trying to help—the few Jews who remained in Castro’s Cuba after over 90 per cent fled the communist revolution—were mostly old Bolsheviks who couldn’t bring themselves to break with the old time religion. As mentioned, they and their descendants did their duty to the Castro regime by ratting out Alan Gross during judicial procedures perfectly mimicking those presided over by Andrei Vishinsky during The Great Terror’s show trials.</p>
<p>“<em>Et Tu Adela</em>?” might have been gasped by the hapless Alan Gross during his trial. But we don’t know because his “trial” was closed to the (uncomplaining) press –from CNN to ABC from NBC to CBS from NPR to PBS&#8211; who infest Cuba. After all, these “gallant crusades for the truth!” (as Columbia school of Journalism hails it’s graduates) have plenty on their Cuban plates already, what with the vital tasks of transcribing the Stalinist regime’s steady flow of propaganda hand-outs and reporting such bombshell scoops as what Beyonce and Jay-Z wore on their Havana visit.</p>
<p>“Adela” refers to Castroite apparatchik Adela Dworin, who performs as president of Havana’s “Jewish Community House” for gullible tourists and “cultural exchange” ambassadors to the Castro family fiefdom. Later, as a proper cap for the revolting Stalinesque charade, Adela Dworin visited Gross in his cell and posed smilingly with her arm around the gaunt but bitterly smiling American hostage she swindled, framed and helped condemn to fifteen years <a href="http://babalublog.com/2014/05/05/alan-gross-poses-with-the-fine-folks-who-duped-him-spied-on-him-and-helped-convict-him/">in a KGB-designed dungeon. </a></p>
<p>A declassified KGB document from May, 20, 1981 revealed by Vladimir Bukovsky snickers the following: “Cultural exchanges with foreign countries are our most effective propaganda.”</p>
<p>To say nothing of a handy-dandy cash pipeline and hostage buffet. As mentioned, Alan Gross was on assignment for USAID. But the scamming of U.S. agencies has never offered even modest sport for Castro’s people. The only challenge might be&#8230;.remember how on the old Carol Burnett show how Carol, Harvey Korman and Tim Conway always cracked up during skits? After trying to stifle the guffaws?</p>
<p>Well, who could possibly blame Castro and his people for similar facial contortions when sneaking vital data to our crackerjack CIA sleuths. To wit:</p>
<p>“We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara <em>have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.”</em> (Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel Nov. 1958.)</p>
<p>“Fidel Castro is not only <em>not</em> a communist –he’s a strong <em>anti</em>-Communist fighter. He’s ready to help us in the hemisphere’s anti-communist fight and we should share our intelligence with him.” (CIA Cuba “expert” Frank Bender, after conferring with Fidel Castro upon the latter’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">visit to the U.S. in April, 1959.)   </a></p>
<p>In an unguarded moment while speaking to the Simon Weisenthal’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper who was allowed to visit Gross last year, a Castro official spilled the beans on Gross’ arrest. Naturally, the U.S. media (eager to maintain their cushy Havana bureaus) have “overlooked” this fascinating item<em>. “Everyone knows that the Jews have a lot of clout in Washington,”</em> the Castro official told Rabbi Cooper, “somewhat sheepishly”&#8211; so sentencing Gross to 15 years could be the key to win the freedom of their agents jailed <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2014/04/must-read-was-alan-gross-arrested.html">in the U.S., the thinking went.” </a></p>
<p>Point is, Castro got his American hostage in December 2009, and &#8212; convinced he held a good hand &#8212; immediately cranked up the propaganda campaign to swap his convicted terrorists for Alan Gross. This “Free the Cuban Five” campaign features a rogue’s gallery of Castro’s American agents–of-influence, on the payroll and off; from Danny Glover to Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon, from Oliver Stone to and Tom Hayden and Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p>Yes, the “Elder Statesmen” of America’s<em> majority</em> political party lends his name to a communist propaganda campaign to unconditionally free the KGB-trained terrorist guilty of&#8211; from the FBI affidavit:</p>
<p>*Gathering intelligence against the Boca Chica Air Naval Station in Key West, the McDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Homestead, Fla.</p>
<p>* Compiling the names, home addresses and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers, along with those of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica.</p>
<p>* Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.</p>
<p>* Sending letter bombs to Cuban-Americans.</p>
<p>* Spying on McDill Air Force Base, the U.S. armed forces’ worldwide headquarters for fighting “low-intensity” conflicts.</p>
<p>* Locating entry points into Florida for smuggling explosive material.</p>
<p>One of these Castro agents, Gerardo Hernandez, also infiltrated the Cuban-exile group Brothers to the Rescue, who flew unarmed planes to rescue Cuban rafters in the Florida straits, also known as “the cemetery without crosses.” The estimates of the number of Cubans dying horribly in the “cemetery without crosses” run from 50-85,000. Brothers to The Rescue risked their lives almost daily, flying over the straits, alerting and guiding the Coast Guard to any <em>balseros</em>, and saving thousands of these desperate people from joining that terrible tally. (Prior to Castroism, by the way, Cuba was swamped with more immigrants per-capita than the U.S., including during the Ellis Island years.)</p>
<p>By February of 1996, Brothers to The Rescue had flown 1,800 of these humanitarian missions and helped rescue 4,200 men, women and children. That month Danny Glover’s and Jimmy Carter’s <em>cause célèbre’</em> passed to Castro the flight plan for one of the Brothers’ humanitarian flights over the straits.</p>
<p>With this info in hand, Castro’s Top Guns, jumped into their MIGs, took off and valiantly blasted apart (in international air space) the lumbering and utterly defenseless Cessnas. Four members of the humanitarian flights were thus murdered in cold blood by communists. Three of these murdered men were U.S. citizens, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">one a decorated Vietnam veteran.</a></p>
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		<title>Five Jihadis For One Deserter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/five-jihadis-for-one-deserter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=five-jihadis-for-one-deserter</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2014 04:58:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226855</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Bergdahl prisoner exchange defied intelligence reports and endangers Americans.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/USA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-226856" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/USA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped.png" alt="USA_PFC_BoweBergdahl_ACU_Cropped" width="305" height="275" /></a>When he announced the exchange of five Guanatamo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan since 2009, Barack Obama <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140531/NATION/305310043/U-S-soldier-freed-from-captivity-Afghanistan"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a> that the swap was “a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield.” However, as ever more damning information came to light about both the deal and Bergdahl himself, it became increasingly clear that the prisoner exchange was actually a reminder of Barack Obama’s unwavering commitment to appeasing and aiding jihadis.</p>
<p>Many people have questioned the wisdom of this deal that sends five seasoned, committed, and ruthless jihadis back to Afghanistan, where they will undoubtedly resume their jihad against the American troops there. The freed jihadis include, according to the <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140531/NATION/305310043/U-S-soldier-freed-from-captivity-Afghanistan"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Associated Press</span></a>, “Abdul Haq Wasiq, who served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence”; “Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden”; and “Mohammad Fazl, whom Human Rights Watch says could be prosecuted for war crimes for presiding over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.”</p>
<p>Even more disturbing, however, are the questions swirling around Bowe Bergdahl himself. Former infantry officer Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served with Bowe Bergdahl, wrote in the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/02/we-lost-soldiers-in-the-hunt-for-bergdahl-a-guy-who-walked-off-in-the-dead-of-night.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Daily Beast</span></a> on Monday that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.” Refuting reports that Bergdahl got separated from his unit while on patrol, Bethea declared: “Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not ‘lag behind on a patrol,’ as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”</p>
<p>Corroborating this was an <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-concluded-2010-bergdahl-walked-away-185047684--politics.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Associated Press</span></a> report that was also published on Monday, stating that “a Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military decided not to exert extraordinary efforts to rescue him, according to a former senior defense official who was involved in the matter.” This official said that the evidence that Bergdahl had deserted was “incontrovertible.”</p>
<p>Why might Bergdahl have deserted? A clue may lie in the fact that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305184/Bowe-Bergdahl-Taliban-claim-captured-U-S-solider-teaching-fighters-bomb-making-skills.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Taliban claimed in 2010</span></a> that Bergdahl had converted to Islam and was teaching bomb-making to its jihadists. His father, Robert Bergdahl, appears to be a convert to Islam, as during the ceremony with Obama in the Rose Garden announcing the exchange, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/01/obama-submits-to-taliban-demands-allows-praise-for-allah/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">he proclaimed</span></a>: “<i>Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim</i>” – the phrase, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful,” which is the heading of 113 of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters. (Journalist Neil Munro noted <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/01/obama-submits-to-taliban-demands-allows-praise-for-allah/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">in the Daily Caller</span></a> that “although Bergdahl quoted the Quran verse, the White House transcript did not translate it or even include the Islamic prayer. Instead, the transcript simply said Bergdahl spoke in the Pasho language, which is the language of the Pushtun tribe, which forms the vast majority of the Taliban force. In fact, ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim’ is Arabic.” The lavishly-bearded Robert Bergdahl has also called for the release of the jihadists in Guantanamo and has implied that American troops are killing Afghan children in <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Robert-Bergdahl.png"><span style="color: #0433ff;">a tweet he concluded with “ameen,”</span></a> the Arabic form of “amen.”)</p>
<p>What’s more, it was also <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/05/31/the-bizarre-tale-of-americas-last-known-pow/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">revealed Monday</span></a> that in an email to his father just days before he deserted, Bergdahl wrote: “I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.” He thundered: “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”</p>
<p>His father thundered back: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”</p>
<p>Apparently he did, by walking away from his unit and seeking out the Taliban. Nor was his action entirely unexpected. James Rosen reported at <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/02/sources-intelligence-community-investigated-bergdahls-conduct/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">FoxNews.com</span></a> Monday that Bergdahl &#8212; “both in his final stretch of active duty in Afghanistan and then, too, during his time when he lived among the Taliban — has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community and is the subject of ‘a major classified file.’” In conveying as much, the Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy.”</p>
<p>It strains credulity to imagine that Barack Obama was not apprised of the existence of this file and these suspicions about Bergdahl. In any case, high-level officials appear to have been aware of them and embarrassed by them for quite some time, as they have enforced a gag order on the members of Bergdahl’s unit, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/02/Former-Officer-Soldiers-Were-Threatened-if-They-Questioned-Bergdahl-Story"><span style="color: #0433ff;">threatening legal action</span></a> against them if they revealed what happened on the night Bergdahl disappeared.</p>
<p>Why the cover-up? Were Obama Administration officials afraid that the story of a Muslim soldier (if the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305184/Bowe-Bergdahl-Taliban-claim-captured-U-S-solider-teaching-fighters-bomb-making-skills.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Taliban claim</span></a> is true) deserting his post and joining up with the enemy would have negative repercussions for Obama’s disastrous fantasy-based policies in Afghanistan and elsewhere? Did they think that such news would provide a fresh basis to challenge the “diversity” in the military that military brass value more than life itself – as Army chief of staff George Casey demonstrated <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/11/us-army-general-lack-of-diversity-in-army-is-worse-than-mass-murder"><span style="color: #0433ff;">when he said</span></a> right after the Fort Hood jihad massacre that “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse”?</p>
<p>Whatever his reasoning may be, Obama has now traded five battle-hardened jihad warriors for someone he was in a position to know was a deserter and possibly a traitor, who had said that he was ashamed to be an American. If the mainstream media and the Democratic Party covers for the President in this, the latest in his long string of insults to the American people, it will be an outrage. But there is no doubt that they will do so. And quickly this incident will be forgotten, like all of Obama’s earlier insults. But if there are any free people left in America, they will not let this incident be forgotten – and will use it as the linchpin to begin the massive change we so desperately need in the political and media culture.</p>
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		<title>Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/our-bad-habit-of-negotiating-with-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=our-bad-habit-of-negotiating-with-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:52:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226712</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Destructive tactics of a destructive foreign policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hy.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226787" alt="hy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/hy-450x229.jpg" width="288" height="146" /></a>Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. But every parent is not the president of the United States, whose primary responsibility is to protect the security and interests of all Americans, both now and in the long-term. The release of 5 “high-risk”––a phrase meaning they’re eager to kill Americans–– Taliban jihadists held in Guantanamo Bay is nothing more than ransom paid to kidnappers, and an invitation to the enemy to take more Americans captive and to hold them as bargaining chips for more concessions. And the release of hardened, high-ranking Taliban terrorists means there will be more dead Americans after theses soldiers of Allah return to the battlefield.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We shouldn’t give credence, however, to the criticism that Obama’s action uniquely violates the principle that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Obama’s administration has already been negotiating with the Taliban in order to craft some chimeric “peace agreement” with the Afghan government after we leave. And talking with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, is de facto “negotiating with terrorists.” But before Obama we have negotiated with terrorists on numerous occasions, and each time we have confirmed the moral hazard that attends trying to talk with fanatic ideologues that, like Auric Goldfinger, don’t expect us to talk, but to die.</span></p>
<p>How else did we secure the release of the 52 Americans held for 444 days by the Iranians starting in 1979, other than by negotiating ransom with hostage-takers? The hostages came home after Jimmy Carter issued a series of Executive Orders that released billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets in American banks, and that indemnified the Iranians from any lawsuits suing the regime for the destruction of American property and the abuse of the diplomats. So much for Carter’s bluster that “we will not yield to blackmail.” During the negotiations the Iranians serially humiliated the Americans. For example, Carter aide Hamilton Jordan donned a fake moustache and wig to meet with the Iranian negotiator in Paris. After weeks of negotiations, with a deal seemingly close, Ayatollah Khomeini killed it with a public speech in which he called the embassy kidnappings “a crushing blow to the world-devouring USA” and left the decision to the new Iranian parliament, which was months from being seated. Negotiations continued with a series of concessions offered by Carter, all of which were contemptuously slapped down by the Iranians. As a result, the prestige of Iran as the foremost jihadist foe of the infidel West expanded across the globe, providing inspiration and material support to other jihadist groups convinced by America’s weakness that we were a civilization with “foundations of straw,” as bin Laden put it, and ripe for destruction.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then there’s the sorry spectacle of the 1985-86 Iran-Contra affair that unfolded during Reagan’s second term. This was a Rube-Goldberg plot to secure the release of 7American hostages taken by Iranian terrorist proxies, and to improve relations with the Iranian regime by providing them with 2200 TOW anti-tank missiles and over 100 HAWK anti-aircraft missiles in violation of an arms embargo, with the profits going to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. These were the same Iranians, by the way, that only a few years earlier had trained and funded the jihadists who had murdered 241 American military personnel in the Beirut Marine-barracks bombing, and that were funding numerous other jihadist groups like Hezbollah. The naïve belief in improved relations with these murderers and so-called “moderates” has no better symbol than a cake in the shape of a key––apparently the “key” to better American-Iranian relations–– that the American emissary brought to Iran along with a Bible signed by Reagan, both items bespeaking a criminal ignorance about the nature of the Iranian theocrats with whom they were dealing. In the end, only 3 hostages were released, only to be immediately replaced by three other kidnapped Americans.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Once again, the willingness to provide advanced weaponry to a regime that publicly and frequently expressed its desire to destroy us only confirmed the mullahs in their belief that we are weak and can be manipulated. Indeed, the intervening years suggest their insight has been correct, as they have murdered with impunity Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, trained and funded numerous terrorist outfits, and continue to pursue nuclear weaponry even as they engage in specious negotiations spiced with contemptuous public statements.</span></p>
<p>Worse than even these examples are the decades we have spent negotiating with the Palestinian terrorist gang known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was rebooted as the Palestinian Authority after the 1993 Oslo Agreements. A whole atlas could be filled with the cities hosting these futile negotiations, many of which delivered nothing but concessions to terrorist murderers. Camp David, Madrid, Wye River, Sharm el-Sheikh, Taba, Annapolis––all have been the sites of negotiations with terrorists for whom violence against Israeli civilians is a negotiating tactic used to complement the tactic of attending “summits” and “conferences” at which the Palestinian leadership has no intentions of negotiating in good faith, instead extracting concessions from gullible Westerners. PLO honcho Yasser Arafat, a die-hard terrorist whose creed was “jihad, jihad, jihad,” was feted and hosted at capitals around the globe and treated as a legitimate chief of state instead of as the head of a murderous, kleptocratic gang that he was. During the Clinton years he visited the White House more often than any other world leader, only in the end to betray Clinton at Camp David by refusing the offered “national homeland” he supposedly wanted, and then launching the Second Intifada that killed 1000 Israelis.</p>
<p>And it isn’t just talk we have shared with the Palestinian terrorists. As the <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf">Congressional Research Office</a> documents, since the Oslo Accords the U.S. has transferred $5 billion to the Palestinians, with much of the money that escaped the Swiss bank accounts of the PA “leadership” going to fund terrorist outfits. This is in addition to funds channeled through the United Nations Relief Works Agency, the only U.N. entity committed to one refugee group and self-identified as an advocate for Palestinians. The U.S. has provided a quarter of the agency’s funds, which since 1950 has totaled nearly $5 billion. Then there’s the money given since Oslo to train, arm, and support the PA security forces, presumably to fight against terrorists. In fact, these “security forces” have participated in or facilitated terrorist attacks. As Caroline Glick writes in her indispensible <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Solution-One-State-Peace-Middle-ebook/dp/B00F1W0DK4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1401636671&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+israeli+solution+a+one-state+plan+for+peace+in+the+middle+east"><i>The Israeli Solution</i></a>, “The more aid the Palestinian authority receives from the international community, the more terror attacks the Palestinians carry out against Israel.” We’re not just negotiating with terrorists; we’re funding them as well.</p>
<p>There are many reasons for this compulsion to try to talk or bribe out of their hatred enemies who have no intention of peaceful coexistence. Politics, of course, is ever a factor in such bad decisions. For Obama, ransoming Bergdahl deflected attention from the VA scandal with a photogenic feel-good story. Pursuing futile negotiations with the Iranians creates the illusion of action when the administration has no intention of doing anything concrete to keep a malignant theocracy from acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>More broadly, the modern West clings to the hoary notion that negotiation and diplomacy are the best means of resolving conflicts and creating peace. Obama recycled this received wisdom in his recent West Point address. In addressing global disorder, Obama said, “we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action. We have to broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development, sanctions and isolation, appeals to international law, and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action.” But as his disastrous foreign policy record demonstrates, negotiation works only with those who sincerely share our goal to end violence, coexist peacefully, and create peace. The jihadist gangs from the Taliban to Iran, and our geopolitical rivals like Russia and China, have other plans. With those actors, negotiation works only when backed by a credible threat of force, something Obama has serially squandered with his “red lines” bluster and bluff. Yet ever the foreign policy naïf, Obama claimed in his statement about Bergdahl’s release, “While we are mindful of the challenges, it is our hope Sergeant Bergdahl’s recovery could potentially open the door for broader discussions among Afghans about the future of their country by building confidence that it is possible for all sides to find common ground.” If sincere, this statement represents a massive failure of imagination, ever the hallmark foreign policy failure. The Taliban have one aim: to impose once more their hegemony over Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Exchanging Bergdahl for 5 seasoned jihadists is a shortsighted, dangerous deal, but it isn’t unprecedented. It’s a recurring bad foreign policy habit driven by politics and idealism.</p>
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		<title>Believing Obama on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/believing-obama-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=believing-obama-on-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2014 04:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225456</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Israeli anxieties are mounting.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Obama_Iran.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225457" alt="Obama_Iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Obama_Iran-450x305.jpg" width="315" height="214" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-world-Believing-Obama-on-Iran-352173">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Brig. Gen. (ret.) Uzi Eilam is an octogenarian who served as the director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission from 1976 until 1985.</p>
<p>Last Friday Eilam gave a head-scratching interview to Yediot Aharonot’s Ronen Bergman in which he claimed that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a decade from completion. He said it is far from clear that the Iranians even want a nuclear arsenal. He accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of cynically exaggerating the threat from Iran in order to strengthen himself politically.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Eilam’s interview was his absolute certainty in his judgment.</p>
<p>Eilam, who hasn’t had any inside knowledge of nuclear issues since 1985, would have us believe that he knows better than active duty Israeli intelligence chiefs and US intelligence directors about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He even thinks he knows better than the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.</p>
<p>Israel assesses that Iran already has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to produce five atomic bombs. As Netanyahu has said, the interim nuclear deal the US and its allies signed with Iran last November only delays Iran’s bomb making capacity by six weeks.</p>
<p>In January, James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, agreed with Israel’s assessment. In testimony before the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence Clapper said that Iran is already a nuclear breakout state. In his words, “Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas – including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors and ballistic missiles – from which it could draw if it decided to build missile- deliverable nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>Clapper argued that this doesn’t matter because the US’s monitoring capabilities are so trustworthy and advanced that Iran wouldn’t be able to put nuclear weapons together without the US noticing.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there is no reason to believe Clapper is right. Indeed, Netanyahu said as much to US National Security Advisor Susan Rice when she repeated Clapper’s claim during her visit to Israel last week.</p>
<p>And the UN agrees with Netanyahu.</p>
<p>In two reports released in recent days, UN officials have stated that Iran has developed an advanced capacity to hide its importation of components of its nuclear program. According to a Reuters report, this includes hiding titanium tubs in steel pipes and using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain valves and other items for its heavy-water nuclear reactor.</p>
<p>According to an AP report, the IAEA is also concerned because Iran is not cooperating with the watchdog group in revealing information about possible military applications of its nuclear program, or allowing the IAEA unfettered access to all nuclear sites.</p>
<p>Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites.</p>
<p>And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community.</p>
<p>What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.</p>
<p>On Sunday Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited a Revolutionary Guards Corps base. There he was shown what the IRGC claims is a reverse-engineered clone of an advanced US espionage drone that Iran captured in 2011. According to Fox News, after the RAQ-170 Sentinel drone landed in Iran in 2011, the Pentagon presented US President Barack Obama with three different plans to destroy or retrieve the drone.</p>
<p>Obama rejected all of them because “he didn’t want to do anything that could be perceived as an act of war.”</p>
<p>During the same visit, to the IRGC base on Sunday, Khamenei told the commanders to begin mass producing ballistic missiles to use against the US.</p>
<p>In his words, the Americans “expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation.</p>
<p>The Revolutionary Guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass produce. This is a main duty of all military officials.”</p>
<p>In other words, on Sunday, a declared enemy of the US, that the director of national intelligence acknowledges already has the independent capability to produce nuclear weapons, humiliated and threatened the US.</p>
<p>At a minimum Iran’s capture of the US drone indicates that the US capacity to monitor Iran’s nuclear capabilities is vulnerable and imperfect.</p>
<p>As for the ballistic missiles, they should be of utmost concern to the Europeans and the Americans. Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>It can use artillery, not to mention a human being playing the role of Enola Gay.</p>
<p>But rather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press against Israel.</p>
<p>In back-to-back articles in Newsweek, unnamed US former intelligence officials and congressional staffers presented an utterly false and deeply malicious portrait of alleged Israeli spying on the US. The reports were presumptively targeting Israel’s attempts to end State Department discrimination against Israeli tourists in the US and allow Israel to join the US visa waiver program.</p>
<p>But it is hard to ignore the timing of the unbridled, untrue and hysterical allegations of “rampant” Israeli spying.</p>
<p>The stories were released in the lead-up to this week’s newest round of nuclear talks between the US, the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, and Iran. Those talks were billed as a diplomatic means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, after Rice’s meeting with Netanyahu last week the White House released a statement claiming that “the US delegation reaffirmed our commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”</p>
<p>But the terms of the deal that is being negotiated with Iran advance the opposite of its stated goal. The deal on the table will enable Iran to develop nuclear weapons, virtually unopposed, and allow Iran to develop delivery systems for its nuclear arsenal entirely unopposed.</p>
<p>Israeli officials have been outspoken in their opposition to the agreement and the terms the US and its partners are offering Iran. Over and over, Netanyahu and his colleagues warn that the terms will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The White House knows what it is doing, and it wants to continue on course. Consequently, for the administration to sell a deal that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it needs to discredit Israel among sufficient swaths of the general public to enable Obama to move forward with Iran against Israel.</p>
<p>In this context, the administration’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Iran’s brazen threats and acts of contempt while sending out anonymous sources to castigate Israel as a US enemy whose actions are hostile and antithetical to the US makes sense.</p>
<p>The malevolent slander of Israel’s actions and intentions is of course only the opening act in this new administration campaign to discredit Israel ahead of a nuclear deal with Iran. Speaking to The Washington Free Beacon, former Bush administration deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams said he believes the administration will frame the issue “saying that it’s this deal or war.”</p>
<p>He’s doubtlessly correct. After all that what the administration did in November when it signed the interim deal and when it forced the Senate to mothball its sanctions bill against Iran.</p>
<p>The truth is that the choice isn’t between war and an agreement. It is between doing something to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, or doing nothing to prevent that from happening. The administration has opted to do nothing. Unfortunately for the world, the price for doing nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is exponentially higher – in the cost of lives that would otherwise be saved – than the price of doing something.</p>
<p>But hey, at least an 80-year-old who led Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission nearly 40 years ago is willing to take Obama at his word.</p>
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		<title>John Kerry&#8217;s Blackmail, Incitement &amp; Insults</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/john-kerrys-blackmail-incitement-insults/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-kerrys-blackmail-incitement-insults</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2014 04:35:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The secretary of state's history of undermining Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/John_Kerry__Ukrain_2843912b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224346" alt="U.S. Secretary of State Kerry speaks about the Ukraine crisis after his meetings with other foreign ministers in Paris" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/John_Kerry__Ukrain_2843912b-450x281.jpg" width="315" height="197" /></a>Yesterday, on Holocaust Memorial Day, John Kerry hit a new low in his despicable conduct towards the Jewish people.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In February, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/john-kerrys-blackmail/">John Kerry tried blackmailing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and bullying, claiming, “[F]or Israel there is an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it, there is talk of boycott and other kinds of things. Are we all going to be better with all of that?”  Kerry predicted a “high risk” of increased boycotts and a higher likelihood of international isolation for Israel if peace talks broke down.  This blackmail failed (much like everything else Kerry touches), and thankfully, Israel’s economy continues to thrive and succeed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In November 2013, Kerry encouraged Arab violence against Israel when he asked, “I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?”  In November 2013, the man said that Israel’s “isolation” would be its own fault if a peace deal with the Palestinians falls through. Kerry further warned the Israelis that “the alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos.” Basically, Kerry is saying either give in or accept attacks.  Little does the man know that the key to Jewish survival is the ability to fight and survive.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now, 70 years after the end of the Holocaust, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, John Kerry, who has failed miserably on all aspects of foreign policy, has reached a new low.  The President of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), signed a unity government agreement with Hamas.  Hamas is an organization that is anti-America and anti-Israel – that is illegal in the United States, Canada, the European Union and many other nations. Hamas considers America an enemy, and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (and the new partner of Abu Mazen) condemned America’s killing of Osama bin Laden, noting that “Osama bin Laden was a Muslim freedom fighter.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Against that backdrop, John Kerry shamefully claimed that Israel is bound to become an &#8220;apartheid state&#8221; if it ceased conceding to the Palestinian Authority&#8217;s demands.  Kerry’s despicable comments came on Holocaust Remembrance Day.  As Jews around the world remember how 6 million Jews were slaughtered, the American Secretary of State blood-libeled Israel as an apartheid State.  Israel – which was established after the world turned a blind eye to Jewish suffering – is a light unto the nations. As Israel faces enemies who seek to destroy the only Jewish State, the American Secretary of State is obsessed with a “peace” which will harm the nation, and cause even more Jewish blood to be shed.  It is despicable.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israel is not a “vassal state” or “banana republic” as Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin reminded America many years ago.  As Begin said, “Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with &#8216;punishments.&#8217; He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments.” As Menachem Begin noted, “The people of Israel has lived 3,700 years without a memorandum of understanding with America – and it will continue to live for another 3,700.” As Dani Dayan, an Israeli leader noted yesterday, “Peace will not be made at gunpoint, nor will it be made through American pressure on Israel to capitulate.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Hollywood movie &#8220;Defiance,&#8221; about Jewish partisans during the Holocaust, has a great scene where a Jew prays, “Please, choose another people! We’ve run out of blood, so please choose another people.”  John Kerry would do just fine to finally leave the Jews alone. America and Israel share common Christian-Judeo values – even if Messrs. Kerry and Obama do not.</span></p>
<p>Israel is not the problem in the Middle East. As the <a href="http://www.ronntorossian.com/">CEO of 5WPR</a>, it is readily apparent that Israel is unfairly blamed and maligned. John Kerry is delusional and offensive.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">P.S.: If he is concerned with civil rights, he can examine how Christians are being treated in the Arab world or women and homosexuals in Gaza.</span></p>
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		<title>Diplomatic Breakthrough on Ukraine or More Russian Lies?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/diplomatic-breakthrough-on-ukraine-or-more-russian-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=diplomatic-breakthrough-on-ukraine-or-more-russian-lies</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2014 04:54:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why odds for a successful deal are not likely. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Russia_Putin_07a53_image_982w.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223659" alt="Russia_Putin_07a53_image_982w" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Russia_Putin_07a53_image_982w-450x323.jpg" width="270" height="194" /></a>Russian President Vladimir Putin shamelessly told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a recent phone call that he expected “clear condemnation” of what he characterized as the “anti-constitutional” operation by the Ukrainian central government in Kiev against the armed thugs whom have illegally occupied government buildings in eastern Ukraine.</span></p>
<p>Putin did not get his wish. Instead, a report issued by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 15th, which was based on first hand reporting by human rights monitors on the ground in Ukraine including Crimea, exposed the baselessness of the Russian propaganda.</p>
<p>The report analyzed events up to April 2<sup>nd</sup>, using information collected during two missions to Ukraine in March by Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović and a team of UN human rights monitors on the ground since March 15<sup>th</sup>.  It found that “while there were some attacks against the ethnic Russian community, these were neither systematic nor widespread. There are also allegations that some participants in the protests and clashes in eastern Ukraine were not from the region, and that some had come from the Russian Federation.”</p>
<p>Speaking to the Security Council on April 16<sup>th</sup> about the report, Mr.  Šimonović said the transformation of protesters in eastern Ukraine into “quasi-paramilitary forces must be stopped.” The international community recognizes Russia’s complaints about alleged attacks against Russian-speaking citizens, and its vows to protect them, for what they really are - the pretext for direct Russian military intervention further into Ukraine, following on the heels of Russia’s illegal military occupation and annexation of Crimea.</p>
<p>Undeterred, Putin warned of potential military intervention if the Ukrainian government persisted in using force against the protesters in eastern Ukraine. Recalling the authorization he received from his pliant Parliament to use military force in Ukraine as he deemed necessary, Putin warned:  “I really hope that I do not have to exercise this right and that we are able to solve all today&#8217;s pressing issues via political and diplomatic means.”</p>
<p>As if on cue, senior diplomats from the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union meeting in Geneva on Thursday worked out a framework to defuse the crisis, according to Secretary of State John Kerry. The separatists in eastern Ukraine would disarm and vacate the buildings and public areas they have occupied. In return, the Ukrainian government would offer amnesty to virtually all of the separatists who disarmed. The government also &#8220;committed to going as far as they can to reach out to opponents&#8221; as part of a &#8220;comprehensive, inclusive process,&#8221; in advance of the upcoming presidential election on May 25<sup>th</sup>, according to Kerry. In a bow to Russia’s demands for turning Ukraine into a more decentralized federation, the Ukrainian government reportedly agreed to consider constitutional amendments giving eastern Ukraine more regional autonomy than it has today. Crimea reportedly did not come up as part of the discussions. Nor apparently did the continuing presence of thousands of Russian troops remaining close to the Russian-Ukrainian border.</p>
<p>&#8220;We worked hard and we worked in good faith in order to narrow our real differences… and find a way forward for the people of Ukraine,&#8221; Kerry said. &#8220;The parties agreed today that all sides must refrain from the use of violence, intimidation, or provocative actions.&#8221; At the same time he warned that &#8220;we will have no choice to impose further costs on Russia&#8221; if the separatists do not respond favorably by the weekend. How many times have we heard similar threats that have failed to deter Putin and his thugs from doing what they wanted?</p>
<p>A fair diplomatic solution that avoids the specter of civil war and further Russian military intervention would be the most desirable outcome, if it respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. However, we must recognize the sad truth that American weakness under President Obama has created power vacuums, emboldening bad actors such as Putin and making the world a more chaotic place. Obama created the vacuum for Russia to fill in the first place when, in 2009, he inexplicably reversed President George W. Bush&#8217;s decision to locate ballistic missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic without getting anything in return. The “reset” with Russia would follow, leading Putin to size up Obama as an all talk, no action adversary. Obama’s abandonment of red lines and vacuous warnings of serious consequences in response to prior Russian provocations and aggression only served to confirm Putin’s initial impression. In short, the inexperienced community organizer has had little chance against the former KGB officer from the first time they dealt with each other.</p>
<p>In Ukraine, Putin has used the threat of force and the creation of favorable conditions for pro-Russian separatists on the ground as leverage to extract significant concessions. His strategy is a variant of the maxim by Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general and influential military theorist: “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.”</p>
<p>The concessions involve the Ukrainian government acceding to constitutional reforms on Russian terms. Yulia Tymoshenko, twice prime minister of Ukraine and a former political prisoner who is a candidate for president in the May 25<sup>th</sup> election, described Putin’s preferred endgame in stark terms:</p>
<blockquote><p>Putin’s gambit is akin to the infamous Yalta Conference in 1945, where Joseph Stalin made Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt complicit in a division of Europe that enslaved half of the continent for almost a half-century. Today, Putin is seeking to make the West complicit in the dismemberment of Ukraine by negotiating a Kremlin-designed federal constitution that would create a dozen Crimeas — bite-size chunks that Russia could devour more easily later.</p></blockquote>
<p>Referring to Putin’s past proposal for a diplomatic solution, which remains his minimum ask price to resolve the crisis, Tymoshenko suggested looking at “the Russian proposal’s fine print: Ukraine’s new federal units would have a powerful say over ‘Ukraine’s foreign-policy direction.’ That provision would enable Putin to try to coerce and manipulate Russian-speaking regions into vetoing the country’s European future.”</p>
<p>Hopefully, when all is said and done, a diplomatic solution that preserves Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity will take hold. But just in case diplomacy does not succeed, is it too much to hope that President Obama has a Plan B, such as imposing major sector-wide sanctions that could cripple Russia’s economy and plans to install missile defense systems in Poland, the Czech Republic and even the Baltic states to give Putin something to really worry about? Perhaps when pigs fly.</p>
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		<title>Can We Stop Iran from Going Nuclear?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/adam-turner/can-we-stop-iran-from-going-nuclear/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-we-stop-iran-from-going-nuclear</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2014 04:10:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Adam Turner]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Endowment for Middle East Truth]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220917</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Endowment for Middle East Truth's warning for America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gh.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220929" alt="gh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gh-450x265.gif" width="360" height="212" /></a>The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) has just launched a major internet Ad campaign, in order to refocus world attention on the threat posed by a nuclear Iran. Ever since the Iran Nuclear Interim Deal was announced in November of 2013, EMET has strongly opposed it. The deal gives Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for almost nothing of any real significance, leaving Iran’s nuclear infrastructure almost totally intact. Iran keeps every one of its 19,000 centrifuges spinning and is able to continue to construct more. While caps will be placed on Iran’s ability to enrich, the deal will do nothing to prevent it from expanding its stockpile of uranium, which means that Iran will emerge from the Iran Nuclear Interim Deal closer to its goal of a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>In return, the U.S. and its allies give the Iranian terror supporting regime immediate economic relief from the economic sanctions that have left it so weakened as to be close to collapse.  The treaty widens permissible trade in oil, gold and auto parts, giving the Iranian regime an economic windfall of over $20 billion.  It also releases frozen Iranian assets to the tune of about $8 billion. Worst of all, while any Iranian concessions are easily reversible, Western concessions are likely irreversible, meaning the existing sanctions regime will have been gutted with no realistic prospect of restoring those sanctions to previous levels.</p>
<p>Until now, the American media has largely focused on how the Iran Nuclear Interim Deal will impact Israel.  However, by framing the conversation on Israel, which the Iranian regime regards as only “the Minor Satan,” the U.S. media has largely avoided discussing the very real threat that Iran still poses to the United States, which they have long referred to as the “the Great Satan.”</p>
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		<title>The Iranian Threat &amp; Obama&#8217;s Deception</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obamas-deception-on-the-iranian-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-deception-on-the-iranian-threat</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Jan 2014 05:58:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217574</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Correcting the president's mistruths. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/rouhani_1024x748.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217575" alt="rouhani_1024x748" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/rouhani_1024x748-433x350.jpg" width="303" height="245" /></a>President Obama misled the American people in his January 28</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">th</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> State of the Union address regarding what Iran is required to do under the six-month interim nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) plus Germany. Obama made the following patently false claim about the implementation of the interim agreement: &#8220;As we gather here tonight, Iran has begun to eliminate its stockpile of higher levels of enriched uranium.”</span></p>
<p>Iran has not eliminated anything. It has merely begun to temporarily convert part of its enriched uranium stockpile from a 20 percent enrichment level to a 5 percent enrichment level or below, and to covert the remainder of its 20 percent enriched uranium to oxide. These actions can be reversed by Iran at any time.</p>
<p>&#8220;We can return again to 20 percent [uranium] enrichment in less than one day and we can convert the [nuclear] material again,&#8221; Iran&#8217;s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Iranian television earlier this month. We are still waiting for an Obama administration nuclear expert to credibly refute this claim.</p>
<p>Iran is able to return its nuclear material back to the 20 percent enrichment level in part because the Obama administration and its fellow P5+1 negotiators caved in to Iran’s demand that it be permitted to hold on to its 5 percent enriched stockpile. Iran was not required to either render its lower enriched uranium completely unusable or to ship it out of the country as Syria is doing with its chemical weapons material.</p>
<p>Now Obama has asked for more time to try and negotiate a final comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. Give diplomacy a chance to succeed, he said, while warning Congress that he would veto any new sanctions bill that “threatens to derail” his diplomatic outreach to the Iranian regime, including presumably the bipartisan sanctions legislation under consideration in both chambers.</p>
<p>President Obama also set out to deceive the American people in trying to bolster his case for more time-wasting negotiations. He falsely claimed that diplomacy, backed by pressure, has “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program—and rolled parts of that program back—for the very first time in a decade.” The truth is that aside from the reversible conversion of its highly enriched uranium and a few other minor concessions, Iran is still able to plow full steam ahead with its nuclear arms program on multiple fronts.</p>
<p>Iran is not required to dismantle a single one of its more than 19,000 installed centrifuges. All it is required to do is to disconnect the centrifuge links (the tandem cascades) used to enable 20 percent enrichment. According to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran can re-connect the centrifuge links to enable resumption of 20 percent enrichment “in one day’s time.” Furthermore, he warned that Iran has the technical capability to put the requisite number of linked centrifuges into operation, after which “it would take about two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”</p>
<p>If that were not bad enough, the interim agreement permits Iran to continue its research and development of even more technologically advanced centrifuges, which would be far faster than previous models.</p>
<p>Iran has another route to production of a nuclear bomb – its heavy water production plant in Arak, which is designed to supply a heavy water reactor under construction nearby that could be used to produce plutonium for a nuclear bomb. Iran has agreed to suspend further construction at the site and not to produce or transfer fuel or heavy water to activate the reactor. However, there does not appear to be anything in the interim agreement that would require Iran to stop the building of components for future installation in its heavy water facilities in Arak, much less dismantle what is already there.</p>
<p>The interim agreement also leaves completely untouched Iran’s Parchin military research facility where clandestine nuclear weapon-related activities may have gone on in the past, involving development and testing of a nuclear explosives device. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is being allowed to broaden its inspections of certain facilities agreed to by Iran such as its Fordow and Natanz uranium enrichment facilities and the Arak facilities, is still barred from gaining access to the Parchin military research facility.</p>
<p>In other words, Iran is free to complete the development of the technology necessary for successfully triggering a nuclear device, while also free to move ahead with the construction of all the components necessary for heavy water plant facilities useful for producing plutonium for a nuclear bomb. Iran is also free to continue its long-range ballistic missile testing to enable it to develop the full technological capacity to build a nuclear weapons delivery system that could threaten the United States and its allies. President Obama’s statement to the American people that his administration’s diplomacy has “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program—and rolled parts of that program back” is deceptive.</p>
<p>President Obama did admit in his speech the obvious point that negotiations with Iran to complete a final comprehensive agreement &#8220;may not succeed.” However, he failed to level with the American people as to why the negotiations will be so difficult. Instead, he insisted that &#8220;we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed.&#8221; Aside from more than a decade of getting nowhere with negotiations while giving Iran more time to reach its goal of achieving a nuclear arms capability, there are likely insurmountable obstacles to reaching a final agreement unless the Obama administration decides to cave and revert to a nuclear containment policy.</p>
<p><a href="http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Elements_of_a_Comprehensive_Solution_20Jan2014_1.pdf">The Institute of Science and International Security</a> set forth its recommendations for the minimum conditions it deems necessary to achieve a workable final agreement with suitable verification, in order to have confidence that Iran’s atomic program will be beyond use for weaponization. This would include the dismantling of thousands of centrifuges. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made it abundantly clear that Iran will “not under any circumstances” agree to dismantle any of its centrifuges. Why isn’t President Obama just as clear in publicly declaring what the United States will require in order to ease any more existing sanctions and desist from imposing even more onerous sanctions?</p>
<p>Although Obama indicated that, if the negotiations fail, “he will be the first to call for more sanctions, and stand ready to exercise all options to make sure Iran does not build a nuclear weapon,&#8221; we have heard such “red lines” in the past that soon faded away.</p>
<p>The president missed an opportunity to explain truthfully to the American people what is at stake for the United States’ own national security interests if Iran is allowed to succeed in obtaining a nuclear bomb. Instead, he chose to lull the American people into a false sense of security.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Iran vs. Israel at Davos</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ryan-mauro/iran-vs-israel-at-davos/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-vs-israel-at-davos</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Jan 2014 05:46:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[centrifuge]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217182</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Islamic Republic announces its terror economy is open for business -- will the West succumb? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/net-i1.jpgw6201.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217192" alt="net-i.jpg?w=620" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/net-i1.jpgw6201-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>It was all about Iran at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Iranian regime sought to entice the West into accepting its nuclear program with promises of profit, while Israel showcased itself as the “innovation nation” that can lead the region to peace.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There are </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/seismic-strategic-shifts-due-easing-sanctions-against-iran-0">seismic strategic shifts</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> already happening in the Middle East, in large part due to the nuclear deal with Iran and the business opportunities it presents to Europe, Turkey and Russia. The Europeans are undoubtedly tempted by the prospect of Iranian natural gas deliveries via Turkey, and Russia </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-iran-russia-oil-idUSBREA090DK20140110">hopes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to import more Iranian oil, increasing the regime’s exports by a whopping 50%.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A microcosm of this shift was on display at Davos when President Rouhani addressed major energy executives, dangling the prospect of lucrative business in Iran if sanctions are lifted. He also </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/23/us-davos-iran-rouhani-idUSBREA0M0KC20140123">lobbied</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> U.S., European and Arab companies for investments in energy, infrastructure, mining, automobile industries and other sectors.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“I view Iran’s economy as the most congruent, capable and closest to that of successful emerging economies,” Rouhani </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/davos-iran-ready-engage-world-rouhani">said.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He also deployed the usual </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">taqiyya</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, the Shiite doctrine of deception, in regards to nuclear weapons.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“We never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons,” he </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/23/us-davos-iran-rouhani-idUSBREA0M0KC20140123">said.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">However, the Iranian regime still will not give international inspectors access to the Parchin military base where it is believed nuclear-related explosives experiments were carried out. The regime started cleansing the site after these tests were exposed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2011, the International Atomic Energy Agency </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ryan-mauro/case-closed-iran-trying-to-make-nuclear-missile/%20">released an incriminating report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> showing that Iran developed technologies only suitable for a nuclear missile. This included work on a nuclear warhead for its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, nuclear triggers and even preparations for an underground nuclear test.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“I strongly and clearly declare that nuclear weapons have no place in our security strategy and that Iran has no motivation to move in that direction,” he </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rouhani-says-iran-has-serious-will-to-make-a-deal-on-nuclear-program/2014/01/23/eb4ae534-843c-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html">said.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is the important caveat. Rouhani is speaking in the present tense. If Iran adjusts its “security strategy” in the future, then this pledge is no longer valid. The Iranians will simply claim that they “never sought” nukes and had “no motivation” to build them, but were forced to do so.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The prospects of a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran dimmed with comments made by top Iranian officials at the event.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In an </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://youtu.be/nUGDdprEgRk">interview</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> with CNN, Rouhani said Iran will “not under any circumstances” destroy any of its centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium. Even more broadly, he vowed, “We will not accept any limitations” on nuclear technology.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Iranian Foreign Minister likewise </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/iran-nuclear-agreement-dismantling-102507.html">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in Davos that his country “did not agree to dismantle anything.” He accused the Obama Administration of falsely characterizing the deal.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304027204579332964034504576">illustrated</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the weakness of the current deal by boasting, “We can return again to 20% enrichment in less than one day, and we can convert the material again.” Therefore, “the structure of our nuclear program is preserved.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">All of these statements show how difficult it will be to reach a final nuclear deal with Iran in six months. The Iranian regime wants to make powerful companies salivate at the thought of investing in Iran in order to pressure the West into accepting an otherwise unacceptable nuclear deal.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A new </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304027204579332964034504576">study</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the Institute for Science and International Security concluded that a viable deal must cause Iran to stay six months to one year away from creating a nuclear weapon.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This means dismantling 15,000 centrifuges, leaving only 4,000 left. That’s 15,000 more than Rouhani is willing to accept. It also requires that Iran close its underground enrichment facility at Qom, accept invasive inspections and convert its Arak heavy water reactor into a light water reactor.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/01/23/mixed-emotions-as-iran-looks-to-promote-investment/%20">told</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the World Economic Forum that Rouhani’s speeches are a “change of words with unchanging deeds.” He pointed out that this is why Arab governments that fear Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have come to see Israel as a “partner.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Netanyahu described his country as the “Innovation Nation” and promoted it as a base for technology companies. He boasted that few Western countries weathered the economic storm better than Israel has. The country’s economy </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=14909">grew</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 3.3% last year and 3.4% the previous year. Foreign direct investment exceeded 2012’s total when 2013 still had a full quarter left.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He also argued that Israel’s economic success should be a model for the region and that investors in his country actually contribute to the well-being of Arabs, including Palestinians.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israeli investment and business with Palestinians is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704107104574571491401847518?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052748704107104574571491401847518.html">helping</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the West Bank grow economically. For example, Israeli training of Palestinian farmers has assisted its agricultural sector. Israeli security measures, condemned by Palestinians and Arabs, have created the safe environment for Palestinian businesses to be birthed. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">SodaStream, an Israeli company located in a settlement 15 minutes from Jerusalem, is actually a microcosm of the economic integration that can serve the cause of peace. The Interfaith Boycott Coalition, a wing of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/interfaith-financial-war-on-israel/%20">targeting</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the company and those who support it, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.570292">like actress Scarlett Johansson.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Even </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Al-Arabiya</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/01/21/Boycott-of-Israel-s-SodaStream-may-affect-Palestinian-workers.html">recognizes</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the boycott hurts Palestinians. SodaStream employs 900 Palestinians, 500 from the West Bank and 400 from East Jerusalem. The female workers are allowed to wear the hijab and the workers are given the same treatment as the Israeli ones. There’s even a mosque on site and Israelis and Palestinians eat lunch together.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The businessmen at Davos that invest in Israel are investing in peace. Those that invest in Iran are trying to profit off of terrorism, tyranny and nuclear weapons.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Elie Wiesel: Stop Iran from Going Nuclear</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/elie-wiesel-stop-iran-from-going-nuclear/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=elie-wiesel-stop-iran-from-going-nuclear</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Jan 2014 05:15:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216857</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Words of wisdom from a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/elie-300x390.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-216859" alt="elie-300x390" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/elie-300x390-269x350.jpg" width="269" height="350" /></a>Editor&#8217;s note: Below is the text to a recent New York Times advertisement featuring Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel&#8217;s call to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Publication of Wiesel&#8217;s statement was sponsored by This World: The Values Network. </em></p>
<p>If there is one lesson I hope the world has learned from the past, it is that regimes rooted in brutality must never be trusted. And the words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions.</p>
<p>Should the civilized nations of the world trust a regime whose supreme leader said yet again last month that Israel is “doomed to annihilation,” and referred to my fellow Jewish Zionists as “rabid dogs?”</p>
<p>Should we who believe in human rights, trust a regime which in the 21st century stones women and hangs homosexuals?</p>
<p>Should we who believe in freedom trust a regime which murdered its own citizens in the streets of Tehran, when the people protested a stolen election in the Green Revolution of Summer, 2009?</p>
<p>Should we who believe in the United States trust a regime whose parliament last month erupted in “Death to America” chants as they commemorated the 34th Anniversary of the storming of our Embassy in Tehran?</p>
<p>Should we who believe in life trust a regime whom our own State Department lists as one of the world’s foremost sponsors of terrorism?</p>
<p>America, too, defines itself by its words and actions. America adopted me, as it did so many others, and gave me a home after my people were exterminated in the camps of Europe. And from the time of the founding fathers, America has always stood up to tyrants. Our nation is morally compromised when it contemplates allowing a country calling for the destruction of the State of Israel to remain within reach of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Sanctions have come at a terrible economic cost for the people of Iran. But, unfortunately, sanctions are what have brought the Iranian regime to the negotiating table.</p>
<p>I appeal to President Obama and Congress to demand, as a condition of continued talks, the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and the regime’s public and complete repudiation of all genocidal intent against Israel. And I appeal to the leaders of the United States Senate to go forward with their vote to strengthen sanctions against Iran until these conditions have been met.</p>
<p>I once wrote that history has taught us to trust the threats of our enemies more than the promises of our friends. Our enemies are making serious threats. It is time to take them seriously. It is time for our friends to keep their promises.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>What Churchill Would Make of Obama’s Iran Appeasement</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/what-churchill-would-make-of-obamas-iran-appeasement/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-churchill-would-make-of-obamas-iran-appeasement</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 05:16:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[churchill]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216648</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Believing in Nazi Germany and Iran.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/iran_missiles0904141-1024x682.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-216643" alt="iran_missiles0904141-1024x682" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/iran_missiles0904141-1024x682-450x340.jpg" width="324" height="245" /></a>In the fall of ’38, the motion was submitted to approve the government’s policy “by which war was averted in the recent crisis and supports their efforts to secure a lasting peace.&#8221;</p>
<p>The policy was the carving up of Czechoslovakia and the war being averted was World War II. Of that, Winston Churchill said, “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.”</p>
<p>Echoing that old Munich motion, the pro-Iran left is calling the nuclear deal that lets Iran keep its nukes and its targets their Geiger counters, Obama’s “achievement”. Any Democrat who challenges it is accused of obstructing the only foreign affairs achievement Obama can claim.</p>
<p>“Cory Booker wants to torpedo a major Obama achievement,” the New Republic shrieked. On MSNBC, Chris Hayes accused sixteen Democratic senators who wanted tougher measures on Iran of seeking a war to sabotage “Obama’s greatest foreign policy achievement” out of “fear” of the Israeli lobby.</p>
<p>Hayes and MSNBC were only echoing another famous Democrat, Joseph P. Kennedy, who warned of opposition to Munich by “Jew media” making noises meant to “set a match to the fuse of the world.”</p>
<p>Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, of whom King George V said, &#8220;No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris&#8221;, warned against those who wanted a sterner tone to bring an end to Hitler’s program of conquest as today’s Hoares warn against those who want to bring an end to Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>“If at the very time when we were attempting… to obtain a peaceful settlement, we had accepted the advice of those who said you must face Herr Hitler with a public ultimatum,” Hoare warned. “If we had made an ultimatum… Europe would to-day have been plunged into a world war.”</p>
<p>Today the Hoares warn that stiffening sanctions against Iran and demanding an end to its nuclear program will lead to war. For years, the Hoares of the Democratic Party insisted sanctions were the only way to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Now the Hoares say sanctions will alienate Iran and lead to war.</p>
<p>Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the alternative to the nuclear deal would be war. Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, warned that the failure of the deal will force Obama to, “choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to continue.”</p>
<p>Since the deal allows Iran’s nuclear program to continue, it’s a buffet of three choices, all three of which lead to conflict of some kind. The only variations are in the date and in the capabilities of the enemy.</p>
<p>That was the problem with Munich.</p>
<p>Hitler had already been making plans for a war with Britain and France that would commence three or four years after finishing off Czechoslovakia. The only thing that the Munich Agreement accomplished was to speed up Hitler’s timetable from three years to one by letting him finish his business with the Czechs earlier than he had planned.</p>
<p>Winston Churchill spoke. &#8220;I will&#8230; begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing&#8230; we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lady Astor, whose Nazi sympathies were infamous, interrupted him with a cry of “Nonsense”.  The Member for Berlin had written to Joseph P. Kennedy that Hitler would have to do more than “give a rough time” to “the killers of Christ” before she would launch &#8220;Armageddon to save them.”</p>
<p>“The wheel of history swings round,” she wrote. “Who are we to stand in the way of the future?”</p>
<p>Churchill, like William F. Buckley, believed however in standing athwart the history of totalitarians, their Reichs, their People’s Republics and their Caliphates and yelling stop.</p>
<p>“£1 was demanded at the pistol&#8217;s point. When it was given, £2 were demanded at the pistol&#8217;s point,” Churchill retorted. “Finally, the dictator consented to take £1 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of good will for the future.”</p>
<p>That is the sum of all negotiations with totalitarians, whether it is with Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or Islamist Iran.</p>
<p>“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama said in 2012. Now there isn’t even a policy of containment.</p>
<p>Obama’s foreign policy achievement consists of letting Iran do nearly everything nuclear it wants in the hopes that it won’t go all the way. Containment has given way to appeasement. Iran gets nine tenths of its nuclear ambitions at gunpoint in the deal and will take the rest when it pleases at nukepoint.</p>
<p>“We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it,” Churchill said, “reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now.”</p>
<p>In five years of Obama, the United States has also been reduced, its security stripped away and sold to win the approval of its enemies. It’s locked into the same policy of offering worthless security guarantees to its allies and then selling those allies down the river to prevent them from calling on those guarantees and exposing their worthlessness.</p>
<p>That was the Chamberlain policy that Churchill was denouncing. That is the Obama policy with his chalkboard of worthless red lines whose bluffing powers he is determined to protect.</p>
<p>&#8220;Having secured resources which will greatly diminish, if not entirely remove, the deterrent of a naval blockade, the rulers of Nazi Germany will have a free choice open to them in what direction they will turn their eyes,&#8221; Churchill said.</p>
<p>Similarly the nuclear deal cuts off most options for America and its allies and endows Iran with a great many options. And once it does have nuclear weapons, its options will be nearly unlimited.</p>
<p>Chamberlain’s rejoinder to Churchill reduced a practical problem to a philosophical one.</p>
<p>&#8220;It seems to me that there are really only two possible alternatives. One of them is to base yourself upon the view that… friendly relation… with totalitarian States are impossible, that the assurances which have been given to me personally are worthless, that they have sinister designs and that they are bent upon the domination of Europe,” he said, reciting true facts with the air of a conspiracy theory.</p>
<p>If that were indeed the case, Chamberlain argued, “There is no future hope for civilisation or for any of the things that make life worth living.”</p>
<p>Peace stopped being a rational program and became a philosophical one. A world where dictators could not be successfully appeased was not a world worth living in. The appeasement of Iran follows that same self-pitying mysticism.</p>
<p>For Churchill negotiations were a practical policy with a practical end, but supporters of appeasement had made negotiations into a moral absolute so that practical issues could be ignored and the dismantling of Czechoslovakia could be rationalized for the greater good of peace.</p>
<p>Any contradictory information was drowned in enthusiasm for peace with Hitler, which became indistinguishable from enthusiasm for Hitler.</p>
<p>If peace depended on Hitler and the entire hope of civilization rested on Hitler’s willingness to live in peace, the Chamberlains and their Hoares had to believe in Hitler to believe that life was worth living.</p>
<p>Their modern counterparts substitute the Supreme Leader of Iran for the Fuehrer, or leader, of Nazi Germany, but otherwise they make the same mistake.</p>
<p>To believe in world peace, they must believe in Hitler, in Stalin and in Khamenei and believe that regimes which ceaselessly talk of war, build weapons of war and torture and murder their own people on a whim somehow share their hopes for peace.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Ann-Marie Murrell</strong>&#8216;s video interview with <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <em>Robert Gates’ Revelations Confirm Horowitz&#8217;s “Party of Defeat,”</em> <em>Abandoning Iraq, </em><em> How Americans Died For a War Obama Didn&#8217;t Believe In</em>, <em>The Release of Terrorist Lawyer Lynne Stewart</em>, <em></em>and much, much more:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/xwp_CUfwAss" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TywIVHDnwxc" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b></b></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for <em>The Glazov Gang,</em> <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>A Hollow Victory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/sarahnstern/a-hollow-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-hollow-victory</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 05:12:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sarah N. Stern]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What's in Obama's secret deal with Iran? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Iran-Kerry-3_2728466b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-216646" alt="Iran-Kerry-3_2728466b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Iran-Kerry-3_2728466b-431x350.jpg" width="302" height="245" /></a>“They should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road.”</p>
<p><em>&#8211; Sir Winston Churchill</em></p>
<p>Once again, Secretary of State John Kerry came home from Geneva this past Sunday, amidst a great deal of euphoria, boasting of an agreement between the P5 plus 1 nations and Iran that is scheduled to take effect on January 20th, saying, “As of that day, for the first time in almost a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will not be able to advance, and parts of it will be rolled back, while we start negotiating a comprehensive agreement to address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.”</p>
<p>These triumphant words were over a signed agreement, the details of which are so fabulous that the Obama administration absolutely refuses to reveal them to journalists or the public at large.</p>
<p>This sense of triumphalism over the agreement has not been shared by most Americans. According to a Pew Research and USA Today Poll, (taken December 2nd through 9th), 43 percent of Americans disapprove of the deal, while only 32 percent approve of it.</p>
<p>However, the triumphalism is shared in Iran, where on Wednesday morning, President Rouhani spoke before a demonstration of throngs of thousands of ecstatic supporters, where he boasted, ‘Do you know what the Geneva agreement means? It means the surrender of great international powers against the nation of Iran.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, told the country’s state-run television on Sunday, “We will in no way, never, dismantle our nuclear centrifuges.”</p>
<p>Yet they are getting an estimated 20 to 25 billion dollars in sanctions relief, plus an additional 8 billion dollars from the unfreezing of the assets that have been frozen in America since the 1979 Islamic revolution. There is a tremendous economic, psychological boost. Businesses from many regions in the world are flying into Tehran seeking new markets. The stock market in Tehran is soaring.</p>
<p>The Iranian mullahs are nothing, if not masters in cunning. They understand this American president, and its war-weary population.  They understand that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the American taxpayer over 4 trillion dollars, and more importantly that over 4,400 American servicemen lost their lives in Iraq, and 2,108 in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>They know that President Obama repeatedly pledged that when it came to Iran’s nuclear program, “all options are on the table.”</p>
<p>The Iranians are very careful observers. They watched vigilantly when President Obama had vowed in a press conference on August 20, 2012:</p>
<blockquote><p>“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Then on August 21, 2013 in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, the unthinkable happened. At the hands of Syrian leader Bashir Assad, over 1,429 people, including 426 children were brutally gassed to death. Our television screens showed the ghastly images of rows and rows children lined up, some flinching and quaking in agony, screaming and writhing in pain, without bullet wounds or scars. It was obvious that these were victims of a chemical attack.</p>
<p>At which point, Secretary of State John Kerry took to the airwaves and made an impassioned plea. “A thug and a murderer like Assad is trying to get away with this,” Kerry said, adding, “We are the USA, the country that’s tried to honor a set of universal values around which we’ve organized our lives…This crime against conscience, this crime against humanity, this matters to us. It matters to us and who we are. It matters to leadership and our credibility in the world. It matters if nothing is done-if the world speaks out in condemnation, and nothing happens.”</p>
<p>And then, President Obama put his finger to the wind, and realized he did not have the support of the American people. He then decided to take it to Congress, and when he realized he did not have the votes in Congress for the authorization for the use of force, he did an interesting little international pirouette, and made Iran and Russia responsible for the disposal of their chemical weapons (which is about as responsible as letting two known pedophiles baby sit for your children).</p>
<p>Not only did that elevate the status of both of those countries’ international credibility, it sharply diminished ours. To make matters, worse, in a press conference in Stockholm, President Obama stated, “I did not set a red line. The world set a red line.”</p>
<p>The Iranian mullahs have been taking careful notes. They appreciate the fact that this administration is, despite the strong rhetoric, almost constitutionally adverse to any renewed military action. They also understand that the biting sanctions that had been put in place by the United States Congress and the international community were breaking their economy, although it had little or no impact on the nuclear program.</p>
<p>They realized that their former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s honest rhetoric about “wiping Israel off the map,” was serving to isolate them economically. So they allowed a pretty, fresh face to run, that of Hussein Rouhani. Of course, Mr. Rouhani had to be approved by the reigning mullahs. And it is hardly known that Mr. Rouhani was a close friend and confidant of both Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, or that he had been part of the committee that had planned the attack on the Argentenian Jewish Center in 1994.</p>
<p>The overall Iranian objectives of regional and global hegemony and Shiite supremacy, let alone their genocidal intentions, have never diminished one iota. Their tactics, however, changed.</p>
<p>While running for office last May, Mr. Rouhani was interviewed on Iranian National television, in which he boasted about how, when he was chief negotiator for the Iranian nuclear program between 2003 and 2005, the Iranians went from 150 centrifuges to 1,750; that he introduced the yellowcake, and the heavy water plutonium enrichment facility in Arak.</p>
<p>When elected, papers such as The New York Times and the Washington Post wrote glowing editorials about him as a “reformer” and a “moderate.”  They failed to mention that the very day before Mr. Rouhani came to New York to embark upon his charm offensive, he spoke in front of a military parade where a fleet of trucks carried a convoy of Shahab II missiles that can easily reach Tel Aviv with the words in English, Farsi and Arabic, “Israel shall cease to exist.”</p>
<p>Mr. Rouhani came to the United Nations and delivered a speech on September 25th that seems reminiscent of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech.”  Among the lovely words of Mr. Rouhani were phrases such as, “Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions.” He expressed the hope of “universal acceptance by the people and the elite all across the globe of ‘yes’ to peace and ‘no’ to war, the hope of preference of dialogue to conflict, and moderation over extremism.”</p>
<p>Like offering candy to a baby, the trap had been eloquently set. Mr. Rouhani was speaking Mr. Obama’s language. Never one to distinguish reality from rhetoric, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have done everything in their power to ignore the ominous signs coming out of Iran and have decided to proceed with a package of inducements, including the lifting of sanctions.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, none of us mere mortals are actually able to see what this agreement is that has been signed. According to an article on January 13th in the Los Angeles Times, Abbas Araqhi said that there is a 30-page side document or non-paper, where many significant details about how the deal is implemented are outlined.</p>
<p>The State Department of course vociferously denies the existence of the non-paper. When asked about the details of the agreement, State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf, said, “We will make the details available to Congress and the public as it becomes available.”</p>
<p>Of course the questions become: If we have already signed it, why is it not available? And, if it is such a good deal, why all the secrecy?</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry was right when he said, “…This crime against humanity, this matters to us. It matters to leadership and our credibility in the world. It matters if nothing is done-if the world speaks out in condemnation, and nothing happens.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Date Set for Iran Deal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ryan-mauro/date-set-for-iran-deal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=date-set-for-iran-deal</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Jan 2014 05:31:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215213</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While White House smears critics as warmongers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/340282_Iran-Rouhani-WMD.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-215216" alt="340282_Iran-Rouhani-WMD" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/340282_Iran-Rouhani-WMD-429x350.jpg" width="300" height="245" /></a>The six-month nuclear deal with Iran will go into effect on January 20 and the White House is nervous that its critics will lead to its undoing. As a bi-partisan majority comes together in Congress to approve further sanctions if a final deal is not reached at the end of the six months, the White House is accusing them of secretly desiring a war.</p>
<p>“As of that day, for the first time in almost a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will not be able to advance, and parts of it will be rolled back, while we start negotiating a comprehensive agreement to address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s program,” Secretary of State Kerry <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/12/world/meast/iran-nuclear/">said.</a></p>
<p>This boast is based on two flimsy premises.</p>
<p>Firstly, Iran’s nuclear program <i>can</i> and <i>will</i> advance. The regime is still <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1-226166-Iran-defends-development-of-advanced-centrifuges">developing</a> advanced centrifuges, enriching uranium, building ballistic missiles, and training nuclear scientists.</p>
<p>At the same time, the work that Iran supposedly halts will continue in North Korea. It is an error to look at the nuclear programs of the two countries as independent. They are interlocked. When North Korea advances; so does Iran.</p>
<p>Secondly, while it is technically true that parts of the program are “rolled back,” they are not necessarily permanent. It is true that the Iranians are required to convert its stockpile of 20% enriched uranium into an oxide that cannot be used for building a bomb, but that’s not the same thing as disarmament.</p>
<p>Two experts from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/irans-nuclear-plans">explain:</a></p>
<blockquote><p>“The notion that this puts the material ‘beyond use for bombs’ is simply wrong. The conversion of oxide back to uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas is not ‘time-consuming,’ is not necessarily ‘detectable,’ and it is not particularly ‘technically demanding.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This conversion does not eliminate Iran’s 20% enriched uranium; it just makes it a little harder to use for nuclear weapons. The Iranian regime is calculating that this temporary setback will yield long-term nuclear gains. This “concession” in no way reflects a commitment by Iran not to build nuclear weapons capabilities.</p>
<p>A powerful bi-partisan coalition has come together in Congress that the White House worries will jeopardize its deal. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) have written a new bill that will hit Iran with even stronger sanctions at the end of the six-month period if a comprehensive deal is not reached. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is also a critical supporter.</p>
<p>Their logic is solid: If sanctions are what brought Iran to the negotiating table, then the threat of harsher sanctions will compel Iran to agree to a long-term deal. If Iran does not give up its uranium enrichment, then it will face sanctions that threaten its oil industry like never before.</p>
<p>The Obama administration is <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/01/11/White-House-Suggests-New-Sanctions-A-Veiled-Attempt-At-War-With-Iran">offensively questioning</a>  these congressmen’s sincerity. A spokesperson for the National Security Council accused them of secretly trying to trigger a war. She said if they “want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American people and say so.”</p>
<p>The administration is worried because its foreign policy legacy is at stake. The Iranian regime is threatening to walk away from the deal if new sanctions are passed. Hypocritically, it was the Obama Treasury Department that <a href="http://freebeacon.com/treasury-department-tightens-iran-sanctions/%20">placed further sanctions</a> on entities linked to Iran’s nuclear program after the agreement was announced.</p>
<p>There are also political risks for the administration. The strong showing of bi-partisan opposition threatens the deal and the administration’s credibility on Iran. President Obama says he will veto any new sanctions legislation, but he now faces a <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/senate-reaches-veto-proof-majority-on-iran-sanctions">majority</a> that can override his veto. The back-and-forth would cause numerous unfavorable news cycles and the episode would be brought up again every time in the future that Iran is talked about.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime is already seeing enormous benefits even before the six-month period begins on January 20. International investors are <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/geneva-deal-sparks-new-international-investor-interest-in-iran-a-940629.html">ready to pounce</a> at the opportunity to exploit the easing of sanctions. Italy is particularly <a href="http://freebeacon.com/sources-italy-leading-charge-to-collapse-iran-sanctions/">eager</a> to end the sanctions on Iran.</p>
<p>Russia is on the cusp of a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-iran-russia-oil-idUSBREA090DK20140110">major deal</a> to buy 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day, increasing the regime’s exports by a whopping 50%. Turkey is <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/28/turkey-and-iran-accused-of-oil-for-cash-sanctions-scheme.html">believed</a> to have helped Iran work past the sanctions and such cooperation will only increase as the Turkish and Iranian governments become closer and closer.</p>
<p>This is all on top of the $7-10 billion in sanctions relief that the Obama administration publicly agree to provide Iran over the course of the six-month period. Israeli <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.562824">estimates</a> put the figure at around $20 billion.</p>
<p>That’s the reward Iran gets for agreeing to stay <a href="http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/content/fpi-analysis-minimum-interim-deal-should-fully-freeze-iran%E2%80%99s-growing-nuclear-threat">7/10ths</a> of the way towards having bomb-grade uranium. In addition, the deal has helped <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/middle-east-now-has-three-alliances-none-are-us">push</a> Iran’s Arab enemies into the arms of Russia and away from the U.S.</p>
<p>To summarize, here’s what Iran has gotten for agreeing to slow down its nuclear pursuits:</p>
<p>• The delaying of further sanctions</p>
<p>• $20 billion in sanctions relief</p>
<p>• Lucrative deals with international partners and investors</p>
<p>• A decreased likelihood of effective sanctions in the future as more countries and companies invest in Iran</p>
<p>• Favorable geopolitical shifts</p>
<p>• The preservation of its nuclear infrastructure and 20% enriched uranium</p>
<p>• An acknowledgement from the U.S. that Iran should be allowed to enrich to at least 5%</p>
<p>The Iranian regime’s participation in the deal doesn’t mean it’s had a change in heart. All it did was negotiate a deal that any nuke-seeking mullah would see as a good bargain.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="http://www.theird.org/">Institute on Religion and Democracy</a> contributed to this article.</em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>American Jewish Groups Dropped Ball on the Iran Deal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/sammy-levine/american-jewish-groups-dropped-ball-on-the-iran-deal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=american-jewish-groups-dropped-ball-on-the-iran-deal</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Dec 2013 05:05:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sammy Levine]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Purported pro-Israel groups are failing to do their job. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/131105175019-parsi-iran-talks-sitting-at-table-story-top.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212337" alt="131105175019-parsi-iran-talks-sitting-at-table-story-top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/131105175019-parsi-iran-talks-sitting-at-table-story-top-413x350.jpg" width="289" height="245" /></a>When I visited Israel in the summer of 2012 and the American Presidential campaign was in full swing, my group met with an anonymous source who told us that the highest levels of the Netanyahu government, possibly including the Prime Minister himself, considered an Obama victory to be “a nightmarish scenario” for the Jewish State. Now, that nightmare has become a reality.</span></b></p>
<p>The P5 + 1 reached an interim agreement last week with the Iranian government, whose leader Khameini <a href="https://remote.zoa.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=55e1e89dfad3490dbe1a453ab79265e3&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.jpost.com%2fIranian-Threat%2fNews%2fKhamenei-Israeli-regime-is-doomed-to-failure-annihilation-332403">recently said</a>, “Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals, some of them&#8230;the Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation.” This deal will not dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and will only slow down its race to the bomb by a couple months, according to most estimates, as the Mullah’s will maintain their capability to enrich uranium. In return, the Iranians are getting major sanctions relief in the form of at least $13 billion now available to them. The tough sanctions regime, which took decades of tough diplomacy to build up, will now be shattered.</p>
<p>The Mullah’s in Iran are rejoicing. Iranian <a href="https://remote.zoa.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=55e1e89dfad3490dbe1a453ab79265e3&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.memri.org%2freport%2fen%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f7588.htm">President Rouhani</a> has proclaimed: &#8220;The results of these talks is that the 5+1&#8230;have officially recognized Iran&#8217;s nuclear rights&#8230; the right to enrich [uranium] on Iranian soil is the right of the Iranian nation, and everyone can interpret it as they wish&#8230; The text states explicitly that Iran will continue to enrich [uranium], and for this reason I say to the Iranian nation that the uranium enrichment activity in Iran will continue as in the past&#8230; In this six-month agreement, our [uranium enrichment] facilities at Natanz, Fordo, the Arak [plutonium reactor], [the uranium conversion facility at] Isfahan, and Bandar Abbas [i.e. the Bushehr reactor] will continue their activity.&#8221; <a href="https://remote.zoa.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=55e1e89dfad3490dbe1a453ab79265e3&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.memri.org%2freport%2fen%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f0%2f7588.htm">Supreme Leader Khameini added</a>, &#8220;The absolute achievements of this initial agreement are official recognition of Iran&#8217;s nuclear rights, and preservation of the nuclear achievements of the sons of this nation.&#8221; It has just come to light that Iran is planning to construct a second nuclear reactor in the province of Bushehr.</p>
<p>Former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton calls this deal an “abject surrender” for the United States. Wall Street Journal writer <a href="https://remote.zoa.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=55e1e89dfad3490dbe1a453ab79265e3&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fonline.wsj.com%2fnews%2farticles%2fSB10001424052702303281504579219931479934854">Bret Stephens</a> calls it, “Worse Than Munich.” Prime Minister Netanyahu calls it “an historic mistake&#8230;this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place.” Naftali Bennett, Chairman of the Jewish Home Party in Israel warns, “If a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal signed this morning.” Even Israeli left-leaning Tzipi Livni said, “This is a terrible deal that will threaten not only us [Israel], but the entire world.” At ZOA, we believe this deal is our eras “Munich” and Obama and Kerry the new “Chamberlain.”</p>
<p>It is important to note that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not just a threat to Israel, but to the United States and the rest of the world. U.S. intelligence states Iran will have ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) that can reach our homeland by 2015. Furthermore, Iran already has operational missile sites in Venezuela, virtually in the United State’s backyard.</p>
<p>For those of us who are politically sober and realistic, we saw this day coming, the capitulation of America to Iran. The Obama administration has proven time and again that it is not serious about preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. As ZOA National President <a href="https://remote.zoa.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=55e1e89dfad3490dbe1a453ab79265e3&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fzoa.org%2f2013%2f11%2f10219587-zoa-obamas-5-year-record-indicates-hes-not-serious-about-stopping-iranian-nuclear-weapons%2f">Mortot Klein stated</a>: “President Obama has not laid down any red lines beyond which the U.S. will not permit Iran to advance in its quest for nuclear weapons. This open-ended policy suggests that there is in fact no point at which President Obama would act militarily to stop Iran developing a weapon. Such suspicions can only be compounded by President Obama’s recent failure to act militarily on a red line that he actually did lay down, that is, the use of chemical or biological weapons by Syria against its own people.”</p>
<p>There are many Jewish and pro-Israel groups who are expressing dismay at the Iranian nuclear deal, but frankly, they are a little late to the party. The ZOA has been warning about this administration’s weakness for years.</p>
<p>Where were the myriad Jewish and pro-Israel organizations when the President chose notorious Israel hater and proponent of containing Iran, Chuck Hagel, to be Secretary of Defense? After all, Hagel’s selection, and subsequent confirmation by the Senate, and the Jewish communities general apathy, laid the groundwork for America’s appeasement of the Mullahs in Iran last week. The overwhelming silence of the Jewish community at the Hagel pick gave tacit approval to his anti-Israel, pro-containment views on Iran, which gave the administration an opening to pursue the disastrous deal reached last week.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry still maintains that there is &#8220;no daylight&#8221; between the United States and Israel. Who is he kidding?</p>
<p>In light of last week&#8217;s news, American Jews should ask themselves if the Jewish and pro-Israel groups they belong to are truly serving their interests.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Iranian Nuke Deal: An Islamist Victory</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/iranian-nuke-deal-an-islamist-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iranian-nuke-deal-an-islamist-victory</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Dec 2013 05:25:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the Mullahs will likely never return back to the negotiating table in good faith.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hassan-Rouhani.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212085" alt="Hassan-Rouhani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hassan-Rouhani-447x350.jpg" width="268" height="210" /></a>After a considerable amount of political capital was spent by the Obama administration, particularly President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, the Iranian deal of the century was struck just a few months after Iran elected President Hassan Rouhani. After four days of negotiations in Geneva, and after Kerry himself flew to Geneva to push the agreement to the finish, an agreement with the Ayatollahs was reached.  Several American and Iranian officials confirmed a report by the Associated Press that the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/24/secret-usa-iran-talks-nuclear-deal">US has been meeting in private</a> for talks to make a deal with the Iranian mullahs ever since Rouhani was inaugurated several months earlier.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry applauded the deal for being a successful and tangible. President Obama boasted about this historic deal, his unique efforts and leadership. On the other hand, Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Javad Zarif celebrated this deal at home, with Rouhani sending a letter to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, congratulating him on the historic deal. In an unprecedented move, Khamenei immediately issued a statement through a letter, showing his joy and suggesting that the Mullah had defeated the Western powers.</p>
<p>Khamenei stated, “Achieving what you have written is worth appreciation and praise to the nuclear negotiating team and other relevant officials and can be the basis for future smart moves,” adding “God willing, resistance against greediness (of the other sides) should always remain as an indicator showing that the officials in this sector are moving on a correct path, and (I believe) it will be so… Success in these negotiations showed the big powers can be urged to respect the Iranian nation’s rights and take firm steps towards the final definite resolution of the differences through a logical and reasonable presentation of the Iranian nation&#8217;s stances, while respecting all the principles and redlines of the ruling system”.</p>
<p>What are the exact details of the deal that President Obama is boasting about?  The transcript of the deal, published on the Iranian state media Fars News, indicates that the agreement implies no new nuclear-related sanctions will be imposed as long as the agreement lasts. Further, the Ayatollah and Iranian leaders will receive about $7 billion worth of sanctions relief on sectors including its metal industry. This sanctions relief can be accomplished by an executive order, by the Obama administration, without the need to appeal to Congress.</p>
<p>What will Iran give in return for these concessions?  Iran will not dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. Iran will not decrease the number of its centrifuges, which is about 19,000 (just a few thousands below the needed amount to created nuclear bomb). In addition, Iran will not close any of its nuclear sites. Iran will not even halt its nuclear enrichment. In fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue enriching uranium. Rouhani, Khamanei, and other Mullahs and Ayatollahs have echoed the same message with glee on the Iranian news media.</p>
<p>Just a few hours after the Iranian nuclear team and six powers reached a first-step accord in Geneva aimed at easing Western concerns—concluding that Tehran could seek nuclear weapons— Rouhani gave a speech addressing Iranian politicians at home, pointing out that the nuclear deal was reached earlier in the day and that the US had recognized Tehran’s rights to maintain an atomic program. “No matter what interpretations are given, Iran’s right to enrichment has been recognized,” Rouhani stated.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Iran will not dismantle or roll back its heavy water reactor in Arak that processes plutonium— only used for militarized nuclear activity purposes. Iran will not shut down its Fordow nuclear site, south of Tehran and revealed in 2007, which is argued to be very close in its capabilities to produce a nuclear bomb. Instead, in six months, Iran would be in a much better economic position, hardening the possibility of pressing it anymore.</p>
<p>As a result, President Obama gave all these compromises, concessions, billions of dollars, along with Iran’s right to continue enriching uranium, keeping its nuclear infrastructure, and retaining its heavy water reactor just so that Iran and the ruling Mullahs will sign the agreement papers. If President Obama had been the same conciliatory leader, willing to give concessions and favors domestically, as he is with the Mullahs and Iran, Washington would not have been in such a deadlock, with the government defaulting, and economy staggering. Americans would more likely have been living in much better economic and political landscapes. However, President Obama is much more masterful at giving concessions and compromising to Iran.</p>
<p>All the efforts, decades of pressure, diplomacy, and four rounds of international economic sanctions— the same reasons that brought the Mullah back to the negotiating table—were given away by President Obama. While, in six months, Iran will regain its currency loss (Rial), will recover its economy, lure back oil companies, and would be in a much stronger position. Therefore, the leverage that the US had over Iran will be reversed and uranium will continue to be enriched, thanks to President Obama.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>David Horowitz</strong> on<strong> The Glazov Gang </strong>discussing his new collection of conservative writings, <strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=SZLFMGIYTBFM">The Black Book of the American Left, Volume I: My Life and Times:</a></strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QL9WUvnJ_Cs" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eeN2K6romr8" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Deal With The Devil</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/riccardo-dugulin/obamas-deal-with-the-devil/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-deal-with-the-devil</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:25:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Riccardo Dugulin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211905</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lose-lose situation.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/dwd.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211908" alt="dwd" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/dwd-450x337.jpg" width="360" height="270" /></a>As President Obama inked a notoriously weak deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, international commentators went berserk. Varying from those who unanimously praise a daring historical move to those who consider it the first step toward apocalypse, views on the topic are as opposed as they have been on the majority of subjects touched by Barak Obama. While there is no doubt that the deal is destructive in its own nature and marks a clear surrender of American power in the Middle East, drawing analogies with the Treaty of Munich may be far-fetched. Khamenei is no Hitler for the simple fact that, even with a nuclear bomb, he lacks the conventional forces and the vision to engage into a hegemonic war. On the other hand, Iran is a threat <i>sui generis</i>. The comparison to past situations is failing simply because of the extent of the terrorist network that Teheran has at its direct disposal and the ability to manipulate world politics that it implies.</p>
<p>The deal struck by President Obama generates an effect closer to the <i>drole de guerre</i>, a period in which two enemy powers who are effectively at war are staring into each other’s eyes to see who will blink first. The problem is that by the steps taken to secure this ephemeral diplomatic victory, Barak Obama has certified that the US military option is off the table, thus freezing the nuclear problem without solving it. Instead, the US will provide Iran with six additional months helping to upgrade the Islamic Republic’s human capital and prepare for the next move.</p>
<p>While focusing on nuclear weapons, President Obama and the entire international community appear to be consciously omitting a key detail: the Iranian nuclear program is only one of Teheran’s tools used to wage war against its regional and international enemies. In fact, the illegal enrichment of uranium is not and should not be considered the unique constituent of the Iranian problem. Since 1979, Iran has been cultivating a network of terrorist organizations loosely linked to the revolutionary establishment that can be activated to wage terrorist attacks from Buenos Aires to Bulgaria and from Israel to Saudi Arabia. Recently, Iran’s proxies have been vigorously developing ties with Western Africa and Latin America, while also fortifying their power bases in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.</p>
<p>The deal President Obama sponsored and pressed for implicitly states that the United States government turns a blind eye on Iranian support of international terrorism as long as the Islamic Republic appears to be respecting a number of weakly defined norms regarding its nuclear program. This decision creates a “lose-lose” situation for the United States and its most direct partners in the Middle East.</p>
<p>On the one hand, President Obama has put the country in a situation in which it loses the power of decision-making and needs to react to other players’ decisions. For the second time in four months, the President has let himself be bullied into negotiations with adversary states over a deal concerning their non-use of WMDs. May it be in Syria or Iran, Barak Obama has played into the hands of regimes who fully understand the political value of their weapons and use them to gain more time to either reaffirm their regional power or further develop an arsenal and a strategy that will be eventually utilized to target American interests in the region.</p>
<p>As it has been previously stated, this deal is structurally flawed because it implicitly emboldens terrorist groups formed to harm the United States and its partners in the region. By opening the diplomatic door to Iran, the message is clear: as long as the regime seems to be cooperating with overly bureaucratic international institutions, it has a free hand in its international covert activities. By attempting a PR stunt, President Obama has ignored the fact that Iran is arming terrorist groups in Nigeria on a massive scale. He has also overlooked the fact that Teheran is countering US policies in Syria by openly fighting militias supported by the White House. Most importantly, President Obama has chosen to abandon its regional partners who are now left virtually alone in their fight against Iran. The United States has suspended the military option for at least six months, thus entering into a situation that has no possible positive outcomes.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the President’s move has also put two essential US partners in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, in a uniquely grave position. Both countries have viewed, although to different extent, the White House’s decision as a surrender of its regional engagements, which left their stability and security solely in their own hands. This new reality is likely to lead to two distinct outcomes.</p>
<p>Since President Obama took office in 2008, Israel has been increasingly voicing its fears of American inaction in regard to the Iranian nuclear threat. While the Jewish State is largely capable of dealing with Iranian regional proxies on its own, partial or full military support from the US has always been an important asset for Israeli policy makers contemplating a direct strike against Teheran’s illegal nuclear program. Due to the long history of Iranian double-gaming and conspiracies, Israel is skeptical about the efficiency of the Obama sponsored deal. In fact, as the US chose to draw down its military capabilities in the region, the gap of trust that has been widening over the past 24 months is likely to become unbridgeable.  While it remains unlikely that Israel will launch a unilateral strike against Iranian targets, the United States must understand that because of President Obama’s move the country may well lose its most committed partner in the Middle East.</p>
<p>The problem with Saudi Arabia is structurally different. The financial factor puts US policy makers in great trouble. While there is little doubt that the partnership with the Gulf Monarchy cannot be considered as one based on shared values, the countries’ cooperation has been driven by shared interests embodied in the Saudi spending sprees in regard to American weapon systems. As the White House turned its back on the Arab Gulf, one might expect that the oil rich monarchies will ask for diplomatic and military protection from other world powers such as Russia who is increasingly seen as a deal maker in a region that is in desperate need of outside guidance.</p>
<p>And yet, there emerges another problem that could prove troublesome for the US national security. While Israel has the military advantage over Iran, Saudi does not. For this, it is likely to attempt to defend itself by using its best deterrent &#8211; radical Sunni terrorist organizations. In fact, when the Kingdom feels threatened, it generally expands its financing of fundamentalist groups. Financial assets are moved either through the various intelligence structures operating officially in Riyadh or informally by activating zakat funds collected through the country’s mosques and religious structures. This system is a well-known way used by Saudi Arabia to protect its national interest. Thus, Al Qaeda elements have been created and exported to Yemen to fight the Shi’a insurgency; Saudi officials have trained and armed Sunni militias in Iraq for over a decade and are now at the forefront of the list of countries deemed essential to sustain the Islamist brigades operating in Syria. Should Saudi Arabia feel truly threatened by Iran, its intelligence services are likely to expand the Al Qaeda network in order to limit Teheran’s hegemonic ambitions, which would undoubtedly backfire on the US.</p>
<p>As Barack Obama led the United States into a lose-lose situation in which both the country and its regional partners are mired in a negative position vis-à-vis one of their most direct adversaries, the Iranian government has emerged as the only clear winner of this first phase. It is now in partial control, which obviously does not represent a best-case scenario.</p>
<p><em>Riccardo Dugulin holds a master&#8217;s degree from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International Security. He is currently working in Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance Company. He has worked for a number of leading think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut. His official website is <a href="http://www.riccardodugulin.com/">www.riccardodugulin.com</a> and official Facebook site is <a href="http://www.facebook.com/riccardodugulin">www.facebook.com/riccardodugulin</a>.</em></p>
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