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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Nuclear Weapons</title>
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		<title>Obama’s White Whale</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-r-timmerman/obamas-white-whale/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-white-whale</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:46:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth R. Timmerman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248064</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After Cuba, could embracing Iran be next?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248067" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini.jpg" alt="rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini" width="305" height="234" /></a>President Obama is not one to be rebuffed.</p>
<p>As he showed when the Castro brothers rejected repeated entreaties to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba, Obama can display exceptional determination, even imagination, in finding a path to surrender.</p>
<p>When the Castros wouldn’t accept his entreaties, Obama turned to the Vatican to offer the candy.</p>
<p>The Castros have no intention of loosening their grip on Cuban society, or of opening the Internet to free speech, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-who-benefits-if-the-embargo-is-lifted-1419205562"><span style="color: #0433ff;">as Obama has claimed</span></a>. But they will take U.S. taxpayer subsidies from the Ex-Im Bank to finance purchases from fellow-Communist China. How’s that for a good deal!</p>
<p>And so, Iran. Obama has now written to Supreme Terrorist – sorry, Supreme Leader &#8211; Ayatollah Khamenei four times since taking office in 2009. And each time, Khamenei has responded with insults and rejection.</p>
<p>The most recent offer was in October 2014, when Obama reportedly offered a whole plate-full of goodies – extensive relief from U.S. economic and financial sanctions, and perhaps much more – in exchange for the Ayatollah accepting Obama’s capitulation on the nuclear agreement.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t good enough for Khamenei, who immediately denounced the United States as a <a href="https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/532514135020695552"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“nuclear criminal”</span></a> &#8211; and on Twitter, no less!</p>
<p>Now we are told that Iran is “cooperating” with the United States in the fight against ISIS, most recently by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/.../iran-airstrikes-hit-islamic-state-in-iraq.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">bombing ISIS targets inside Iraq</span></a>.</p>
<p>But Iranian sources in Europe with access to current regime intelligence told me last week that Iran has provided 30 percent of the weapons ISIS has been using in its offensives in Syria and Iraq, mainly from Chinese sources.</p>
<p>Surprise? Not really. Despite what some “experts” in Islam will tell you about how Shiite Iran is irrevocably opposed to Koran-citing, Sunna-invoking, Sharia-inflicting ISIS, the two have a common cause: the triumph of Islam throughout the world.</p>
<p>Iran’s Islamic regime is also Koran-citing, Sunna-invoking, and Sharia-inflicting. They stone to death female rape-victims for “adultery” and make child-brides of young girls, imitating the example of the Prophet of Islam. They just disagree with ISIS – as they do with Turkish president Erdogan, and the al-Saud family – about who should be leading the Islamic caliphate.</p>
<p>Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin disagreed about whose army should march first into Berlin. Roosevelt caved. Stalin won. A fifty-year Cold War ensued.</p>
<p>Shiite Iran has a long and well-documented history of supporting Sunni terrorist groups. They <a href="http://www.iran911case.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">helped al-Qaeda recruit, train, and elude U.S. surveillance</span></a> before the 9/11 plot, and they have sheltered senior al-Qaeda operatives ever since.</p>
<p>They continue to publicly support Sunni jihadi groups including the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hamas in Gaza.</p>
<p style="color: #202020;"><span style="color: #000000;">In 2011, the U.S. Treasury Department <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1261.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">exposed Iran</span></a> for sheltering al Qaeda’s top financiers. Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2613.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Treasury identified yet another top al Qaeda financial operative,</span></a> </span>Abdul Mohsen Abdullah Ibrahim al-Sharikh, whom Iran nurtured and protected until he moved to Syria and joined the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra front, “later becoming one of its top strategists.”</p>
<p>So don’t be surprised to see that the Islamic Republic of Iran has provided weapons to the Islamic State (of Iraq and Syria). After all, on most days ISIS uses those weapons to slaughter America’s “allies,” the weak-kneed, slightly less Islamified opposition to Iran’s ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.</p>
<p>It’s an old trick of totalitarians everywhere. Light a fire on your enemy’s doorstep, then offer to help him put it out. The Soviets used it repeatedly.</p>
<p>Now the Pentagon wants to provide yet more goodies to Iran. Under the misguided leadership of outgoing SecDef Chuck Hagel, DoD has asked the U.S. Treasury Department to <a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/article/pentagon-sought-sanctions-exemptions-for-iranian-investment-in-afghanistan-20141104-01797"><span style="color: #0433ff;">remove sanctions so U.S. companies can help Iran</span></a> with multi-billion dollar development projects in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Let me spell that out. The Pentagon has identified “worthy” projects in Afghanistan and turned them over to the Iranians, and is now “inviting” U.S. companies to provide financial and technical assistance so the Iranians can make it rich.</p>
<p>There is more than just stupidity at work here.</p>
<p>Listen to “progressive” Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=b6wwvf87260bd94514057851fd5200ffab291#bookmark=http://video.foxnews.com/v/3951118421001/van-hollen-alan-gross-exchange-a-good-deal-for-us/?"><span style="color: #0433ff;">speaking to Foxnews</span></a> after “bringing back” U.S. hostage Alan Gross from Cuba. (Remember, Alan Gross was jailed five years ago for helping Havana Jews get access to the Internet.)</p>
<p>Cuba’s human rights abuses and its lack of freedom “have resulted from 54 years of failed U.S. policies,” Van Hollen said without even blushing.</p>
<p>For Obama and his acolytes, America is the problem. We have “caused” the world’s problems with our sanctimonious nonsense about God-given freedoms. Any self-respecting Socialist would naturally react to men and women who fear God and love life by banning God and substituting a government that robs citizens of their freedom.</p>
<p>And so, Obama’s mission as president is to make America as small as possible so we can’t continue to spread freedom and the values underpinning it around the world. We are going to stop causing harm by vacating the premises and allowing <i>real</i> bad guys to take over.</p>
<p>Former Brookings Institution scholar Michael Doran calls Obama’s obsession with making bad deals with rogue states his “white whale.”</p>
<p>“The president is dreaming of an historical accommodation with Iran. The pursuit of that accommodation is the great white whale of Obama’s Middle East strategy, and capturing it is all that matters; everything else is insignificant by comparison,” <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2014/08/13-doran-obama-middle-east-policy-danger-to-allies"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Doran wrote earlier this year.</span></a> “The goal looms so large as to influence every other facet of American policy.&#8221;</p>
<p>The ship of state is taking on water in Iraq? Let’s make a deal with Iran and hand it over to them. Afghanistan can’t stay afloat? Not to worry, Obama’s Iranian allies will come to the rescue.</p>
<p>There is only one thing Iran’s leaders can do to prevent Obama from rushing to conclude a deal with them that will allow them to develop a militarily-useful nuclear arsenal, impose their hegemony over the Persian Gulf, swallow up Lebanon and install their genocidal legions on the borders of Israel: they can just say no.</p>
<p>So far, that’s just what Khamenei has been doing. He has swallowed all the goodies Obama has offered without even saying thank-you. And Obama’s response has been to offer more.</p>
<p>Don’t think for an instant that cooler heads will prevail. They won’t. This president is determined to take America down, and he is pursuing that goal with all the single-minded intensity that Captain Ahab displayed in his chase for the white whale.</p>
<p>Will someone please wrench the harpoon out of his hands?</p>
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		<title>A Victory For the Ruling Clerics</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/a-victory-for-the-ruling-clerics/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-victory-for-the-ruling-clerics</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clerics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mullahs]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[More time to secure the bomb. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Irans-supreme-leader-Ayat-007.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246719" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Irans-supreme-leader-Ayat-007.jpg" alt="Irans-supreme-leader-Ayat-007" width="259" height="211" /></a>While the Obama administration formerly stated that extending the nuclear talks is out of equation, nevertheless, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry raised the option of an extension a day before the November 24th deadline. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, definitely welcomed the idea.</p>
<p>After over a year of negotiations, which have traveled across the globe from Vienna, to Oman, and to New York, the negotiators (the Islamic Republic and the P5+1: China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) planned to <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/23/Iran-reaching-nuke-deal-on-Nov-24-impossible-.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">extend</span></a> the nuclear talks for another seven months in order to finalize the preliminary deal reached last year in Geneva. Accordingly, the nuclear negotiations will continue through the end of June.</p>
<p>The obscure objectives are to achieve a “headline” agreement by March 1st and seal the complete technical details of the <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/23/Iran-reaching-nuke-deal-on-Nov-24-impossible-.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">headline </span></a>agreement by July 1st. Details and nuances of the nuclear talks, with regards to agreements and gaps, have yet to be released, but some diplomats stated the repeatedly-heard phrase that “<a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/23/Iran-reaching-nuke-deal-on-Nov-24-impossible-.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">progress</span></a> has been made.&#8221;</p>
<p>The nuclear extension definitely lacks any clear key terms upon which prospective nuclear talks would be anchored or that give any idea how a final nuclear deal could be reached.</p>
<p>But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions,  and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled.</p>
<p>Based on the extension offered by the Obama administration, the Islamic Republic will continue receiving <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/23/Iran-reaching-nuke-deal-on-Nov-24-impossible-.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">$700<b> </b></span></a>million per month in frozen assets during the extended seven month period. Secondly, Iran will further consolidate its economy through increased sales in oil, particularly to Asian countries, heighten business deals with some Western companies, regain the value of its currency, and enjoy the removed sanctions on some of its industries. As a result, Iran will attempt to address the economic challenges which were threatening the hold on power of the ruling politicians.</p>
<p>From the economic perspective, the $700 million in sanctions relief will boost Iran’s economy as it is an equivalence of approximately 350,000 more oil barrels a day, based on the current market price.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic exports roughly one <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/iran-oil-economy-falling-prices-crude-exports-market-reacts.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">million</span></a> barrels of crude oil in a day. The sanctions relief would be equivalent to a 30 percent increase in oil sale.  In the next few months, Tehran will attempt to push for additional sanctions relief as well as ratchet up its economic deals, such export of gas and other goods, to some European and Eastern countries including France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and China.</p>
<p>Some European countries&#8217; exports to Iran have already ratcheted up due to the prospects of the nuclear negotiations. Tehran Times, the Islamic Republic’s state newspaper, stated that Germany was Iran’s leading trade <a href="http://www.jpost.com/International/Analysis-Its-business-as-usual-as-some-of-Israels-friends-in-Europe-increase-trade-with-Iran-374622"><span style="color: #0433ff;">partner</span></a> “The European country (Germany) exported €207 million of goods to Iran in June 2014, an 88 percent rise compared to June 2013.” Nevertheless, Tehran needs the complete lifting of economic sanctions in order to gain the optimal potentials of its economy and gain full recovery.</p>
<p>Third, the extension of the nuclear negotiations will ensure to the Iranian leaders that the international community, specifically the West, will not make efforts in further isolating Iran and pressuring it economically or politically.</p>
<p>In addition, the extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities.</p>
<p>Finally, the Islamic Republic’s antagonistic stance towards the United States and the West will remain the same as well. This week, while Khamenei officially granted his blessing to Rouhani to continue with the game of nuclear negotiations, he also called the West “<span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Khamenei-Arrogant-world-powers-failed-to-bring-Iran-to-its-knees-382776">arrogant</a>.</span>” Earlier, he published a &#8220;9-step plan&#8221; to eliminate Israel. After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2848810/Iran-wont-brought-knees-nuclear-issue-Khamenei.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pointed out</span></a> on state television that &#8220;I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.&#8221; The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Surrender to Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obamas-surrender-to-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-surrender-to-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Nov 2014 05:17:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246196</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Islamic Republic moves one step closer to the bomb. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Obama_Iran.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246197" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Obama_Iran-450x305.jpg" alt="Obama_Iran" width="388" height="263" /></a>The commander of the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps, Iran’s top military force aligned with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, openly mocked the United States for having “clearly surrendered to Iran’s might,” according to a report quoted by the <i>Washington Free Beacon</i>.  “Despite the military embargo on the Islamic Republic, there is no weapon that our military is not able to manufacture,” he added.</p>
<p>The commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, was commenting on the Obama administration’s agreement to a further seven-month extension in the talks with Iran over its nuclear program, which were supposed to have expired on November 24<sup>th</sup>. Sadly, Iran’s top military thug is right. The extension gave the Iranians what they have most wanted out of the talks all along – more time within which to further develop their nuclear arms technologies while still gaining some relief from the economic sanctions. Indeed, Iran will continue to get its hands on $700 million per month in frozen assets under the terms of the nuclear negotiation extension.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that “we would be fools to walk away.” As usual, Kerry was being played for a fool. And once again, the United States looks weak under President Obama&#8217;s failed leadership.</p>
<p>Iran’s leaders are out to prove to the world that Iran can be counted on to stand up to the “arrogant powers,” as Iranian leaders like to refer to the U.S. and its allies. So far, they are succeeding.</p>
<p>“In the nuclear issue, America and colonial European countries got together and did their best to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees, but they could not do so – and they will not do so,” said Ayatollah Khamenei on November 25<sup>th</sup> according to his personal website.</p>
<p>The year-long negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have been going nowhere, even as the Obama administration was reportedly willing to allow Iran to maintain its own nuclear enrichment program. Dismantlement of large parts of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, presumably an original goal of the negotiations for the so-called P-5 countries (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany), is no longer on the table, if it ever really was.  Iran’s missile program never was on the table. Nor were its possible imports of any nuclear materials, technologies and weapons delivery system components from North Korea.</p>
<p>Yet, the Iranians were still not satisfied with the offers they received during the negotiations. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani boasted in a television interview following the announcement of the talks extension that his country’s “centrifuges will never stop.”  He added that “Today we have a victory much greater than what happened in the negotiation. This victory is that our circumstances are not like previous years. Today we are at a point that nobody in the world [in which no one says] sanctions must be increased in order that Iran accept P5+1 demands. No one says to reach agreement we must increase pressure on Iran.”</p>
<p>Rouhani has a history of using negotiations as a delay tactic to achieve by stealth Iran’s strategic objectives. This time, Iran set out, in the words of its Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to reach a final deal that will result in “a serious and not a token Iranian enrichment program coupled with removal of sanctions. This is the objective that we’re working on and this is the objective we will achieve.”</p>
<p>What additional evidence does the Obama administration need to demonstrate that Iran’s strategic objective is irreconcilable with a deal that would truly protect the world against Iran’s emergence as a nuclear-armed power? Apparently, they have learned nothing from the disastrous results of negotiations with North Korea. Instead of walking away from the talks after a year of futility and immediately reinstituting the full array of economic sanctions that have been melting away over the last year, the Obama administration buckled.</p>
<p>During the next seven months, the Obama administration will be deluding itself and sacrificing the security of the American people if it thinks that Iran will simply stand still and freeze all of its vast nuclear technology and production programs in place. According to Greg Jones, a senior research and nuclear analyst at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, “They have a stockpile now that’ll probably support the production of about four nuclear weapons, and that’s slowly increasing over the course. It’ll probably gain another nuclear weapons worth by the end of June 2015 when this agreement runs out. So certainly that’s been continuing.”</p>
<p>John Kerry remarked that the Obama administration has “earned the benefit of the doubt” in agreeing to the further extension of talks, even though he conceded that “significant points of disagreement” remain. To the contrary, the administration has run out of excuses. Its quixotic quest for an elusive deal with a rogue state that continues to refuse the International Atomic Energy Agency access to all of its sites does nothing but raise more doubts about the administration’s intentions and competence.</p>
<p>For example, Iran has persistently refused to allow international inspectors to visit Parchin, Iran’s military facility where the agency seeks to probe for itself evidence that Iran may have been conducting experiments on nuclear detonators. Just days ago, the agency’s director Yukiya Amano complained that Iran was not cooperating “concerning issues with possible military dimensions.” Mr. Amano also warned that his agency, while able to assess Iran’s compliance with the interim agreement regarding its declared nuclear materials, was “not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”</p>
<p>Yet Kerry’s message to Congress is to hold off on re-imposing or adding any sanctions at this time. Some members of Congress in both parties are understandably frustrated by the lack of concrete results. They believe that preserving the threat of increased sanctions if an acceptable, verifiable deal is not reached by a date certain is the most realistic strategy.</p>
<p>“The cycle of negotiations, followed by an extension, coupled with sanctions relief for Iran has not succeeded,” the outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in response to the latest extension. “I continue to believe that the two-track approach of diplomacy and economic pressure that brought Iran to the negotiating table is also the best path forward to achieve a breakthrough.”</p>
<p>Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), whom has co-authored a sanctions bill with Senator Menendez, said it was now “critical that Congress enacts sanctions that give Iran’s mullahs no choice but to dismantle their illicit nuclear program.”</p>
<p>The chances for Congressional passage of a sanctions bill will improve next year when the Republicans take control of the Senate. However, President Obama is likely to veto such a bill. If the current extension runs out in June 2015 with no final deal concluded, expect the Obama administration to once again plead for more time so that it can kick the can down the road for the next president to handle – if it is not too late by then. Even worse, in a rush to try and improve his tarnished foreign policy legacy, President Obama may end up accepting just about any bone Iran offers him in a deal that he can spin as a positive achievement. The lethal consequences will be for the next president to worry about while the world becomes much less safe.</p>
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		<title>Iran&#8217;s No China</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/irans-no-china/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-no-china</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2014 05:50:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration will never abandon its courtship of Iran. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iranian-protestors-burn-us-flag-during-protest-tehran.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245973" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iranian-protestors-burn-us-flag-during-protest-tehran-450x337.jpg" alt="iranian-protestors-burn-us-flag-during-protest-tehran" width="322" height="241" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-Irans-no-China-382727">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The Obama administration will never abandon its courtship of Iran. On the eve of the extended deadline in the US-led six-party talks with Iran regarding Teheran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, the one thing that is absolutely clear is that courting Iran is the centerpiece of US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy. Come what may in Geneva, this will not change.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To be clear, Obama does not seek to check Iran’s rise to regional hegemony by appeasing it. None of the actions he has taken to date with regard to Iran can be construed as efforts to check or contain Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Their goal is to cultivate a US alliance with Iran. As Obama sees things, Iran for him is what China was for then US president Richard Nixon. Nixon didn’t normalize US relations with the People’s Republic of China in order to harm the Chinese Communists. And Obama isn’t wooing Iran’s Islamic revolutionaries in order to harm them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately for the world, China is not a relevant analogy for Iran. Nixon sought to develop ties with Beijing because he wanted to pry the Chinese out of the Soviet orbit. Courting China meant harming Moscow, and Moscow as the US’s greatest foe.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There is no Moscow that will be weakened by the US’s empowerment of Tehran. The only parties directly and immediately harmed by Obama’s policy of courting Iran are America’s allies in the Middle East. The Allies’ appeasement deal with the Nazis in 1938 had three victims: Czechoslovakia, the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama’s policy of courting Iran also has three victims: Israel, the Sunni Arab states, and the rest of the world.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama’s initiation of the six-power nuclear talks with Iran harms Israel because the talks facilitate Iran’s nuclear program. That is, Obama is enabling Iran to develop the means to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to press reports of the content of the negotiations, the US has already abandoned its major red lines. It has abandoned its demand that Iran dismantle its centrifuges. Late last week the US was reportedly about to abandon its demand for Iranian transparency to the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding its past work on atomic bomb development.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, the deal the US was hoping to conclude this week with Iran, and will now continue negotiating next month, involves taking no serious action to curtail Iran’s progress in developing nuclear weapons.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And in exchange for taking no action to curtail its nuclear progress, Iran demands and will likely receive a complete abrogation of binding UN Security Council economic sanctions against it. Those sanctions were passed in response to Iran’s illicit nuclear progress. The deal the US is now willing to sign renders Iran’s nuclear program legitimate.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Then there are the rest of the states in the region. The Saudis and their Sunni brethren are not the Czechs. They are Poland, Belgium France and Holland. Like the Nazis and the European states in late 1938, Iran threatens all Sunni states in the region.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As the Americans have engaged in obsessive-compulsive nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Iranians have divided their attention between nuclear development and regional expansion. In September they took over Yemen.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Houthi militia from northern Yemen took over Yemen’s capital city Sana’a that month. The Houthi are Shi’ite, and are to Yemen what Iran’s Lebanese Shi’ite proxy Hezbollah is to Lebanon. The Houthis, who are already a major force in the US-trained Yemeni armed forces, are demanding control over them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In addition to its proxy’s takeover of Yemen, as Middle East analyst Tony Badran reported earlier this month, the Iranian leadership is orchestrating a major information campaign to present itself as the regional hegemon to regional actors.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Qassem Soleimani has had his picture taken with Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq as well as with Iraqi regular military forces. Iranian security chief Ali Shamkhani went to Lebanon in late September and offered to arm the Lebanese Armed Forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Iran, these photo-ops and visits signal – is the new boss of the region. Yemen shares a 1,700 km border with Saudi Arabia.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Houthis already fought a border war with Saudi Arabia in 2009. The Iranian proxy’s control over much of the border today is a clear threat to Saudi sovereignty. In light of the close ties the Houthis have spent the past decade cultivating with Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite minority, it is also a threat to the internal political stability of the kingdom.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As the Obama administration has erased red line after red line in the nuclear talks, and sided with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and other Iranian Sunni allies against US allies, Iran’s leaders have gloated that their hegemony over Yemen raises to four the number of Arab states under their dominion, that list including Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Iran’s control over Yemen is a direct threat to the world economy. Before the Houthis marched on Sana’a, Iran was able to threaten global oil markets with its sovereignty over the Straits of Hormuz that controls naval traffic between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. With the Port of Aden, Iran will also control maritime traffic between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It is true that massive increases in US oil sales due to its shale oil development will reduce some of the Middle East’s power to dictate oil prices. But Middle Eastern oil sales still constitute 40 percent of the world market and will continue to be a massive force in the global economy in the coming years. As the force controlling the flow of that oil, Iran will exert massive influence over the global economy.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Add to that the fact that Iran’s Hezbollah has sleeper cells in every major city in Europe and in several hubs in North America, and that Iran has strategic alliances with Venezuela and Nicaragua, a nuclear- armed Iran exerting hegemonic control over the Middle East and its oil exports will become a strategic danger to the global economy and global security.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">One of the many eyebrow raising aspects of Obama’s courtship of Iran is that it isn’t tied to a US retreat from the region. The US isn’t retreating.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama has ordered hundreds of air strikes on Islamic State targets to date, and more will undoubtedly follow. The US participated in the NATO overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. US power remains a major factor in regional affairs, and Obama has not shied away from using it during his tenure in office.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The problem is that in all cases, his use of US power has helped Iran more than it has helped US allies. And in the case of Libya, US power has directly threatened US allies and empowered al-Qaida and it associates.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">With the rise of China today, some US analysts question the wisdom of Nixon’s opening to Beijing.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But there is little argument that his China gambit caused strategic damage to the Soviet Union and contributed to the US victory in the Cold War.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only will Obama’s Iran opening not redound to the US’s benefit in the short term. Its inevitable result will be a decade or more of major and minor regional wars and chronic instability, with the nuclear-armed Iran threatening the survival of all of America’s regional allies. It will also lead to shocks in the global economy and massively expand Iran’s direct coercive power over the word as a whole.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only is Obama no Nixon, compared to him, Neville Chamberlain looks like a minor, almost insignificant failure.</span></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>
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		<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>Iran: The 9-Step Plan to &#8216;Eliminate&#8217; Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/iran-the-9-step-plan-to-eliminate-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-the-9-step-plan-to-eliminate-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Nov 2014 05:54:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's nuclear negotiations have made the Islamic Republic more fearless than ever. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-880329-3-000.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245347" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-880329-3-000-380x350.jpg" alt="khamenei-880329-3-000" width="306" height="282" /></a>President Barack Obama appears to be determined to reward the ruling clerics in the Islamic Republic for its “good” behavior by engaging in nuclear negations.</p>
<p>In addition, President Obama has created the narrative that the Islamic Republic is in a weaker position in the nuclear negotiations because the Iranians want sanctions to be lifted against them. But what we witness in reality is that every time that the Islamic Republic rejects any deal that does not comply with its objectives, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry keep coming back with a new deal to satisfy the Iranian leaders. If the Islamic Republic is the weaker actor in these negotiations, then why are the rules of the nuclear deal not being set based on the p5+1 criteria?</p>
<p>John Kerry has been holding bilateral talks with the Russians and French in order to make sure that a final nuclear deal can be reached between the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the Islamic Republic. Additionally, President Barack Obama seems to be determined.</p>
<p>President Obama has also recently written a secret letter &#8212; revealed by the <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-wrote-secret-letter-to-irans-khamenei-about-fighting-islamic-state-1415295291">Wall Street Journal</a> &#8211;</span> to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, implying the shared regional interests that the Islamic Republic and the United States bear in the Middle East. The letter appears to be asking the Supreme Leader to grasp the opportunity and seal the final nuclear deal, which would result in the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Apparently, President Obama is determined to strike the final nuclear deal and to make friends with enemies in other parts of the world in order to add to his superficial Middle East achievements.</p>
<p>But the crucial question is whether these rewards, and diplomatic leniency towards Iranian politicians and leaders, have resulted in creating or reinforcing good behavior in the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Most recently, Ayatollah Khamenei <a href="https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/531366667377717248/photo/1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">published</span></a> a nine-step plan that would “eliminate” Israel. In response to the question “What is the most urgent action to take to militarily confront Israel?” the Supreme Leader points out, “The West bank should be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should take action to arm the people of he West bank, so that the sorrows and grieves (sic) of the Palestinian people will reduce in the light of their powerful hands and the weakness of the Zionist enemy.”</p>
<p>During a speech to university students in Tehran, Khamenei <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/khamenei-calls-palestinian-referendum-armed-resistance.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">stated</span></a>, &#8220;If God willing, it is eradicated, even better, but while this fraudulent regime is there and not eradicated, what’s the cure? The cure is a strong and armed resistance against this regime. In confronting the Zionist regime, strength needs to be shown from the direction of the Palestinians.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition, Iran’s Supreme Leader took to Twitter to call for the elimination of Israel. Khamenei tweeted a series of vitriolic anti-Israel tweets that called for the<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/11/09/barbaric-wolflike-and-infanticidal-khamanei-tweets-for-annihilation-of-israel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"> elimination</span></a> of the “barbaric, wolflike &amp; infanticidal regime of Israel.”</p>
<p>Historically speaking, we have repeatedly witnessed that incentives and rewards do not elicit good behavior from the Islamic Republic and the ruling officials. For example, after the disclosure of the clandestine nuclear sites in 2002, not only did the Islamic Republic not pay any price for its covert operation, deception and fraudulence, but it was rewarded with hollow and ongoing negotiations in the international arena for the next decade, which fell right in the interest of the ruling clerics in the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Did the Islamic Republic appreciate these diplomatic negotiations for its deceptive tactic in nuclear proliferation? Well, history shows that Iranian leaders continued to install covert nuclear sites, one of which was revealed seven years later on September 21, 2009. So why we are not learning from history? When will President Obama recognize that the Islamic Republic will not wake up all of sudden and alter all its objetives, dishonesty and covert operations in nuclear fields?</p>
<p>After the 2009 disclosure, again the White House decided to use diplomatic avenues, which were followed by a flimsy and face-saving interim nuclear deal and the release of billions of dollars to the Iranian government hoping that it will give up on its nuclear objectives.</p>
<p>After a 2009 disclosure of another nuclear site by IAEA, Ayatollah Ali Khemnei, the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the ruling clerics wanted to buy time. They were capable of stalling until now, while installing more centrifuges (currently 19,000) and obtaining high-level enriched uranium. Currently, the objective of the Islamic Republic is to strike a flimsy final and comprehensive nuclear deal that will lead to the lifting of sanctions. Simultaneously, Iran will cheat its way to obtain nuclear weapons because there is no way that IAEA and the international community would be capable of fully monitoring all nuclear activities and its nuances inside the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Incentives, removal of sanctions, and more respect are not going to change the behavior of the Islamic Republic. Apparently, rewarding the Islamic Republic has led to the emboldening of the Iranian government, increasing threats from its leaders, and the continuation of dishonesty. If we look at the dishonesty and deceptive strategies that Iranian leaders have utilized with regard to its nuclear program in the last decade, it becomes clear that this government is not going to give up its objectives of obtaining a nuclear bomb, give up exerting its regional hegemonic ambitions, proclaiming to be the leader of the Shiite and Muslims in the World, and give up its opposition to the US and Israel foreign policies in the region. The Islamic Republic is not solely a rational state actor based on the standards of international politics, but also an ideological state founded on the principles of the ruling clerics.</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>Obama Secretly Giving In to Iran&#8217;s Nuke Demands</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/obama-secretly-giving-in-to-irans-nuke-demands/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-secretly-giving-in-to-irans-nuke-demands</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2014 04:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242395</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's unprecedented concessions to the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242397" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report-408x350.jpg" alt="Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report" width="321" height="275" /></a>For several reasons, President Obama appears to be desperate to seal a final nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, even if the comprehensive nuclear pact would leave the Iranian leaders with the nuclear infrastructure and required centrifuges to build an atomic bomb. Based on the latest developments, it is clear the Obama administration has steadily become much more lenient and compromising, giving unprecedented concessions to the Islamic Republic, some of which have been kept <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-white-house-iran-20140920-story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">clandestine</span></a>.</p>
<p>As the nuclear talks continue between Iranian leaders and representatives from the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the nuclear negotiations have turned primarily into a show between the United States and the Islamic Republic. Increasingly, Iranian and American politicians from both sides have been holding bilateral talks in order to strike a nuclear deal by the extended deadline of November 24.</p>
<p>The US and Iran appear to be the two major players in the nuclear talks, as the White House began reshaping the nuclear negotiations which fall right into the interests of Iranian politicians.</p>
<p>First of all, the main demand of the United States and other world powers was that the Islamic Republic had to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure for the United Nations Security Council to remove the four rounds of economic and political sanctions on Iran. Dismantlement of the major nuclear facilities would give the international community a considerable amount of relief from Iran’s potential to develop an atomic bomb anytime soon.</p>
<p>In the past months, the nuclear talks became stagnant due to the fact that Iranian leaders, particularly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, suggested that they will not give an inch or dismantle their nuclear infrastructure.</p>
<p>How did President Obama respond to Iranian leaders’ zero sum political game and uncompromising standpoint? Intriguingly, President Obama made a decision to secretly lower the international community&#8217;s demands to satisfy the Iranian nuclear team’s demands. It is key to point out that the decision he made highlights a significant shift in nuclear negotiations. The White House proposed that the Islamic Republic disconnect rather than dismantle its centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium and obtain a nuclear bomb. This is a critical shift in the American position towards Iran’s nuclear defiance.</p>
<p>President Obama’s proposal to the Islamic Republic would in fact leave Iranian leaders with all their nuclear infrastructure they have so far developed. Iranian leaders would also be capable of secretly continuing to enrich uranium through bypassing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s rules. In addition, since the nuclear infrastructure and centrifuges would remain almost intact, the Islamic Republic would be capable of resuming its nuclear activities anytime they desire in the future; this can occur potentially after economic sanctions were removed and Iran’s objective achieved.</p>
<p>President Obama’s offer to the Iranian leaders was kept secret from the public and US Congress as well. The proposal was disclosed by the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who held private conversations with U.S. experts in New York.</p>
<p>After President Obama’s proposal was revealed, Congress understandably raised a series of concerns. Senator Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) initiated a letter, which included thirty other Senators, to Secretary of State John Kerry, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-white-house-iran-20140920-story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pointing out</span></a> that the Obama administration “may now be offering troubling nuclear concessions to Iran in the hopes of rapidly concluding negotiations for a &#8216;deal.&#8217;”</p>
<p>President Obama will be in office for a few more years, but if the final nuclear deal is signed based on President Obama’s proposal, it will pose an unprecedented danger and an irresolvable global issue with regard to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threat as well as Tehran’s ideological and hegemonic ambitions.</p>
<p>Numerous reasons may be behind President Obama’s leniency, priority changes and determination to strike a final nuclear deal with Iran. First of all, Obama cannot run for reelection. As a result, a flimsy nuclear deal &#8212; which would leave the Islamic Republic with a path to develop a nuclear bomb &#8212; would not affect his political career. Secondly, President Obama can add another achievement to his political career and history for being the first US President to seal a final nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.</p>
<p>Third, President Obama’s leadership has always been weak when it comes to dealing with Iran’s Supreme Leader and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian leaders have masterfully taken advantage of his leaderless personality. The Islamic Republic is even attempting to get more concessions from the White House by linking its fight against the Islamic State with the nuclear negations as a trade off. Apparently, all odds are in favor of the Iranian leaders so far as they are cognizant of that fact that they are facing a lenient and weak US President and as they are increasingly and steadily increasing their leverage over the US.</p>
<p>President Obama’s proposal and leniency would grant Ayatollah Khamenei what he desires: removal of economic sanctions as well as maintaining the right the enrich uranium; build an atomic bomb.</p>
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		<title>Netanyahu’s Statements and Policies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/netanyahus-statements-and-policies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=netanyahus-statements-and-policies</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:50:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meeting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242293</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Decoding the Israeli prime minister's message to the Obama administration. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5618435092089408259no.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242294" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5618435092089408259no.jpg" alt="5618435092089408259no" width="315" height="200" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Netanyahus-statements-and-policies-377946">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Although commentators overlooked it, the Obama administration did it again. They blindsided Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the eve of his trip to Washington.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The last time it happened was in May 2011 when US President Barack Obama set out his policy toward Israel and the Palestinians as Netanyahu was in flight, en route to Washington to meet with him.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In that speech Obama announced his support for an essentially full Israeli withdrawal to the entirely indefensible 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Obama adopted this position despite the fact that Netanyahu and the Israeli public rejected it and viewed it as a threat to Israel’s survival.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This time the Obama administration didn’t blindside Israel on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit with another hostile pronouncement in relation to the Palestinians. This time they did so in relation to Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In an address on Saturday night before the National Iranian-American Council, Phillip Gordon, the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East, said that if US-Iranian talks on Iran’s nuclear weapons program lead to an agreement, they can pave the way for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In his words, “A nuclear agreement could begin a multi-generational process that could lead to a new relationship between our countries.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Gordon’s statement was a blunt departure from the White House’s previous position that the only gain Iran would make by obeying binding UN Security Council resolutions that prohibit the Islamic theocracy from enriching uranium would be the abrogation of economic sanctions that were adopted to force Iran to end its illicit nuclear activities.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In accordance with US law, diplomatic relations with Iran are contingent on Iran’s cessation of support for terrorist organizations and other unlawful activities.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In his remarks to NIAC – a group that the vast majority of Iranian-Americans view as the unofficial lobby of the Iranian regime – Gordon said that due to the importance of the nuclear issue, to make progress in nuclear talks, the US is willing to ignore Iran’s support for terrorism and other crimes.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In his words, “The nuclear issue is too important to subordinate to a complete transformation of Iran internally.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">FACED WITH this boldfaced US declaration that it will not only do nothing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, but is also endorsing continued Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah, Netanyahu opted to avoid yet another direct confrontation with the White House. Rather than directly call the administration out for its role in enabling Iran to become a nuclear state, Netanyahu sufficed with his usual rhetoric. He gently chided Obama for his pro-Iranian policy during his public remarks at the White House. And in all of his public statements, Netanyahu underlined how and why Iran and its nuclear weapons program are a greater threat to the free world than Islamic State.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There are probably two reasons for Netanyahu’s reticence. First, a confrontation would be futile.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Even before Gordon’s speech, it was obvious to Netanyahu that Obama’s goal is not to prevent Iran from getting nuclear bombs. The goal of Obama’s Iran policy is to reinstate US-Iranian relations.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama sees himself as a reincarnation of Richard Nixon. He will be for US-Iranian relations what Nixon was for US relations with Communist China.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama doesn’t mind if Iran has a bomb in the basement so long as he can drink tea with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the drawing room.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Given Obama’s absolute commitment to his goal, there was no point in having a confrontation with him. Netanyahu’s rejection of Obama’s position, made through his repeated warnings, was directed toward other ears. Netanyahu’s statements and warning were directed toward the American media, the American public and the American political class. His goal is to develop and strengthen support for an Israeli policy that would run counter to Obama’s policy of embracing Iran even at the cost of enabling Iran to become a nuclear power.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The only problem with Netanyahu’s rhetoric is that it isn’t credible. At this point, it is hard to believe Netanyahu has a policy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During his five-and-a-half years in office, Netanyahu has taken only sporadic action against Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The cumulative impact of those actions has been limited, in part due to the Obama administration’s policy of leaking Israeli operations to the media.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Moreover, in light of the episodic nature of these actions, it is hard to view them as integrated components of an overall strategy whose aim is to destroy or significantly degrade Iran’s nuclear installations. In other words, it doesn’t appear that Israel has a policy of any kind for dealing with Iran’s nuclear weapons program.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">All we have is Netanyahu’s Churchillian rhetoric, which in itself will do nothing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As the media analysts were quick to point out, whereas Netanyahu sought to focus his discussions with Obama on Iran, Obama was keen to focus his discussions with Netanyahu on the Palestinians.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu’s unwillingness to focus specifically on the Palestinian issue was notable mainly because in his limited remarks on the issue, he signaled that he has a new strategic vision and policy for contending with the Palestinian conflict with Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The first aspect of Netanyahu’s apparently emerging policy came out on Monday during his speech at the UN General Assembly. There Netanyahu criticized PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas more honestly and assertively than he ever has before.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Slamming Abbas for his libelous charge that Israel enacted a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, Netanyahu said that the deranged moral universe in which Israel can be accused of genocide is “the same moral universe where a man [Abbas] who wrote a dissertation of lies about the Holocaust, and who insists on a Palestine free of Jews, judenrein, can stand at the podium and shamelessly accuse Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu then further distanced himself from the PLO-centric framework for building peaceful relations between Israel and its neighbors. He noted that the rise of Sunni jihadist forces and the Iranian nuclear threat have brought major Sunni Arab states to the conclusion that their best bet is to work with Israel to meet and surmount the growing dangers. This new regional landscape in turn can provide a means of resolving the Palestinian conflict with Israel in a manner that will not endanger Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu’s suggestion, repeated at the White House Wednesday, that neighboring Arab states may develop new means of resolving the Palestinian issue, rings true in light of the diplomatic support Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gave Israel in its war against Hamas this summer. And even though the Egyptian government later denied the reports, talk persists that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi did in fact offer the Palestinians sovereignty over a large swathe of Sinai adjacent to Gaza as a means of establishing a viable Palestinian state without sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The assessment that a policy is slowly being developed along these lines was reinforced on Tuesday by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Repeating Netanyahu’s reference to a regional alliance structure that can be used to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel, Ya’alon said that it is irrational to even consider an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria in the aftermath of the war in Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The emerging policy apparently involves the application of Israeli sovereignty over all or parts of Judea and Samaria, along the lines I set out in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, in combination with an Egyptian offer of Sinai territory to the Palestinians in conjunction with the demilitarization of Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From the administration’s behavior following Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday, we learned that the administration is adamantly opposed to any revision of the current PLO-centric framework, which is predicated on Israeli concessions to an intransigent PLO.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Shortly after Netanyahu left the White House, the administration bitterly attacked and threatened Israel, because the Jewish state refuses to obey the administration and deny Jews the right to buy and own property in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. The administration was enraged because in line with Israel’s refusal to adopt anti-Semitic housing policies, the Jerusalem Planning Board approved the construction of housing for Jews and Arabs in the city.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Also on Wednesday, Channel 10 reported that Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to scuttle the developing Israeli alliance with Egypt and other anti-jihadist Sunni states by bringing Qatar, Hamas’s principal Sunni state-sponsor, into the mix. Kerry is reportedly trying to organize a regional peace conference that would coerce Israel into accepting the so-called Saudi Peace Initiative from 2002. That initiative would require Israel to surrender to all the PLO’s territorial demands and accept millions of foreign, hostile Arabs into its shrunken, indefensible territory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In light of Obama’s absolute commitment to the anti-Israel, PLO-centric policy model for dealing with the Palestinian rejection of Israel, for the next two years there will be no change in US policy on the issue.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Under these circumstances, Netanyahu’s task is to lay the foundation in Washington for support for an Israeli policy that abandons the PLO as a partner and moves beyond the failed two-state model. Here, Netanyahu’s statements at the UN and the White House indicate that this is the path he has embarked upon.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately, while Netanyahu may prefer to lay the groundwork for a new policy indirectly and cautiously, Abbas’s bid to convince the US to support the passage of a Security Council resolution that would require Israel to withdraw from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem a week after the 2016 presidential elections will likely force Netanyahu present an alternative to the PLO-centric two-state plan sooner rather than later.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">After the 2016 elections, Obama will be unconstrained by concerns for Democratic candidates.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Most of the Security Council resolutions against Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria were passed after the 1980 presidential elections when the then lame duck Jimmy Carter felt free to attack Israel at will.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To avoid a repetition of that experience in late 2016, Netanyahu will have to offer an alternative to the failed two-state plan ahead of the 2016 presidential nominating conventions.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu’s statements in the US this week present us with a mixed picture of his leadership.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu appears more resolute on the Palestinian threat than he has in the past. This is a good thing. But on the most pressing threat Israel faces today, his strong words rang hollow. The only way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power is for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. Until Israel adopts a policy for doing so, words will not suffice.</span></p>
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		<title>The Islamic Republic vs. the Islamic State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-vs-the-islamic-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-republic-vs-the-islamic-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2014 04:10:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241925</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Which is the bigger threat? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/APTOPIX-UN-General-As_Horo-e1411668283485.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241926" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/APTOPIX-UN-General-As_Horo-e1411668283485-384x350.jpg" alt="APTOPIX-UN-General-As_Horo-e1411668283485" width="317" height="289" /></a>Although the Islamic State has gained the global spotlight in the media due to its brutality and barbarism, it is critical not to be distracted from the larger threat posed from the ruling Ayatollahs and politicians in the Islamic Republic of Iran. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated in an interview with NPR, Iran &#8220;is a bigger problem than ISIS.&#8221;</p>
<p>On other other hand, while Iranian leaders proclaim that they are fighting the Islamic State, there are many similarities between the Islamic Republic and the Islamic State. Let us unravel the commonalities and differences between the Islamic Republic and the Islamic State from several angles such as ideological, strategic, geopolitical, military, as well as human rights perspectives.</p>
<p>Ideologically and religiously speaking, although the fighters of the Islamic State are predominantly Sunnis and the ruling politicians of Islamic Republic of Iran are Shiite, there exist several underlying similarities between these two entities.</p>
<p>Both groups believe that Islam should be a dominant element in the political, social, cultural and economic affairs of the territories they govern. By Islam, they mean the literal application of Quranic verses and the Hadith &#8212; Muhammad’s sayings, his way of life, etc.</p>
<p>When it comes to specific Islamic and Shari’a laws and rules, Iran and ISIS apply the same doctrine. For example, if an adulterer is arrested, she or he should be stoned. Body amputations, tortures, rapes, executions, religious discriminations,  oppressions, and the elimination of any one who disagrees with their ideology are prevalent in the activities of both groups.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Islamic Republic has enshrined its Islamic and Shari’a laws in its Islamic judiciary, legislative, and executive branches, in a more sophisticated matter in order to legitimize its actions and in order to avert any global outcry and attention.</p>
<p>Both the Islamic Republic and the Islamic State are attempting to spread their version of Islam to other territories in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. The Ayatollahs in Iran fulfill this action in a more clandestine way by funding Shiite and religious schools and movements (such as Hezbollah) in other countries, as well as by interfering in the domestic affairs of other nations through their Quds forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Islamic State carries out these objectives by their offensive attacks to various territories.</p>
<p>In other words, the religious objective of both groups is maintaining an Islamic state, ruling by the religion of Islam and Muhammad, and spreading their version of Islam to other nations.</p>
<p>When it comes to human rights violations, the Islamic Republic enjoys a much heftier file of  human rights abuses with regard to executions, persecution of religious minorities, tortures, amputations, etc. While the Islamic State has been carrying out these atrocities in the last few years, the Islamic Republic began its barbarism with its establishment in 1979.</p>
<p>Militarily speaking, the Islamic Republic of Iran poses a much more serious threat than the Islamic State due to the fact that Iranian clerics possess much more stronger and sophisticated armies, ballistic missiles (which can reach Israel), nuclear programs, and defense systems.</p>
<p>While it remains to be seen whether the Islamist militants of the Islamic State are yet capable of establishing a state and capturing more territories, the Islamic Republic had already established a state run by Islamic doctrine of Shiism, with a large territories – approximately 640,000 square miles excluding their influence and dominance in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. As Kissinger pointed out,</p>
<blockquote><p>The borders of the settlement of 1919-&#8217;20 are essentially collapsing… That gives Iran a very powerful level from a strategic point of view. I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can became a strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS — important as it is — is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran.</p></blockquote>
<p>Strategically speaking, while the Islamic State might pose some threats in some parts of Iraq, the Islamic Republic presents a more serious threat through its control over the Strait of Hormoz, where approximately 20 percent of the world’s petroleum (and nearly 35% of the total petroleum traded through sea), passes through the strait. Iran has threatened repeatedly that it will shut down the strait. Iran already possess an advanced nuclear program that is a step away from developing an atomic bomb. In addition, the Islamic Republic is quietly attempting to significantly alter the military balance of power in the Gulf more to its favor. As <a href="http://www.janes.com/article/42880/pentagon-report-says-iran-is-fielding-anti-ship-ballistic-missiles"><span style="color: #0433ff;">IHS Jane&#8217;s Defence Weekly</span></a> stated, “Iran&#8217;s Khalij Fars anti-ship ballistic missile (AShBM) &#8211; a weapon that could shift the military balance in the Gulf region &#8211; is being delivered to operational units, according to the US Department of Defense&#8217;s annual report to Congress on the Islamic Republic&#8217;s military capabilities.&#8221;</p>
<p>While the politicians and mainstream media have concentrated on the threat of the Islamic State, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is a much more critical threat militarily, strategically, religiously and ideologically, is quietly enjoying and continuing its nuclear program and developing more sophisticated anti-ship ballistic missile, and weaponries which are also being exported to other terrorist groups.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, the Islamic State has averted the world&#8217;s attention from the Islamic Republic’s efforts to build an atomic bomb. This year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York focused mainly on the threat of the Islamic State, while the Islamic Republic enjoyed not being criticized for its nuclear program. As Israel’s ambassador to the United States pointed out, a nuclear Iran is “<a href="http://azjewishpost.com/2014/israeli-envoy-nuclear-iran-is-a-thousand-times-more-dangerous-than-isis/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">thousand times</span></a>” more dangerous to the world than the Islamic State. Nevertheless, we still need to wait for a robust leadership from the United States to take a strong stance against the Ayatollahs and ruling politicians in Iran who continue to carry out gregarious human rights abuses, support terrorism, and threaten the security of other nations.</p>
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		<title>Iran&#8217;s Quiet Military Build Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/irans-quiet-military-build-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-quiet-military-build-up</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2014 04:10:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Behind the Islamic Republic's softened rhetoric. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Irans-military-drill.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240432" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Irans-military-drill-450x321.jpg" alt="Irans-military-drill" width="278" height="198" /></a>The Islamic Republic and the Ayatollahs have mastered a new tactic and strategy to achieve their ideological, geopolitical, hegemonic and strategic objectives: speak softly on the international arena, while quietly building up weapons and arm more militia groups.</p>
<p>While Iran’s state media outlets and Iranian officials had previously boasted about their military accomplishments, drone capabilities, nuclear technology, and power periodically, they have recently toned down their language and publicity. But does that mean the ruling Ayatollahs have given up on their nuclear ambitions to build a nuclear bomb and stopped their military operations and interference in other states?</p>
<p>In fact, a recent report reveals that the Islamic Republic continues to pursue the same geopolitical and strategic policies in order to achieve its objectives. According to a <a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iranmilitary.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">classified Pentagon assessment</span></a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Iran has not substantively changed its national security and military strategies over the past year; however, Tehran has adjusted some of its tactics to achieve its enduring objectives. President Hasan Ruhani&#8217;s international message of moderation and pragmatism is intended to support these objectives: to preserve the Supreme Leader&#8217;s rule, counter Western influence, and establish Iran as the dominant regional power. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei remains unchallenged atop Iran&#8217;s power structure as both the political-spiritual guide and the commander in chief of the armed forces.</p></blockquote>
<p>Those who believe that the Islamic Republic is going to change its fundamental ideological, military, strategic, and hegemonic ambitions, are fooling themselves and they are not cognizant of the major pillars upon which this Islamist regime is founded upon. More recently, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) has covertly, tremendously increased its political and military influence in several countries in the region including in Iraq and Syria. Iranian leaders have also intensified their ties with Hezbollah and ratcheted up their arms delivery to Hamas. In addition, the Iranian military is <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184542"><span style="color: #0433ff;">delivering weapons</span></a> to Judea and Samaria in order to ensure “the annihilation of the Zionist regime.”</p>
<p>According to the classified Pentagon assessment, IRGC-QF has built up its capabilities to carry out a terrorist attack in foreign countries as well:</p>
<blockquote><p>Iran&#8217;s covert activities appear to be continuing unabated in countries such as Syria and Iraq. Despite Iran&#8217;s public denials, for example, other information suggests Iran is increasingly involved, along with Lebanese Hizballah, in the Syria conflict. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) remains a key tool of Iran&#8217;s foreign policy and power projection, in Syria and beyond. IRGC-QF has continued efforts to improve its access within foreign countries and its ability to conduct terrorist attacks.</p></blockquote>
<p>When it comes to Iran’s nuclear defiance, long-range missiles, and technological nuclear capabilities, Iran has not given up on its ambition to build a nuclear bomb,  even after the nuclear interim deal between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, plus Germany) was reached. <a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iranmilitary.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Accordingly</span></a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Iran continues to develop technological capabilities that could be applicable to nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, which could be adapted to deliver nuclear weapons, should Iran&#8217;s leadership decide to do so. On 24 November, 2013, Iran agreed to a Joint Plan of Action (JPA) with the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+ 1) that included enhanced monitoring of lran&#8217; s nuclear facilities and a six-month halt to enrichment activities over 5 percent and further advances on the IR-40 Heavy Water Research Reactor. In public statements, some Iranian officials have minimized the JPA&#8217;s impact on the nuclear program.</p></blockquote>
<p>In addition, while Iranian leaders and the Mullahs previously publicly threatened the world claiming that they would block or cause damage to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran’s recent toning down of threats does not necessarily mean that the Ayatollah and ruling clerics have changed their strategy and goals.</p>
<p>The Strait of Hormuz is considered to be one of the most crucial strategic spots for global and international trade.  Approximately 20 percent of the world&#8217;s petroleum, and (nearly 35% of the total petroleum traded through sea), passes through the Strait. Any interference or military attacks on the Strait of Hormuz would skyrocket the price of oil and petroleum around the world, affecting the life of every citizen. The approximate price of a gallon of petrol in the gas stations ($4) can double or even climb to $10 a gallon.</p>
<p>Iranian leaders are increasing their abilities in “lethal symmetric and asymmetric weapon systems” as well as “anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities” in order to strengthen control over the Strait of Hormuz. As the Pentagon assessment says,</p>
<blockquote><p>Iran continues to develop its anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities to control the Strait of Hormuz and its approaches. Tehran is quietly fielding increasingly lethal symmetric and asymmetric weapon systems, including more advanced naval mines, small but capable submarines, coastal defense cruise missile batteries, attack craft, and anti-ship ballistic missiles.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Obama administration needs to act more decisively and quickly before it is too late. If the Islamic Republic continues to build up its military and nuclear capabilities quietly, covertly and without pressure from global powers, it will impose tremendous geopolitical, strategic and economic repercussions for the world. At that point, Iran would be like North Korea, but with the additional capabilities to impact the world economy negatively, as well as play a role in arming more terrorist groups in the region. While recent assessments show that the Ayatollahs are using a different tactic – speak softly, but build up larger weapons and nuclear capabilities covertly &#8212; the Obama administration appears to still be hesitant in taking a decisive and robust stance towards the Iranian regime.</p>
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		<title>Kerry Admits: Iran Negotiations Not Working</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/kerry-admits-iran-negotiations-not-working/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kerry-admits-iran-negotiations-not-working</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:35:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The subtext of the Secretary of State's recent op-ed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/75971004_451204022.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235952" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/75971004_451204022.jpg" alt="_75971004_451204022" width="283" height="239" /></a>In less than two week, the interim nuclear deal will expire, most likely without a final deal being struck between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the G5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany).</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic has been given years to come clean and halt its ideological and regional hegemonic ambitions of obtaining nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the Obama administration believes that we need to give the Islamic Republic another chance, trusting the ruling clerics and the theocracy.</p>
<p>The Ayatollah and Mullahs were given that chance, six months of negotiations, and sanctions relief in oil, metal, and financial sectors— including the flow of billions of dollars to their regime.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry wrote an op-ed in <i>The Washington Post</i> on Tuesday, pointing out that Iranian leaders have not yet made serious decisions although they have been engaged in the negotiations. Kerry wrote, “What will Iran choose? Despite many months of discussion, we don’t know yet. We do know that substantial gaps still exist between what Iran’s negotiators say they are willing to do and what they must do to achieve a comprehensive agreement. We also know that their public optimism about the potential outcome of these negotiations has not been matched, to date, by the positions they have articulated behind closed doors.”</p>
<p>What Kerry is saying is simple: Iran has been buying time and fooling us. It would have been much more sincere if Kerry would have made a straightforward statement, admitting that the Obama administration’s policies towards Iran’s nuclear defiance have failed. Kerry should have frankly said: The Islamic Republic of Iran is buying time to reach breakout nuclear capacity and obtain nuclear bombs, and they have been tricking us for decades.</p>
<p>Kerry appears to be pleading with the Islamic Republic to reach a final nuclear deal while attempting to give the nation a plentitude of incentives. For instance, Kerry wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>If Iran is able to make these choices, there will be positive outcomes for the Iranian people and for their economy. Iran will be able to use its significant scientific know-how for international civil nuclear cooperation. Businesses could return to Iran, bringing much needed investment, jobs and many additional goods and services. Iran could have greater access to the international financial system. The result would be an Iranian economy that begins to grow at a significant and sustainable pace, boosting the standard of living among the Iranian population.</p></blockquote>
<p>In case a final nuclear deal is reached, why would the Secretary of State desire that a theocratic Islamist state— which is ranked the top in human rights abuses, gender discrimination, corruption, dictatorship, lack of freedom of speech, press, and assemble, oppressiveness, and the list goes— join the global economy and “have greater access to the international financial system”? Where are our values of respecting democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, press and civil liberties? Why would the Obama administration desire to strengthen the Islamic Republic— the ruthless cleric leaders, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Shiite militia groups like the Basij, and subsequently Hezbollah, Hamas— by boosting their economy? How will he respond to millions of Iranian women and young people who are fighting against this Islamist theocracy? While many Iranian people view the United States as a model for democracy, what kind of message is John Kerry sending to these citizens? That we do not care about you?</p>
<p>What should the United States do if the negotiations failed? What policies should the Obama administration carry out in order to protects US citizens, preserve its national, strategic, geopolitical and economic interests as well as to support its regional allies, primarily Israel, from an Islamist state armed with nuclear weapons?</p>
<p>In his op-ed, Kerry answered this question: “If Iran is not ready to do so, international sanctions will tighten and Iran’s isolation will deepen.”</p>
<p>But is Kerry serious about this message? Absolutely not.</p>
<p>Based on the Obama administration’s policies, here is what is going to occur: If the negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the G5+1 failed, the Obama administration is going to push the international community to extend the interim nuclear deal. This means that the Mullahs and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will score a victory. In other words, they will have more time to buy with more worthless negotiations, and they will have the required time to obtain the nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>Finally, thanks to Kerry and President Obama, whether a final nuclear deal is reached or not, the Islamist clerics and Iranian leaders come out as winners. If a final nuclear deal is reached, the deal is going to be a flimsy one that will leave a path for the Islamic Republic to obtain nuclear weapons, and Iran will be able to join the international economic system, pushing for their ideological and regional hegemonic power. If a final nuclear deal is not reached, the Islamic Republic will be able to buy more time through the extension and achieve its objectives as well.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s Path to the Bomb</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/charles-bybelezer/irans-path-to-the-bomb/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-path-to-the-bomb</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[And how Washington is enabling it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235875" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg" alt="_76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4" width="256" height="193" /></a>As nuclear negotiations resume between Iran and world powers, it is becoming increasingly clear that any deal signed will be considered negatively by Israel as “ill-conceived.”</p>
<p>According to most estimations, the focus of the talks has shifted from dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, as demanded by Jerusalem, to creating a verification network that would, ideally, grant inspectors unfettered access to Iranian sites to ensure the peaceful nature of its nuclear operations.</p>
<p>In “Inspections: The Weak Link in a Nuclear Agreement with Iran,” Dore Gold, a former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and currently an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questions “the advisability of erecting a comprehensive agreement with Iran that is so highly dependent upon the efficacy of its inspection system and the willingness of Iran to agree to what some analysts call unprecedented levels of transparency.”</p>
<p>The drawbacks should be evident, especially when considering Iran’s ongoing refusal to grant the IAEA access to its Parchin facility, where the UN nuclear watchdog believes Tehran has conducted military research into the development of atomic weapons. That the underground Fordow nuclear plant remained unknown to the West for years casts further doubt on both the Islamic Republic’s trustworthiness and the ability of monitors to keep tabs on the whole of its nuclear activities.</p>
<p>The fact that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently revealed that Iran’s breakout capacity stands at a mere two months should alone obviate any such deal, as this window is surely too close for comfort.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it appears as though the prospects of reversing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear progress by significantly reducing the number of its centrifuges is off the table.</p>
<p>In the prescient words of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, the “talks are not about nuclear capability…they are about Iranian integrity and dignity.”</p>
<p>But the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism is undeserving of respect.</p>
<p>Iran continues to fuel the debauchery in Syria, and now has boots on the ground in Iraq; with the aim there, in conjunction with local Shiite fighters, almost certainly to carve out an Iranian protectorate.</p>
<p>Moreover, the widely held belief that Iran opposes the Sunni terror group ISIS, which is active in both Iraq and Syria, is tenuous at best, with recent reports suggesting the organization may well have been spawn by Tehran.</p>
<p>As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ Pinhas Inbari recently pointed out, “the more time passes, the more this notion of a link between ISIS, Syrian and Iranian intelligence has become fixed in the minds of leading Arab analysts.”</p>
<p>To support this claim, Inbari highlights a February 2012 U.S. Treasury Department document which states that ISIS’ precursor, “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” was provided with money and weapons by Iran. He also raises the intriguing possibility that Iran facilitated ISIS’ advances in Iraq in order to force the U.S. to deepen its coordination with Tehran.</p>
<p>As journalist Melanie Phillips recently noted in the <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, “the Iranian leadership [has] suggested the price of its ‘help’ in ‘stabilizing’ Iraq would be a deal over its nuclear program.”</p>
<p>And this is the key point: The road to an Iranian bomb is paved with instability.</p>
<p>Iran’s carefully crafted plan is two-tiered; first, to foment widespread regional unrest, thereby removing the focus on is illicit nuclear work while, concurrently, convincing the West, which shuns chaos in favor of stability, that the only solution is to engage, rather than defeat, Iran.</p>
<p>And it has worked.</p>
<p>The West has misunderstood, or otherwise turned a blind eye to, Iran’s strategy, devised to buy time while Tehran becomes a nuclear power, which, in turn, will allow it to pursue its ultimate ambition of spreading its Islamic “revolution” throughout the world.</p>
<p>The ramifications of an expansionist, nuclear-armed Iran would be devastating.</p>
<p>Even without the bomb, in the near future Iran will effectively control territory spanning from eastern Iraq to southern Lebanon. The so-called Shi’ite crescent warned of years ago by Jordan&#8217;s King Abdullah is, for all intents and purposes, a <i>fait accompli</i>.</p>
<p>An Iran with atomic bombs can be expected to set its sights on Sunni Gulf states, including Kuwait and Bahrain, where its meddling during the Arab Spring prompted Saudi Arabia to deploy troops to the country.</p>
<p>In fact, Tehran appears to be on a collision course with Riyadh (which, parenthetically, is alleged to have pre-paid atomic weapons waiting for it in Pakistan).</p>
<p>Were tensions to explode between the Mullahs and the House of Saud, the entire region could be drawn into a bloody conflict; not unlike the Sunni-Shiite proxy war currently being waged in Syria, although the effects of a direct clash between the leading purveyors of these competing forms of Islam would, almost inconceivably, be much worse.</p>
<p>Like it or not, such a prospect would force the hand of the United States, which could not sit idly by as its allies, as well as the global oil economy, became endangered.</p>
<p>It is possible that an emboldened Russia would likewise become involved, at the very least as an arms supplier, and perhaps even ascendant China if to protect its growing interests in the region.</p>
<p>Israel, undoubtedly, would be targeted by its enemies and thus dragged into the fighting.</p>
<p>This is but a snapshot of the bleak picture facing the Middle East if Iran goes nuclear, and the Obama administration in particular is seemingly oblivious.</p>
<p>While the U.S. president reiterated last month—this time to his outgoing Israeli counterpart—that he remains committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Obama’s words are no longer trusted by many in Jerusalem given his willingness (eagerness) to treat a rogue regime, ideologically committed to the West’s destruction, as a friend.</p>
<p>Hence the recent dispatch to Washington of Israeli National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, in order to spell out the Jewish state’s positions perhaps for the last time.</p>
<p>Speaking to prior to his departure, Steinitz made clear that a good deal “will not allow the Iranians to remain a nuclear threshold state&#8230;. Our position is that an agreement needs to be based not only on supervision and verification, but on dismantling infrastructure,” he affirmed.</p>
<p>Netanyahu likewise weighed in last week, granting interviews to major television networks in each of the P5+1 countries.</p>
<p>“Inspectors can be deceived,” he warned, before advocating for an agreement along the lines of the Syrian one, which “remove[s] what’s not destroyed.”</p>
<p>But given Obama’s ongoing rapprochement with Iran, Israel&#8217;s expectations are surely being tempered. In fact, it would be surprising if the government was not already intensifying covert preparations for “plan-B.”</p>
<p>What this entails could be revealed as early as July 21st, the day after the deadline for a nuclear agreement is set to expire.</p>
<p>Only then will it become known whether Netanyahu is serious about preventing an Iranian bomb—and the lengths to which he is willing to go in order to do so.</p>
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		<title>The Ayatollah&#8217;s Call to &#8216;Wipe Out&#8217; America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-ayatollahs-call-to-wipe-out-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-ayatollahs-call-to-wipe-out-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 May 2014 04:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khameini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wipe out]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226401</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why anti-American jihad is at the heart of the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/article-0-05679496000005DC-990_634x486.jpg"><img class="wp-image-226404 alignleft" alt="article-0-05679496000005DC-990_634x486" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/article-0-05679496000005DC-990_634x486-450x344.jpg" width="315" height="241" /></a>The West and mainstream media have made significant efforts to paint a moderate picture of the Iranian regime, with amiable sentiments towards Western and American values.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Nevertheless, on Sunday, Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated the Islamic Republic’s real intentions towards the West and particularly the United States during a speech he delivered to the Majlis— the Iranian parliament in Tehran.  He called the fight against the United States as a great and ongoing jihad.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">When a parliamentarian and lawmaker loyal to the regime asked the Supreme Leader how long the nation should carry the jihad against the United States, he responded: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist… This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought… This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.</span></p></blockquote>
<p>From Khamenei’s perspective, the nation should follow this sixth pillar of Islam for Allah’s sake. The end of this jihad for the Iranian regime occurs when his loyalist Muslims wipe out their opposition. Many Western politicians, particularly in the Obama administration, seem to have a benevolent view of the Iranian regime and its president Hassan Rouhani.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Any scholar or policy maker who has closely studied the Islamic Republic of Iran and its ideological and geopolitical foundations is cognizant of the fact that the key principle upon which the Islamic Republic rules is its Jihad— and opposition to the United States as well as Israel. The founding father of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini said, it “is the established principle of Islamic nations and countries who, with the help of Allah, will accept Islam as the only ideology leading to salvation – and they will not go back from this principle in the least.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He added, “in our domestic and foreign policy […] we have set as our goal the world-wide spread of the influence of Islam… We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world. We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The fact is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is centered on this Jihadist and anti-American principle that Ayatollah Khomeini established, and his followers like Ayatollah Khamenei want to carry out these goals. The Iranian regime and its Supreme Leader derive power and legitimacy from this antagonism towards America and from pursuing this Jihad (which requires eliminating America, and other countries such as Israel from the earth). If the Iranian regime changed this fundamental organizing principle, it would not be able to yield power from its loyalists, constituents, and define itself as the “Islamic Republic of Iran.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In other words, Jihad against America is in the roots of the Iranian regime’s ideological and political underpinnings.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Khamenei clearly stated that aggressiveness is required to pursue this Jihad, get rid of America, and achieve Allah’s will, and higher Islamic values and platforms.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Iran’s most powerful man, Khamenei, even extended the Jihad to the whole world to achieve God and Islam’s mission. He stated, “Today’s world is full of thieves and plunderers of human honor, dignity and morality who are equipped with knowledge, wealth and power, and under the pretense of humanity easily commit crimes and betray human ideals and start wars in different parts of the world.” These words come from a leader of a regime drenched in hypocrisy, corruption, oppression, terrorism, and stealing national resources.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One of the principle slogans of the Iranian regime, coined by Ayatollah Khomeini, is “Not the east, not the west.”  It is first and foremost Islam and Allah. He adds, “this is the established principle of Islamic nations and countries who, with the help of Allah, will accept Islam as the only ideology leading to salvation – and they will not go back from this principle in the least.”  The Supreme Leader called America “the devil incarnate [with plans for] evil domination of Iran.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In an unprecedented speech, Khamenei told the parliament that the Islamic Republic needs to arm itself against the “thieves” and “pirates.” He stated, “The reason for continuation of this battle is not the warmongering of the Islamic Republic. Logic and reason command that Iran, in order to pass through a region full of pirates, needs to arm itself and must have the capability to defend itself.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By listening to these remarks from the man who has the final say in foreign policy and every domestic matter in Iran, is it logical to believe that the Islamic Republic is not seeking to obtain nuclear bombs and weapons to achieve and fulfill this Jihad?  What is appalling is not the Supreme Leader’s remarks (because these remarks have been and will be the principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran), but the West’s and the Obama administration’s trust of the Iranian regime and the significant indifference to these public remarks.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Obama administration is close to sealing a comprehensive nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which would urge the United Nations Security Council to remove all sanctions against Iran. This deal will leave the Islamic Republic with a path to reach the nuclear breakaway capacity, arm its nuclear program, and develop nuclear weapons and bombs. The Iranian regime is already receiving billions of dollars from the Obama administration for the interim nuclear deal. In the meantime, Iran is buying time, has improved its economy by ratcheting up oil exports, and is significantly close to becoming a nuclear power considering the amount of centrifuges it possesses. According to Iran&#8217;s ISNA News Agency, an Iranian official was quoted this week as saying that Russia has also agreed to build eight new nuclear reactors in the Islamic Republic. Russia built Iran’s first nuclear reactor in Bushehr.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The salient issue is that the major pillar, religious and political foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the endless Jihad against the United States and Americans till there is no America. This ideological battle will not alter as long as the Mullahs, Ayatollah, and Iranian regime exercise their power. The objective is to achieve this God’s mission, and the higher Islamic principle of Jihad.</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>Iran and the Relevance of Purim</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/iran-and-the-relevance-of-purim/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-and-the-relevance-of-purim</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2014 04:02:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Esther]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[purim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rouhani]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221673</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The eerie parallels of today to the Persian Empire's attack on the Jewish people. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/f8e349eb-fba0-436b-a345-7a6f0685ac47-460x276.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221674" alt="Hassan Rouhani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/f8e349eb-fba0-436b-a345-7a6f0685ac47-460x276.jpg" width="281" height="218" /></a>As Jews worldwide and especially in Israel, celebrated the holiday of Purim (lots) last week, a sense of deja vu was in the air. Contemporary affairs evoked echoes of the text read by Jews in the Scroll of Esther. Haman, the Persian “Prime Minister,” under the Emperorship of Ahaseurus (presumed to be Xerxes I, King of Persia and Media) set out to annihilate the Jewish people in and around </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/265,56975/When-did-the-Purim-story-take-place.html">337 BCE</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Haman convinced Ahaseurus to endorse an edict permitting him to commit genocide against the Jews in the Persian Empire, a form of the Final Solution to the Jewish question in those days. The reading of Haman’s call to eliminate the Jews is an eerie reminder to Israeli Jews of how some things have not changed. The recent president of Iran (formerly Persia), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had a similar call to “wipe the Jewish State off the map.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While Ahaseurus was made to understand that he had made a mistake by his beloved wife Esther, he could not reverse his decree. He therefore permitted the Jewish people to defend themselves against those Persians who had set out to kill the Jews by engaging in what we refer to today as a pre-emptive attack.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Today, unlike the time of Esther, Mordechai, and Ahaseurus, there is no Iranian leader that would stop the genocidal threats against Israel, or refrain from propagating anti-Semitism in Iran. In fact, the Iranian Supreme Leader himself, Ali Khamenei, is plotting the very demise of the Jewish state. Deliverance for today’s Jews will not come from a benevolent Iranian leader, nor will it come from the leader of the free world, President Barack Obama. Rather it will come, as in the days of Esther, in the form of a pre-emptive attack; one that will capitalize on the vulnerabilities of the Khamenei-Rouhani regime.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Iran, much like Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, is not a homogeneous society. Close to 50% of Iran’s population of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://countryeconomy.com/demography/population/iran">76.4</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> million (as of the end of 2012) is non-Persian. They include ethnic minorities such as Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, and Baluch. The Islamic Republic of Iran under the Ayatollahs fostered discord and enmity in dealing with its diverse ethnic minorities. This will impact the regime’s ability to mobilize for war with Israel and the West should the interim agreement between the six world powers (U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) and Iran, signed in November, 2013, fail. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Under the interim agreement, Iran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear program in return for relief from some sanctions. The sanctions relief commenced in January, 2014, but it is still unclear as to how much of the nuclear program the Iranians have “rolled back” or are willing to roll back. According to Wendy Sherman, a senior State Department official and lead negotiator for the U.S. on the interim deal, any final agreement will be contingent on Iran taking </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.kcra.com/national/p51-and-iran-agree-on-nuclear-talks-framework/24575212">concrete</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and verifiable steps to prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. Yet, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi charged that the “[h]alting of Iran’s nuclear program and dismantling Iran’s nuclear facilities are not on the agenda.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The delusional Western powers will learn soon enough that Tehran is simply buying time until it can produce a nuclear weapon. Israel cannot wait until that happens. However, a singular Israeli attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran will only delay the Iranian nuclear program. What the free world, and the U.S. in particular, should strive for is regime change. Removing the dangerous &#8220;messianic clerics&#8221; of Tehran from power and creating a multi-ethnic democratic Iranian regime is the wish of not only the oppressed ethnic and religious minorities (Sunni-Muslim, Christians, Bahai, and Jews) in Iran, but also the dream of the educated Persian middle-class that has been devastated by the Islamic Republic. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Sunni-Muslim Baluch in southeastern Iran have taken up arms against the regime of the Ayatollahs, as did the Sunni-Muslim Kurds in north-central western Iran, and the mostly Shiite Arabs known as Ahwazis (named after the capital of the southwestern province of Khuzestan).  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israel’s Arutz Sheva reported on December 18, 2013 that “[t]hree members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have been killed in a roadside bomb in Iranian occupied Baluchistan according to the Iranian media.” Earlier in October, Baluch rebels killed 14 Iranian border guards. In retaliation, the Iranian regime hanged 16 Baluch fighters. Baluch rebels also gunned down a public prosecutor and his driver in the city of Zabol. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Baluch struggle against the Iranian regime for an independent Baluchistan has resulted in an upswing in Tehran’s severe oppression and discrimination against the Sunni Baluch. Western Baluchistan was annexed to Iran in 1928. Since the fall of the Shah, the Ayatollahs have forbidden the use of the Baluch language, and have targeted the region for deliberate economic neglect and discrimination in employment. Serious fighting between the Baluch nationalists and the IRGC erupted in 2006.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Kurds, a much larger minority in Iran, have given the Tehran regime a great deal of trouble. The Iran-based Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) began fighting the IRGC in 2004, after Iranian security forces fired on Kurdish demonstrators, killing 10 people. In 2014, PJAK was the only Kurdish group still waging an armed struggle against the Iranian regime. According to </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Rudaw, </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Iranian Kurdish youth were “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/23012014">disappointed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> with the traditional Kurdish parties fighting the Tehran regime, because they left Iranian territory in the 1980’s to take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan.” One such party was the Freedom party of Hussein Yazderpana (this writer hosted him in New York City). These parties that moved to Iraq were forced to renounce attacks against the Iranian military and the IRGC to avoid reprisals against Iraqi Kurdistan thereby creating a vacuum that was filled by the PKK-related PJAK. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Vera Eccarius-Kelly, a researcher on Kurdish Diaspora and Professor of Comparative Politics at Siena College in New York, suggested that “Iran’s brutality has provided the PJAK with a level of legitimacy among young Kurds, but the current thaw in relations between the U.S. government and the Iranian regime signals an extremely difficult future for the Kurdish fighter in Iran.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In April 2005, the tensions between Ahwazi Arabs and the Tehran regime boiled to a head with the leak of a memorandum from the office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran that set forth a policy aimed at changing the ethnic makeup of Khuzestan province. Ahwazi Arab demonstrators took to the streets of Ahvaz to protest the memorandum. Over the course of the next two weeks, the protests quickly spread through major cities and towns in the rest of the province and the Iranian government reacted with brute force. The Ahwazis responded by taking up arms and attempting to assassinate Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Ahwaz.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There is a saying in Hebrew that translates to “not every day is Purim,” and an understanding that miracles do not occur twice the same way. The miracle in our modern time will be the uprising against the Islamic regime in Tehran by the minorities who together, with the economically and politically repressed Iranians, will no longer endure the Hamans that rule them. The educated Iranian people are pro-American, even pro-Israel, and they seek a more democratic society – a free and less corrupt economy, unlike the one that is currently dominated by cronies of the regime and the IRGC. Nepotism and corruption on one hand, high unemployment and inflation on the other, are causing rising frustration among the young people of Iran.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The gist of the Purim story is the pre-emptive strike by the Jews against Haman and his cohorts. This time, the miracle would be a coordinated pre-emptive strike by the Iranian people and the Israeli Air Force that will destroy the regime’s assets, but would leave most Iranian people safe, and ultimately free.  </span></p>
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		<title>China and Iran Draw Conclusions on Crimea</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/china-and-iran-draw-conclusions-on-crimea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=china-and-iran-draw-conclusions-on-crimea</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2014 04:20:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crimea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Aggressive powers see an opportunity. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/china_iran_flag.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221512" alt="china_iran_flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/china_iran_flag.jpg" width="296" height="197" /></a></span>As Putin moves to consolidate his hold on Crimea, concern grows that Russia’s expansionist appetite will not be satiated with conquest of the peninsula. Ukraine fears that Putin’s next move will entail seizure of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian sentiment remains high. Some news outlets intimated that the tiny nation of Estonia, once part of the Soviet Union <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/19/us-russia-estonia-idUSBREA2I1J620140319">may be next</a> on Russia’s wish list with reports about Russia’s concern over the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltic country.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Some, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://time.com/13310/clinton-walks-back-russia-nazi-comparison/">she later backtracked</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">) and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird have </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-harper-john-baird-compare-russia-to-ww-ii-era-germany-1.2559643">compared</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Russia’s actions in Crimea with those of Nazi Germany and its unlawful seizure of Sudetenland in 1938, suggesting correctly that aggression unchecked will simply lead to more aggression. While there are certainly similarities between the two scenarios in that the leaders of both nations feigned concern for their kinsmen as the impetus for invading the sovereign territory of another nation, the similarities stop there.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hitler was a madman, prone to irrational and rash decisions. He was infamous for refusing advice offered by seasoned Prussian military officers infinitely more capable than his limited mental abilities. Putin, by contrast is cold, cunning and calculated. An ex-KGB officer, Putin is by definition a cautious, analytical man who does not embark on an endeavor without thinking it through. Hence, when his troops entered Crimea, they did not bear any insignias that would betray their nationality thus gaining a measure of plausible deniability. While a confused NATO was scrambling to react to rapid developments, Putin had already thought things through to the minutest detail.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Putin realizes that any further moves into Ukraine will likely invite biting sanctions and other political repercussions and any move on the Baltic countries will provoke direct confrontation with NATO. Thus, the Ukrainian crisis will end in Crimea and go no further. Putin recognizes that he’s pushed the Crimean envelope as far as it could go and he is satisfied with this result. The aggressor has attained its objective while at the same time exposing and highlighting a feckless American foreign policy.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Events in Crimea and the Obama administration’s impotence in dealing with aggression have also had far-reaching, negative global implications. There are two nations watching events unfold with keen interest. China and Iran, two dictatorial countries with imperialistic and expansionist agendas, can draw comfort from a pusillanimous American foreign policy.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the South and East China seas, China is aggressively seeking to expand its maritime borders. It has made significant headway in both these areas with a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/02/19/china-preps-military-for-short-sharp-war-with-japan-says-us-navy/">muscular military approach</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> designed to intimidate American regional allies like Japan and the Philippines. America’s feeble response to Putin’s aggression in Crimea will only serve to embolden a resurgent and aggressive China, making the likelihood of a regional war in that neglected theatre a real possibility.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The situation with respect to Iran is even more acute. Iran is arguably the greatest threat to world peace since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, providing financial and military support to groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-sees-new-weapon-in-iraq-iranian-efps/">Iraqi insurgents</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and Hezbollah. Its terror tentacles have extended beyond the Mideast to Europe, South Asia, Africa and the Americas and its </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-maduro-respond">connection to narco-terrorism</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> is well established.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Israel’s </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://defense-update.com/20140305_israel_sizes_shipload_of_heavy_rocket.html">recent naval interception</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of the Klos-C, a terror bound cargo vessel laden with Iranian arms, including some forty, long-range M-302 rockets, only serves to underscore the scheming nature and menace posed by that pariah nation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But it is Iran’s nuclear ambitions coupled with its aggressive ballistic missile program that are most worrisome, with implications far beyond the region.  Iran is now cognizant of the fact that the Obama administration, exercising what John McCain so aptly described as a “feckless” foreign policy, will do nothing to thwart the Islamic Republic from achieving breakout capacity. Once that occurs, the free world will be at the mercy of an apocalyptic Islamic theocracy and that should be a source of concern for us all.</span></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>
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		<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>Iran Answers Appeasement with Warships</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/iran-answers-appeasement-with-warships/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-answers-appeasement-with-warships</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2014 05:52:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218397</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The frightening failure of Obama's nuclear weapons deal with the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiList_of_current_ships_of_the_Iranian_Navy-antiship-missile-noor-c802Frigates-Alvand-Moudge-Corvettes-Bayandor-Hamzeh5-Missile-Craft-Houdong-KamanSina-Patrol-Coastal-Pa-10.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218398" alt="httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiList_of_current_ships_of_the_Iranian_Navy  antiship missile noor c802Frigates Alvand Moudge Corvettes Bayandor Hamzeh5 Missile Craft Houdong KamanSina Patrol Coastal Pa (10)" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiList_of_current_ships_of_the_Iranian_Navy-antiship-missile-noor-c802Frigates-Alvand-Moudge-Corvettes-Bayandor-Hamzeh5-Missile-Craft-Houdong-KamanSina-Patrol-Coastal-Pa-10-450x322.jpg" width="315" height="225" /></a>Despite the alleged &#8220;good faith&#8221; negotiations </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/world/middleeast/kerry-and-iran-minister-confer-on-nuclear-issue.html?_r=0">taking</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> place between Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry, </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">the world&#8217;s foremost state sponsor of terror is now testing the United States&#8217; mettle. Iranian warships initially </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-iranian-warships-en-route-to-atlantic/">sent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on their first trip to the Atlantic Ocean in January will now travel close to U.S. maritime borders. The move was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAN_US_NAVY?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2014-02-08-10-14-18">revealed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Saturday by a senior Iranian naval commander.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Iran’s military fleet is approaching the United States’ maritime borders, and this move has a message,” said Adm. Afshin Rezayee Haddad of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet,  according to Iran&#8217;s Fars news agency. Fars further noted that Iran had warned the Obama administration they would initiate the deployment &#8220;in the next few years” back in September of 2012. At the time, Iran’s Navy Commander R.-Adm. Habibollah Sayyari noted that the gesture would be aimed at countering the U.S. Navy&#8217;s presence in Iranian waters. The U.S. Navy&#8217;s 5th fleet is based in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Islamic Republic News Agency (INRA) reported that Haddad said ships have already entered the Atlantic Ocean in waters near South Africa, after beginning their voyage from the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas last month. The fleet consists of two ships, a helicopter carrier and a destroyer carrying an approximate total of 30 navy academy cadets in training as well as their regular crews. Their mission will last three months.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Earlier on the same day in a speech marking the 35th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out at the U.S. He contended the United States would overthrow the Iranian regime if it were capable of doing so, and that Washington had a “controlling and meddlesome” attitude towards his nation. “American officials publicly say they do not seek regime change in Iran. That’s a lie. They wouldn’t hesitate a moment if they could do it,” he was quoted as saying by Fars.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Khamenei said nothing about the current negotiations, but explained that when dealing with the nation&#8217;s &#8220;enemies&#8221; Iran should be prepared to change tactics, even as it resists compromise on any of its primary principles. He also warned his nation to solve their own economic problems. “The solution to our economic problems is not looking out and having the sanctions lifted,” he said. “My advice to our officials, as ever, is to rely on infinite indigenous potentials.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Khamenei has nothing to worry about on the sanction front. The Obama administration has apparently convinced themselves they were little more than a tangential element in bringing Iran to the bargaining table regarding its nuclear ambitions. The the Islamic Republic has already been given the first $500 million of $4.2 billion in assets that had been frozen. &#8220;The first tranche of $500 million was deposited in a Swiss bank account, and everything was done in accordance with the agreement,&#8221; </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-gets-first-instalment-frozen-assets-195816803.html">announced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on February 1. According to a U.S. official, subsequent payments will be &#8220;evenly distributed” over the next 180 days.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a rare display of common sense, Congress voiced extreme displeasure in the &#8220;breakthrough&#8221; deal when it was announced by the Obama administration. As late as last Tuesday some members were still angered by the administration&#8217;s accusation that those seeking to maintain sanctions were tantamount to war-mongers. Sen. Timothy Kaine (D-VA) said that sanction supporters &#8220;are not pro-war and those that oppose it are not soft on Iran or anti-Israel. We all want exactly the same thing…we all will prefer if we can get to that diplomatically,&#8221; Mr. Kaine said.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Still others remained skeptical. &#8220;I am convinced that we should only relieve pressure on Iran in return for verifiable concessions that will fundamentally dismantle Iran&#8217;s nuclear program,&#8221; declared Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Two days later Menendez upped the ante, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blog.northjersey.com/thepoliticalstate/9464/menendez-be-tougher-with-iran-but-wait-for-sanctions-vote/">complaining</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the negotiators were letting Tehran keep too much of its nuclear infrastructure intact. He is the lead sponsor of a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/204977241/Menendez-Kirk">bill</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that would impose new sanctions, but only after giving the negotiations a specific period of time to succeed. No doubt the reality that President Obama during his State of the Union address threatened to veto any sanctions bill, along with the fact that Menendez was denied an opportunity to bring his bill to the floor by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), played a part in his calculations.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">However, the bill is languishing. Due, undoubtedly, to pressure and to avoid the Obama administration&#8217;s warmongering smears, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/07/It-s-Over-AIPAC-Democrats-Cave-on-Iran-Sanctions">stopped</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> pushing for the support of the bill, despite it having 59 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. &#8220;We agree with the Chairman that stopping the Iranian nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support and that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure,” they </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.worldjewishdaily.com/iran-sanctions-battle.php">announced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The move, as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/07/It-s-Over-AIPAC-Democrats-Cave-on-Iran-Sanctions">explained</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by Breitbart&#8217;s Joel B. Pollak, was transparently political. He noted the nation&#8217;s foremost pro-Israeli lobbying group &#8220;has often abandoned winnable political fights to protect Democrats from the consequences of their dwindling support for Israel.&#8221; </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One day after Democrats and AIPAC caved, Iran announced it would be cruising warships off America&#8217;s coasts.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Regardless, the Obama administration remains committed to appeasement masquerading as diplomacy. Thus it mattered little that Menendez&#8217;s bill had a &#8220;hard floor&#8221; allowing for a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100258304/obamas-dangerous-game-on-iran-is-now-becoming-clear/">full year</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of negotiations, including the six months of the &#8220;interim deal&#8221; plus a six month grace period (following a </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">full decade</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of fruitless negotiations). Nor was anyone overly concerned that Russia </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10570147/White-House-concerned-about-Russias-oil-for-goods-deal-with-Iran.html">negotiated</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a backdoor, $1.5 billion-a-month oil-for-goods deal in January, or that a group of 116 of France&#8217;s top businessmen </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100258304/obamas-dangerous-game-on-iran-is-now-becoming-clear/">visited</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Iran on a trade mission, as recently as last week. Both moves threaten to completely scuttle the next round of negotiations scheduled to begin Feb. 18 in Vienna, but the best the Obama administration can come up with is that such deals are &#8220;unhelpful&#8221; or of &#8220;serious concern.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One is left to to wonder whether there is any serious concern regarding another provocation by Iran. On Friday, Iran&#8217;s state TV network aired a video titled “The Nightmare of Vultures,” simulating attacks on Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ben Gurion Airport and the Dimona nuclear reactor. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, an American air craft carrier, as well as American aircraft and American military targets in the Persian Gulf, are also targeted for destruction, all in a hypothetical retaliation for an American or Israeli attack on Iran. The film opens with Khameni giving a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://english.khamenei.ir/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=1558">speech</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in 2011 to graduates of the Imam Ali (a.s.) Military Academy. &#8220;Anybody who thinks of attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran should be prepared to receive strong slaps and iron fists from the Armed Forces,” he says. “And America, its regional puppets and its guard dog – the Zionist regime – should know that the response of the Iranian nation to any kind of aggression, attacks or even threats will be a response that will make them collapse from within.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So what kind of deal are Iran and the P5+1 likely to reach? One might be tempted to look at the &#8220;deal&#8221; the Obama administration reached with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, regarding the removal of chemical weapons. Despite an agreement that called for a December 31, 2013 deadline for removing </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">all </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">such materials from Syria, only </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/02/05/failure_in_syria_will_doom_an_iran_nuclear_deal">4 percent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of so-called priority one chemicals have been taken out of the country. Even Kerry was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fred-hiatt-senators-say-john-kerry-admitted-us-failure-in-syria/2014/02/03/bfc203c0-8c75-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html">forced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to admit the deal is a bust, and that &#8220;new approaches&#8221; were needed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Negotiations with Syria and Iran might best be described as a feedback loop. Syria has watched Iran successfully stall for time for more than ten years thanks to weak international sanctions, which have now been watered down to the point of meaninglessness. Such spinelessness undoubtedly emboldened Assad, who initially ignored Obama&#8217;s &#8220;red line,&#8221; even as he slow walks chemical removal, while </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/17/us-syria-russia-arms-idUSBREA0G0MN20140117">receiving</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> additional arms from Russia. Tehran sees that fiasco unfolding, and decided that an interim deal &#8212; one that both sides have now </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-with-iran-israel-kerry-is-master-of-the-interim-deal/2014/01/29/2465be2e-8911-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html?hpid=z2">agreed</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> could be extended an </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">additional</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> six months if &#8220;good faith&#8221; bargaining continues &#8212; is their best bet. The deal not only provides additional time for stalling, but pays the regime</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> $4.2 billion to do so. Meanwhile, Syria watches such toothless dithering while it plots </span>its<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> next move, which will not be lost on Iran, and so on and so on.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;If Iran’s leaders do not seize this opportunity, then I 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; Obama </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176847#.Uvf6Rl5CD1w">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> during his State of the Union speech. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obama also </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/sep/05/context-president-obama-syria-red-line/">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> this in 2012: &#8220;I have, at this point, not ordered military engagement in the situation&#8230;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. …&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Iranian warships will be here soon. There is nothing the Obama administration has done that would cause the Mullahs to change their calculus and change course. Not when American weakness abounds and the Iranians sense they&#8217;re on the march. </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>Iran&#8217;s Bomb in the Basement</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/irans-bomb-in-the-basement/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-bomb-in-the-basement</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Feb 2014 05:39:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Middle East arms race begins. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Iranian-nuclear-weapon.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218272" alt="Iranian-nuclear-weapon" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Iranian-nuclear-weapon-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-Irans-bomb-in-the-basement-340641">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>It is happening in slow motion, to be sure.</p>
<p>But we are witnessing how a nuclear armed Iran is changing the face of the Middle East.</p>
<p>For years, US leaders, including President Barack Obama, warned that a nuclear armed Iran would spark a regional arms race.</p>
<p>And this is happening.</p>
<p>As the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens (a former Jerusalem Post editor in chief) noted this week, Turkey signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan that includes “a provision allowing Turkey to enrich uranium and extract polonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia has long had a nuclear cooperation deal withPakistan, whose nuclear weapons program the Saudis financed.</p>
<p>Jordan and Egypt have both raised the prospect of developing nuclear programs.</p>
<p>And in 2007, Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear installation built for it by North Korea and paid for by Iran.</p>
<p>In his article, Stephens cited a recent report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board stating that the world is entering into “a new nuclear age” that, as we see is characterized by everyone, including non-state actors, seeking to develop and proliferating nuclear capabilities.</p>
<p>Iran’s nuclear status has opened the floodgates to this era of nuclear chaos.</p>
<p>Also in response to Iran’s nuclear progress, Gulf states and others are treating Iran with newfound deference. Kuwait,Qatar and Oman all seem to be breaking ranks with Saudi Arabia by expressing support and indeed obedience to Iran.</p>
<p>Shortly after word broke in late November that the US and its partners had reached an interim nuclear deal with Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammed Javad Zarif took a victory lap in Kuwait and Oman.</p>
<p>In his press conference with his Kuwaiti counterpart, Zarif said, “We believe that a new era has begun in ties between Iran and regional states which should turn into a new chapter of amicable relations through efforts by all regional countries.”</p>
<p>Zarif also visited Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Beirut, he took on the role previously held by the US and France when he mediated between Hezbollah and the March 14 movement to form a new government.</p>
<p>The fact that Hezbollah has since reneged on its agreement to the deal doesn’t mean that Iran is weaker than it thought. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy. Its refusal to join the government means that Iran is now demanding better terms than it previously accepted. Its new terms require total Hezbollah domination of the country.</p>
<p>As Michael Rubin reported in Commentary this week, the Iraqi Kurds, who have been US allies for decades, have now accepted Iranian mediation of their leadership crisis.</p>
<p>All of this newfound deference toward Iran owes entirely to Iran’s new nuclear status.</p>
<p>In Washington, the Obama administration placed the full weight and prestige of the White House on its campaign to derail a widely supported bill in Congress to install additional sanctions against Iran in six months if Iran fails to comply with its obligations in the interim Joint Plan of Action. Over the past week, due to administration pressure, the Senate buried the sanctions bill.</p>
<p>Far from feeling the need to protect its agreement with the mullocracy, it appears that the administration’s main goal in that campaign was to weaken and discredit AIPAC, which supported the sanctions bill.</p>
<p>As Lee Smith noted this week in Tablet, weakening the pro-Israel advocacy group has become one of the administration’s major second-term goals.</p>
<p>AIPAC was the target of the administration’s campaign rather than the sanctions themselves because the sanctions regime against Iran – painstakingly cobbled together over a decade – disintegrated last November. When word of the interim deal got out, the stampede of European businessmen to Tehranbegan.</p>
<p>This week’s delegation of a hundred French businessmen to Iran in search of deals that could bring as much as $20 billion into the country was just the latest demonstration that the entire debate about sanctions is an irrelevant sideshow.</p>
<p>Just as its leaders have always believed, Iran’s new nuclear status is its economic salvation.</p>
<p>Most observers are missing Iran’s rise to the stature of regional hegemon because the Iranian regime has yet to try out its new power against Israel. With Iran and its Syrian and Hezbollah proxies tied up in their jihads in Iraq and Syria, they haven’t yet been able to turn their guns on Israel. But when the fighting in those theaters abates, there can be little doubt that Israel will move to the top of their target list.</p>
<p>And as Jonathan Schanzer pointed out in Foreign Policy this week, the Middle East is being flooded with advanced weapons that erode Israel’s qualitative military edge over its adversaries.</p>
<p>Hezbollah and Hamas have 60,000 missiles in their arsenals – three times the number they possessed at the end of the 2006Second Lebanon War. And as Schanzer noted, these missiles are far more powerful and precise than the ones they fielded eight years ago. Hezbollah’s Yakhont missiles can strike naval vessels within 120 kilometers of Lebanon’s coast. Hamas has advanced anti-aircraft missiles that threaten the air force.</p>
<p>As for the air force, its fleet of F-15s and F-16s is already a decade old.</p>
<p>Syria, of course has retained more than 95 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal. And its forces are more battled hardened than ever before.</p>
<p>Iraq, now largely an Iranian satellite, is receiving advanced drones from the US. There is no reason to trust that those drones will not be shared with Iran and Hezbollah.</p>
<p>In his interview last month with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, President Hassan Rouhani stated unequivocally that contrary to claims by Obama administration officials, Iran will never “under any circumstances” destroy any of its centrifuges.</p>
<p>Zakaria said that means the negotiations for a final nuclear deal with Iran will end in “a train wreck,” since the sides’ conceptions of what was agreed to “look like they are miles apart.”</p>
<p>But Zakaria is wrong. The talks won’t end in a train wreck. Indeed, they may never end at all.</p>
<p>Catherine Ashton, the EU’ foreign policy chief, said Sunday that negotiations with Iran may well go on after their six-month deadline in July.</p>
<p>Moreover, whether the negotiations go on forever or end at a certain point, the result won’t be a train wreck. It will be Iran with a nuclear bomb or nuclear arsenal in its basement, waiting for a propitious moment to conduct a nuclear weapons test or attack.</p>
<p>Last spring, Rouhani gave a television interview explaining how he used his position as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003 to facilitate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Rouhani boasted that they massively expanded uranium enrichment at Natanz, and constructed the nuclear reactor at Bushehr and the heavy water plant at Arak under the cover of the negotiations.</p>
<p>In testimony last month before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Iran has already reached the breakout point where it can assemble nuclear weapons at will. In his words, Iran’s “technical advancements strengthen our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>Obama and his advisers claim that the US has the intelligence capability to know if and when the Iranians move from breakout capacity to actual bomb making.</p>
<p>But as Stephens reported, the Defense Science Board report rejects that conclusion. According to the board, the US does not have the capability to know when a country moves from breakout capacity to an actual arsenal.</p>
<p>So given Rouhani’s previous subterfuge, there is every reason to assume that Iran is using its current negotiations to move from breakout capacity to a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>This state of affairs has grave implications for Israel.</p>
<p>Today it is no longer self-evident that Israel has the capacity to effectively strike Iran’s nuclear installations.</p>
<p>Through deed and word, the White House has made clear repeatedly that it prefers a nuclear- armed Iran to an Israeli strike to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.</p>
<p>As it has done several times over the past six years, the Obama administration can be expected to continue to use the many means it has at its disposal to prevent Israel from launching such an attack.</p>
<p>Moreover, with each passing day Iran’s nuclear sites become more and more difficult to attack successfully. And Iran’s technological capabilities have vastly expanded over the past decade.</p>
<p>Today Iran can replace damaged or destroyed centrifuges much faster than it could in the past.</p>
<p>Iran’s ally North Korea has also expanded its nuclear capabilities and its arsenal. Pyongyang is ready and willing to sell Iran replacements for any nuclear components that might be destroyed in a military strike.</p>
<p>Finally, Iran recognizes the implications of growing European and US hostility toward the Jewish state. It knows that if Israel openly attacks Iran and sets back its nuclear weapons program, the EU and the US will punish Israel, and express sympathy with Iran, and so give the Iranians cover to rapidly rebuild any lost capabilities.</p>
<p>Iran’s achievement of breakout capacity and seemingly unfettered path to a bomb in the basement, and its consequent rise to the position of regional hegemony, is the greatest Israeli foreign policy failure since the 1993 Oslo Accord with the PLO.</p>
<p>Our leaders on the Right failed us. They were too weak to pay the diplomatic price for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations when Israel could have easily set the program back for a decade or more.</p>
<p>Our leaders on the Left failed us. Their messianic faith that America will protect us from Iran if we just surrender to Palestinian terrorists lulled us to sleep at the watch when we needed to be most vigilant.</p>
<p>Today, due to the administration’s full-bore assault on Israel’s right to defensible borders and to our historic heartland, we have devoted ourselves to a fruitless and irrelevant discussion of how much of our land and our security we need to give up to appease the Palestinians who will never, ever be appeased.</p>
<p>Our leaders continue to hope that a proper mix of concessions to the PLO will convince Obama to stand by his empty pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.</p>
<p>Obama will do no such thing. Concessions to the Palestinians will weaken us militarily and politically. And they will give us no advantage over Iran. While it is important to deal with the administration’ hostile insistence on unreciprocated Israeli concessions to the PLO, we cannot ignore Iran.</p>
<p>Iran either has a bomb already or is about to get one. And, having been abandoned by the White House, we face this threat alone.</p>
<p>We must now, immediately and consistently, do whatever we can still do to diminish the Iranian threat.<br />
<em><br />
Caroline Glick’s new book, </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=the%20israeli%20solution&amp;sprefix=The+Israeli+So%2Caps%2C1130" target="_blank">The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East</a><em>, is due out on March 4.</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>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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		<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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