The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
It is time for a song of thanks in gratitude for the events of last week.
Pompeo and Netanyahu Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
It is said that King Hezekiah would have become the Messiah had he sung Shirah
(Song of Thanks) after God miraculously delivered 185,000 Assyrian
soldiers into his hands on one fateful night around 700 BCE.
Unfortunately, he failed to do so. We cannot make the same mistake.
After the events of last week, it is again time to sing Shirah,
and we should not miss the opportunity. For the very first time in
American history a U.S. secretary of state visited areas of Israel
that—until the Trump administration came along—were not fully recognized
or even acknowledged as part of the land of Israel.
On Nov. 18 last year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took the unprecedented step of declaring that the cities and towns of Judea and Samaria are not “inconsistent with international law.”
Last week, he went further by visiting
Judea and Samaria, illustrating that the settlements there not only are
“not illegal,” but—without using the word—part of Israel’s “sovereign”
territory.
It would be great, of course, if the Trump administration approved
the extension of Israeli sovereignty once and for all over all of Judea
and Samaria. Pompeo should be applauded not only for his visits to the
City of David in Jerusalem, Psagot and the Golan Heights, but for his pronouncement that the United States would henceforth view the international BDS movement as anti-Semitic.
The second event that the Jewish people must sing the “Song of
Thanks” for is the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to declare that
Jonathan Pollard, after 30 years in prison and another five on
restricted parole, was free
to emigrate to Israel. The Justice Department declared, “This is in
accordance with the statute, the commission has ordered that, as of
today, his parole supervision is terminated and he is no longer subject
to the conditions of parole.”
These are great accomplishments for the Jewish people. The Pompeo
visit and the Pollard decision should give the younger generations a
great deal of inspiration. So much more has to be accomplished. Besides
extending Israeli sovereignty to all of Judea and Samaria, the Jewish
people in America and in Israel have to be brought back to their roots,
to the straight and narrow—to Torah Judaism.
This is not a fantasy. It can be done. Not many thought the State of
Israel would be reestablished after 2,000 years, but sure enough it was.
Hard work pays off. Keep the faith and sing Shirah.
Dr. Joseph Frager is first vice president of the National Council of Young Israel.
The Palestinian Authority is already signaling to President-elect Joe Biden that it's willing to return to negotiations, but its maximalist positions clash with the prevailing mood in the Arab Sunni world.
On Nov. 17, the Palestinian Authority announced it would restore
security cooperation with Israel and agreed to receive tax monies Israel
had collected for it. Despite this, however, the PA's prospects for the
near future remain gloomy.
The Arab Spring changed priorities in the Middle East. Observers must
be careful to avoid the common mistake of judging the PA's prospects
through the binary view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the truer,
wider assessment should be regional. The Palestinians must make
decisions with their eyes focused on their natural milieu – the Arab
Sunni world – and not Turkey, Iran or the Shi'ite world in general. In
the new Middle East reality, the Sunni Arabs find themselves siding with
Israel, not with the Palestinians.
What makes things even worse for PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is that the
Israeli-Arab Sunni alliance is attracting European powers such as France
because of the Turkish-French tensions in the Mediterranean and the
proxy war in Libya. President-elect Joe Biden cannot ignore or dismiss
these real facts on the ground. What he can do is convince the PA and
Israel to return to the negotiation table. In other words, not to
challenge the Israeli-Arab Sunni alliance but to add the PA to it.
The PA's hesitation in this regard is due to its fear of losing
Turkey and Iran as diplomatic cards to use, and being compelled to rely
on Qatar to balance the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. During the Trump
term, this was not possible. In a Biden presidency, the PA hopes it can
keep the Sunni world while placing Turkey and Qatar on the side without
losing them. This is especially important to Abbas because of the
challenge he faces from political rival Mohammed Dahlan, who lives in
the United Arab Emirates. Relying only on the Gulf with no other cards
to play means strengthening Dahlan's loyalists in the West Bank and the
Palestinian diaspora.
Abbas' shuffling of cards with the fake reconciliation talks in
Turkey led by the Qatari proxies Jibril Rajoub (Fatah) and Saleh Arouri
(Hamas) was considered anti-Trump. In the Arab Sunni world, however, the
maneuver was deemed dangerous.
The first Arab state alarmed by the Fatah-Hamas talks was Jordan. The
very prospect of Hamas gaining power in the West Bank is a horror for
the Hashemite Kingdom. Although the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas
is a subsidiary, is a legitimate power in Jordan as a political party,
Hamas is seen as its dangerous armed wing.
According to Palestinian sources, Jordan recently exploited the visit
of a senior American figure who has open doors to both Trump and Biden
to convince Abbas to draw back from his Hamas track and return to the
negotiating table with Israel. The American official promised to work
with Biden, once elected, to renew the talks with Israel. Apparently,
Jordan also applied its diplomacy in Washington in this regard.
During the fake talks between Fatah's Rajoub and Hamas's Arouri in
Turkey, Abbas considered giving his approval to elections with a joint
Hamas-Fatah list – but not actually elections – to bring fresh relevance
to the long-forgotten and bypassed "Palestinian problem."
On Nov. 17, the PA announced it would restore PA-Israel security
cooperation, accept $100 million a month in tax money collected for it
by Israel and restore salaries to public workers. With that, Abbas is
signaling to the Biden administration his readiness to return to
negotiations, but on the PLO's terms. That includes restoration of
American aid, a repeal of Trump's policies on Jerusalem and the US
embassy, 1967 boundaries and a solution for Palestinian refugees.
Those maximalist negotiating points do not fit the new mood of the
Arab Sunni countries, that prefer the bargaining approach and a
compromise on borders in the West Bank over the PLO's myth of a "popular
struggle," even a political struggle. These Sunni countries acquiesced
to the Trump moves regarding Jerusalem, but the issue of Jerusalem is
very sensitive in inter-Arab-Muslim struggles and deserves a separate
examination.
An issue that concerns the Arab Sunni powers is the refocusing on
human-rights issues that Biden, like former President Barack Obama,
almost surely will adopt. Worried Saudi and Egyptian voices are already
being heard.
The news that Trump lost the elections was received in Ramallah with
relief not so much because of political prospects of renewing the peace
talks, but because the Trump plan had annulled the PLO doctrine of
liberating Palestine by "struggle" – military or political. The path of
"struggle" led the Palestinians to a deadlock; the path of a "deal" led
to the normalization agreements between Israel and the Gulf states.
Today, the term "peace" is associated with the Gulf and not with
Palestine, and the incentive of Western leaders to invest in the
Palestinian problem to win their Nobel prizes is dramatically reduced.
The Biden-Harris Transition website
identifies the members of the transition’s government agency teams who
are responsible, according to the website, for “ensuring a smooth
transfer of power, and preparing for President-elect Biden and Vice
President-elect Harris and their cabinet to hit the ground running on
Day One.” The list is full of leftist progressives as team leaders and
members, presaging the left’s influence in cementing its own deep state
to steer the Biden-Harris policy agenda its way.
The transition team leader assigned to the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), for example, is Ur Jaddou. After serving as chief
counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under
then-President Barack Obama, Jaddou became the director of DHS Watch at America’s Voice.
This left-wing pro-amnesty group calls for reforms to “put 11 million
undocumented Americans on a path to full citizenship.” Biden is already
on record supporting this sweeping amnesty program.
Jaddou was sharply critical of the Trump administration’s decision
to deploy some agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to
protect a federal court building in Portland Oregon from the rampaging
mobs seeking to destroy it. Jaddou was upset by what she falsely claimed
was CBP’s attacks on “peaceful protesters.“ Jaddou demanded that
unless and until “Trump’s CBP” stops such attacks and there is “real
reform and meaningful accountability, Congress should not appropriate
any additional money to CBP or allow CBP to move its money around.”
In other words, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security transition
team leader wants a radically transformed DHS where the use of DHS
resources to secure federal property on American soil from mob violence
is out of bounds.
According to Nick Miroff,
who covers immigration enforcement and the DHS for the Washington Post,
Jaddou “is viewed as a frontrunner for USCIS director.” If so, Jaddou
can be expected to bring with her other members of her transition agency
team who think like her. One example is Blas Nunez-Neto, a senior
policy researcher at the RAND Corporation with previous experience
advising the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Nunez-Neto advocates expanding the discredited catch and release program.
The Biden transition agency team leader for the Environmental
Protection Agency is Patrice Simms, who served in the Obama
administration and now works for the left-wing environmentalist group Earthjustice.
Earthjustice is committed to ending the nation’s use of fossil fuels
“and bringing about a swift and just transition to zero carbon emissions
and 100% clean energy.” Simms boasted
that “Earthjustice has filed more than 110 lawsuits against the Trump
administration’s efforts to gut environmental safeguards, and we are
winning many of those fights long before they ever reach the Supreme
Court.”
Climate activists are interspersed throughout various transition
agency teams, beyond just the agencies most involved in
environment-related issues such as the EPA, the Energy Department,
Interior Department, and the White House Council on Environmental
Quality. “Unlike past transitions, officials with significant climate or
clean energy experience also pop up in departments like State, Defense,
Treasury and Justice,” E&E News
observed. “They're even handling the transition at agencies that, so
far, have been on the periphery of climate policy, like the Small
Business Administration and the Federal Reserve.”
The Biden transition agency team leader for the National Security
Council is Jeff Prescott, a former senior director for Iran on the
National Security Council in the Obama administration. Prescott also
served as then-Vice President Joe Biden's deputy national security
advisor. Prescott has since worked for National Security Action, an
anti-Trump network made up, according to its website,
of “former senior officials and policy experts, academics, and civil
society leaders who are dedicated to a progressive vision of American
global leadership.” Some of them were responsible for pushing forward
the Obama administration’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, which they
continue to defend.
Prescott shares the climate change alarmism of Patrice Simms’ Earthjustice. He wrote an article last
year, for example, claiming that President Trump’s stance on climate
change “is putting not just the United States, but the entire planet on
the brink of meltdown.” Prescott's willingness to coddle the Iranian
regime could put the planet on the brink of nuclear meltdown.
Kelly Magsamen is one of the members on the Biden transition agency
team for the National Security Council led by Prescott. She is the
leftist Center for American Progress’s Vice President for National
Security and International Policy. Magsamen has criticized President
Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime. She claimed
that Trump “recklessly escalated tensions in the Middle East by
ordering a strike on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem
Soleimani.” The removal of Iran’s terrorist mastermind with American
blood on his hands, who was putting into motion a plan to kill more
Americans in Iraq until Trump stopped him, did not trigger a new war in
the Middle East as Magsamen had feared.
Magsamen claimed that Trump’s approach to dealing with North Korea
had exacerbated tensions. Precisely the opposite is true. Following
President Trump’s outreach to Kim Jong Un, the North Korean regime has
suspended its testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic
missiles. Magsamen also criticized one of Trump’s most significant
achievements on trade, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
(USMCA), because it “doesn’t go far enough on labor or environmental
standards to make a real difference for working Americans.” Even Biden
had to admit that USMCA was an improvement over NAFTA.
The Biden transition agency team leader for the intelligence
community is Stephanie O’Sullivan. This former principal deputy director
of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in the
Obama administration submitted an unmasking request for
intelligence about Michael Flynn. Bob Litt, who served as general
counsel for ODNI during the Obama administration and is now on the
O’Sullivan-led intelligence transition team for Biden, reportedly
discussed the idea of using the archaic Logan Act against Flynn as part
of the Obama administration's shameless persecution of Flynn.
The Biden transition agency team leader for the Department of
Education is Linda Darling-Hammond, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s
choice to serve as president of the State Board of Education. She has
opposed merit pay for teachers, which makes her a friend of teachers’
unions. Darling-Hammond has “strong ties with the labor and the social
justice communities,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the
University of California, Berkeley. Four members of her team are from
national teachers’ unions. Emma Vadehra, a member of the Department of
Education transition team, works for the Century Foundation, which lists as one of its top priorities for 2021
the expansion of high-quality free and debt-free college options
financed by the federal government. It also advocates some form of
student loan cancellation.
Gary Gensler is the Biden transition agency team leader for the
Federal Reserve, Banking and Securities Regulators group of agencies.
Gensler, who is currently a professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management, was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from
2009 to 2014. His appointment to lead this transition agency team “will
likely calm the nerves of progressives who want Biden to take a hard
line with the finance industry,” according to Politico.
As these examples demonstrate, leftist progressives populating
Biden’s various government transition teams are poised to strongly
influence the direction of key federal government agencies’ hiring
decisions and policy priorities under a Biden-Harris administration. But
they will never be satisfied until they secure complete control. It’s
all about demanding payback from Joe Biden for supporting him in the
election.
For example, various progressive climate change activist groups held
a rally outside the Democratic National Committee building in
Washington D.C. last Thursday, including the US Climate Action Network,
the Sunrise Movement, the Climate Justice Alliance and the Indigenous
Environmental Network. They were furious with Biden’s selection of
Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond to serve as his senior adviser and
director of the Office of Public Engagement because Richmond was
considered too cozy with the fossil fuel industry.
“We don’t feel like we want to be in a confrontational pose, but if we need to, we will be,” said Keya Chatterjee,
executive director of the US Climate Action Network. “Right now is the
moment where a lot of decisions are being made about whether or not the right personnel
are going to be in place to actually be ambitious in a green recovery
and get done everything that they ran on.” (Emphasis added)
Democratic-Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)
and her fellow Squad members also took part in the rally and addressed
their adoring fans. “We're going to secure the basic tenets of a Green
New Deal, a multi-trillion jobs program for climate, for environmental,
racial, gender and class justice,” AOC declared. She urged continued pressure to make sure that Biden keeps his promises and “we have environmental justice front and center.”
New York Congressman-elect Jamaal Bowman, a Democratic-Socialist,
was even more explicit. "Black and Brown communities organized across
the country to make sure Joe Biden won the White House, and he did that,
but now it's time for payback,” Bowman said. (Emphasis added)
Climate change activists will expect a Biden-Harris administration
to bow to their demands for “environmental justice” in return for the
votes of “environmental justice communities” that they claim made
Biden’s victory possible. Black Lives Matter movement activists will
expect their demands for “racial justice” to be met in return for what
they claim was their delivery of the election for Biden. And the same is
true for the leftist progressives who demand as payback for their
support that Biden-Harris embrace their policy agendas to achieve
gender, class, LGBTQIA+ and intersectional “justice.”
More than 40 progressive groups, under the auspices of the
Progressive Change Institute, have submitted to the Biden transition
team 400 names
of individuals the groups want considered for key government positions
in a Biden-Harris administration. "This is a roadmap for how Biden can
get a bold agenda done, even with Republican obstruction in the Senate,"
said Stephanie Taylor, founder and Board President of the Progressive
Change Institute. "And the way you do that is through the right
personnel in place."
According to Taylor, the plan is to place these individuals in
agencies across the executive branch, such as the Office of Management
and Budget, the Export Import Bank and the IRS, where they can advance
the Green New Deal and other progressive initiatives “without requiring
any act of Congress."
In short, progressive leftists are plotting to cement their own
version of the deep state inside the executive branch to end run
Congress, no matter what happens in the Georgia Senate runoff elections.
Only constitutionalist justices and judges can stop them.
“The teaching of history is continuing to be transformed into
indoctrination by illiberal, leftist propaganda,” writes historian Bruce
Thornton in his new booklet Why History Matters
from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The result, he notes, is that
“the abandonment of belief in objective historical truth makes possible a
politicized history that legitimizes tyrannical power.” George Orwell
dramatized this in his novel 1984, a fictional scenario that, Thornton warns, “has traveled a long way to becoming fact” in America today.
Bruce
Thornton is a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and professor of
Classics and Humanities at California State University in Fresno. He is
also the author of nine wide-ranging histories on classical culture and
its influence on Western civilization, including The Wages of Appeasement and Democracy’s Dangers & Discontents.
Covering more ground in forty pages than some books do in several times that number, Why History Matters
reaches back to the origins of historiography in Herodotus and
Thucydides, and brings the reader forward to the current, dangerous
trend of ideological history found in Howard Zinn’s ubiquitous,
subversive work A People’s History of the United States and, more recently, The New York Times’
discredited but influential “1619 Project,” which falsely posits that
America was founded “to ensure slavery would continue.” This sort of
historiography “that villainizes our country,” Thornton argues, is a
suicidal fashion that “insidiously erodes” our love of country,
emboldening our enemies “to see us as weak and primed for a fall.”
Bruce Thornton’s Why History Matters is a must-read for
understanding how modernity has eroded our grounding in “the tragic
truth about human nature,” and why we need a common history that gives
us a context for understanding ourselves. “Without that perspective,” he
writes, “the past becomes a Cubist painting, everything flattened on
the canvas of the present… and judged in terms of present ideologies and
political aims and interests.”
By now it should be obvious - even to conservatives - that we are in
a war. It is a conflict that began nearly fifty years ago when the
street revolutionaries of the Sixties joined the Democrat Party. Their
immediate goal was to help the Communist enemy win the war in Vietnam,
but they stayed to expand their influence in the Democrat Party and
create the radical force that confronts us today. The war that today’s
Democrats are engaged in reflects the values and methods of those
radicals. It is a war against us - against individual freedom, against
America’s constitutional order, and against the capitalist engine of our
prosperity.
Democrat radicals know what they want and where they are going. As a
result, they are tactically and organizationally years ahead of
patriotic Americans who are only beginning to realize they are in a war.
The Democrats’ plan to steal the 2020 election was hatched many years
ago when Democrats launched their first attacks on Voter I.D.s, and then
every effort to secure the integrity of the electoral system. Those
attacks metastasized into an all-out assault on Election Day itself with
early- and late-voting grace periods, and a flood of 92 million mail-in
ballots, hundreds of thousands of which were delivered in the middle of
the night to be counted behind the backs of Republican observers after
Election Day had passed.
The result of these efforts is that Election Day no longer really
exists as a day when the votes are cast and counted. This is a fact that
offers generous opportunities for the election saboteurs to do their
work. Those saboteurs’ opportunities were greatly enhanced this year
with the installation in battle ground states of voting machines
specifically designed to calculate how many votes were required to steal
an election and then to switch ballots already cast and deliver them to
the chosen party. Mail-in ballots were indispensable to the realization
of this plan.
I will not dwell at length on the years it took the Republican
Party, and American patriots, to recognize what the Democrat Party had
become or the threat it posed to our country as an enemy within. Suffice
it to say that Republicans can still be heard referring to Democrats as
“liberals” when it is obvious even to them that there is nothing
liberal about their principles or methods. They are vindictive bigots
who are actively destroying the First Amendment in our universities, on
the Internet and in our once but no longer free press. Suffice it to
note that while Democrats accuse Republicans including the President of
being racists and traitors, the response of Republican leaders is this:
“Oh, the Democrats are just playing politics.”
This is not “playing” people. It is war. They are trying to kill us
politically, and we need to respond accordingly, to fight fire with
fire. Today’s Democrat Party is a party of character assassins and
racists. Republicans know this but are reluctant to say it. That is how a
pathological liar and corrupt political whore like Joe Biden can accuse
the choice of 73 million Americans of being a white supremacist and
also murdering 220,000 corona virus patients. That’s why Biden and his
gunslingers can do so with no consequences – without so much as a wrist
slap – from “moderates” and independents, who know better. The
Democrats’ ability to intimidate well-meaning Americans is that great.
Is this too blanket a condemnation? Where, then, is the Democrat who
was outraged by the four-year Russia collusion hoax and the failed coup
and impeachment attempts – all of which accused the president, without a
shred of evidence, of treason? Where was the Democrat who dissented
from the public lynching of an exemplary public servant, Justice Brett
Kavanaugh, over an incident that never happened 37 years ago at a time
when he was a high school kid? Where is the Democrat who has condemned
the violent street criminals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter who got
away with conducting the most destructive civic insurrection in American
history, orchestrating mayhem and disrespect for the law that led to
the murders of scores of people who happen to have been mainly black?
What follows is a basic vocabulary for understanding the political
war that has engulfed us. When it is used by enough Americans who love
their country, it will cancel the surreal universe that Democrats’ lies
have imposed on us, and the war will be on its way to being won.
Democrats are not democrats; they are totalitarians. They have
declared war on the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Electoral
College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the election system, and the
idea of civil order. They have called for the Republican President of
the United States to be de-platformed and jailed. Their obvious goal is a
one-party state that criminalizes dissent. To them, support for such
basic necessities as borders and law enforcement are racist. If
you oppose their efforts to legalize infanticide, they will condemn you
as enemies of women, and if you make videos of their confessions to
selling body parts of murdered infants, they will - like Kamala Harris -
throw you in jail.
Progressives are not progressive; they are reactionaries. They are
out to abolish liberal value systems and create a status hierarchy where
race, gender, and sexual orientation define and confine you to an
unalterable place in their new social order. If you are white or male or
heterosexual or religious – Justice Kavanaugh was all four - you are
guilty before the fact.
But if you are a member of a designated (but increasingly imaginary)
“victim” group you are innocent even when the facts show you are guilty
- like the reprehensible female who lied to Congress in a calculated
attempt to destroy Kavanaugh’s life and career. If you are a member of a
“victim” group you have an unlimited license to persecute others. Thus,
the LGBTQ lobby is currently behind a nation-wide crusade to strip
Christians of their First Amendment rights and criminalize their
religion. They use their victim status to leverage their hate of people
who don’t embrace their agendas, and deploy it to crush them – and only
Republicans seem to care.
Identity politics is a pure form of racism, yet Trump is the only
Republican I’m aware of who has had the political spine to call a
Democrat a racist. Identity “wokism” is a totalitarian politics because
it encompasses every aspect of life, down to the pronouns one is ordered
to use. The progressive police state will leave no space free.
Racists and aspiring totalitarians are what Democrats have become.
The only moral principle they are guided by is the old Bolshevik saw,
“the ends justify the means.” They will say anything however false and
condone anything, however criminal, which advances their goal of maximum
power.
Since race is the principal weapon wielded by Democrats, this is
most evident in their claim that there is “systemic racism” in America,
which needs to be rooted out even if it means destroying the very
foundations of law and order. When two Republican canvassers refused to
certify the election result in Detroit – a city once the richest in
America but now mainly black and poor thanks to fifty-nine years of
misrule by Democrats – they were accused of “systemic racism.” This
charge and the accompanying threats by the Democrat mob were so
intimidating the two withdrew their objections. But if there was in fact
election fraud in Detroit, to object to it is not by any stretch of the
imagination “systemic racism.” To believe otherwise is to believe that
black people, due to their skin color, are incapable of committing
election fraud. How racist is that?
“Systemic racism” is an assertion made reflexively by Democrats that
is never accompanied by evidence. For good reason. Systemic racism has
been outlawed in America since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If there
were actual instances of systemic racism in 2020, there would be
lawsuits – plenty of them. Even making the racist assumption, which the
Identity Politics crowd does make, that all white people are white
supremacists by dint of their skin color, there are tens of thousands of
black lawyers, prosecutors, district attorneys, attorneys general, and
elected officials who would be filing lawsuits over a practice that is
illegal. You never hear of massive lawsuits over systemic racism,
because “systemic racism” is a myth. The myth lives because it is an
indispensable weapon wielded by Democrats to advance their
anti-democratic agendas and quests for power.
But the only reason Democrats are able to do this so successfully –
even going so far as to justify the arson, looting and general
destruction in more than 600 American cities this summer – is because
Republicans, and conservatives generally, are too cowardly to confront
them. This war will continue until patriotic Americans summon the
courage to call Democrats the racists, liars, character assassins and
aspiring totalitarians that they actually are. And to do so in so many
words. Blowback works.
David Horowitz is the author of The Enemy Within: How A Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America, which will be published by Regnery on April 6, 2021.
by Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall and Jerusalem Center - Iran Desk
In Iran’s domestic arena, six months before the Iranian presidential elections, the U.S. presidential election re-ignited the controversy between proponents and opponents of dialogue with the United States.
The front page of the Iranian newspaper Sobhe No (Morning News)
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 20, No. 25
In Iran’s domestic arena, six months before the Iranian presidential
elections, the U.S. presidential election re-ignited the controversy
between proponents and opponents of dialogue with the United States.
President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and other proponents of
dialogue with the United States are facing fierce fire from the
conservative camp that is backed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei, who
dismisses the U.S. election results and has continued to preach his
Economic Resistance Doctrine.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, declared that
Iran would not be willing to make changes to the nuclear deal. “The
agreement belongs to the past and is not open for discussion again … The
United States violated UN Resolution 2231, withdrew from the nuclear
agreement, caused enormous damage to the Iranian people, and must
compensate for it.”
The reformist camp called on President Rouhani to use his influence
over Khamenei to the fullest extent to urge him to agree to a move
toward talks with the United States. They have called to restart
negotiations if the Biden administration returns to the nuclear deal or
conducts behind-the-scenes talks on the required conditions that the
United States would demand from Iran to enable it to return to the
agreement framework.
The conservative camp in Iran emphasizes that there is no real
difference between Biden and Trump and that Democrats are just a
“prettier face” with the same policy and the same intentions that were
implemented so far by the Republicans against Iran.
The conservatives state that only if the United States fulfills a
long list of conditions that Iran will impose on it would they agree to
return to the negotiating table with Washington regarding the nuclear
deal. However, they would by no means enter into a dialogue on other
issues, including ballistic missiles, human rights, or regional issues.
The front page of the Iranian newspaper Sobhe No (Morning News),
November 11, 2020, addressing President Trump: “Go to hell, Gambler!”
(When Trump once stated he would like to meet with Iran’s president, the
late Gen. Qassem Soleimani responded, “Mr. Trump, gambler, you have
business with me, but I will tell you: go to hell!”)
The U.S. elections continue to draw the attention of the Iranian
leadership and media, which reports on its front pages the election
process, its disputed results, and implications. Most of the
publications mocked the confusion, division, and the United States’ lack
of direction. The Vatan Emrooz newspaper illustrated this in a
bloody cartoon published on its front page on November 11, 2020,
depicting Trump’s expected departure, which will deepen the left-right
chasm within the United States.
Vatan Emrooz cartoon.
Iran’s top religious and political figures have highlighted the
damage caused to Iran by the U.S. maximum pressure policy. This has
resulted in the Iranian regime’s unwillingness to discuss the nuclear
deal with the incoming U.S. administration. Iranian officials have
maintained in this regard that the United States will be “examined by
deeds and not by words” within regional contexts. The Iranian
leadership called on the countries of the region to secure themselves in
regional cooperation frameworks and not to be dependent on the United
States and Israel.
In the domestic arena and against the background of the upcoming
Iranian presidential elections in June 2021, the conservative and the
reformist camps are set to compete with one another over the benefits of
negotiations with the United States. President Rouhani, who has served
two successive terms will not stand again. Both camps perceive the
United States as the “same lady, just in a different coat.”
It is likely that reformist candidates will be screened beforehand
since the Guardian Council is dominated by conservatives who will try to
block reformist candidates, as they did ahead of the recent (February
2020) Majlis (parliamentary) elections. If a hardline president is
elected, both domestic and foreign policy (dealing with the nuclear
dossier, Middle East peace efforts, power projections) will become more
uncompromising and defiant. In the meanwhile, in the run-up to the
election, conservatives in Iran will try to frustrate any dialogue with
the incoming U.S. administration.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei emphasized before the U.S.
elections and on Election Day that regardless of who is elected,
“America is in decline.” It appears that the Iranian Leader is leaning
towards Iran’s conservative camp. In any case, relations with the United
States critically impact both Iran’s economy and the welfare of its
people. Therefore, relations with the United States is expected to be
one of the major themes in the Iranian presidential election campaign
and a key issue for the next Iranian president – reformist or
conservative.
Khamenei: The United States Is Descending, No Matter Who Leads It
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reiterated his past views that
the U.S. elections have no implications for Iran, and he minimized the
significance of the U.S. elections, saying, “It does not matter who will
be the next president in the United States.” Khamenei added, “The
decline of the United States is certain … The situation in the United
States and its internal debate regarding the recent elections
demonstrate the ugly reality of liberal democracy inside the country. No
matter which one will be elected, there is one obvious point, which is
the political, civil, and moral decline of the American regime.”1
Rouhani: The Elected President Must Compensate for the Damage of His Predecessor
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took advantage of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization Summit and said in his November 10, 2020,
speech that the U.S. elections proved that not only the international
community rejects the Trump administration’s mistaken policies.
According to Rouhani, the American public is fed up with Trump, and the
election results prove the failure of “a country that spreads threats,
imposes sanctions, uses sticks, threatens and bullies other nations, and
adopts wrong and misleading policies. “
Rouhani attacked the U.S. policy of unilateralism and said it had
threatened international economic cooperation in recent years. According
to the Iranian President, recently elected representatives in the
United States must implement the mandate as determined by American
voters, which means changing U.S. foreign policy and relations with
other countries. Alluding to the nuclear agreement with Iran, from which
U.S. President Trump withdrew in May 2018, Rouhani added, “that renewed
adherence to international laws, regulations and obligations, respect
for the rights of other countries, and compensation for damages caused,
are necessary conditions for restoring world’s trust in the United
States.”2
Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif: The Nuclear Agreement Is Not Up to Discussion
The Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on November 10, 2020,
while visiting Pakistan, that the future of the nuclear deal (JCPOA)
depends on the steps the United States will undertake. Tehran is waiting
to see what policy the U.S. administration would implement and what
action it would take regarding the nuclear deal. Regarding Biden’s
elections, Zarif said, “Individual people are indeed important, but it
is also essential to see how the administration runs.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement mocking the U.S.
administration’s policy against Iran. The ministry spokesman, Saeed
Khatibzadeh, said that “the Trump’s administration has been on the wrong
track for several years, and the policy of maximum pressure has led to
maximum defeat.” In the spirit of the Iranian Foreign Minister,
Khatibzadeh added that Iran will closely monitor the steps and policies
of the incoming administration and that the United States has an
opportunity to return from the wrong path.
Khatibzadeh referred to the recent peace agreements signed between
Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and declared that the
U.S. elections “sent a new message to the Middle East … Iran reached out
to its neighbors. However, the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia bought
their security from psychopaths in the United States and Israel. They
must immediately retract to seeking peace and security, acting within a
regional context. If these countries want to keep putting all their eggs
in the American basket, then it is no longer safe for them.”
The spokesman denied that Iran had already contacted Biden’s
transition team and clarified that “in principle, Iran will not contact
any party that is not related to the nuclear deal, especially given the
fact that the new administration has not yet taken office.” He
reiterated that Iran would not be willing to make changes to the nuclear
deal. “The agreement belongs to the past and is not open for discussion
again … The United States violated UN Resolution 2231, withdrew from
the nuclear agreement, caused enormous damage to the Iranian people, and
must compensate for it.”3
The Controversy between Opponents and Supporters of Negotiations with the U.S. Has Re-Ignited
In Iran’s domestic arena, six months before the Iranian presidential
elections, the U.S. presidential election re-ignited the controversy
between proponents and opponents of dialogue with the United States.
President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and other proponents of
dialogue with the United States are facing fierce fire from the
conservative camp that is backed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei, who
dismisses the U.S. election results and has continued to preach the
Economic Resistance Doctrine.
“Iran Is Hopeful Again”
Following the announcement that Biden was elected president, the
newspapers and media affiliated with the reformist camp expressed hope
that the United States would return to the nuclear deal. They proffered
that Biden’s election would allow the renewal of dialogue between Iran
and the rest of the international powers, in general, and specifically
with those countries that would ease sanctions and even remove economic
pressure on Iran, whose people have felt its destructive impact.
Headlines and op-eds of many newspapers in the reformist camp in Iran
emphasize that the Iranian people are once again hoping that the future
administration in Washington will herald a new era for the Iranian
people.
These articles call on the Rouhani government, which is expected to
end its term in May 2021, and all government agencies not to miss the
opportunity to resume negotiations with the new U.S. administration. The
newspaper Seday-e Eslahat (Voice of Reform) even published the headline on November 7, 2020: “Iran is hopeful again.”4
Seday-e Eslahat: “Iran is hopeful again.”
Officials in the reformist camp have called on President Rouhani to
use his influence over Khamenei to the fullest extent to urge him to
agree to a move toward talks with the United States. They have called to
restart negotiations if the Biden administration returns to the nuclear
deal or conducts behind-the-scenes talks on the required conditions
that the United States would demand from Iran to enable it to return to
the agreement framework.
Biden pointed out in an article published by CNN in
September 2020 that “there is a better way” and that the United States
will return to the agreement if Iran meets all its commitments. Biden
added that this would serve as a starting point for further
negotiations. In the wake of the elections, however, Iran has already
reiterated that it is unwilling to change the agreement.
Biden said the United States would also raise the issue of human rights, including the execution of wrestler Navid Afakari,5
and the arrest of attorney Nasrin Satuda. Biden also noted the
importance of the reduction of tensions in the region, especially in
Yemen.6
The strengthening of the value of the Iranian currency rial
against foreign currencies, after the historic steep drop in the value
in the last six months and the sharp drop in the prices of vehicles,
gold, and even property in Iranian markets, were interpreted as positive
consequences of Biden’s victory, and more precisely, the removal of
Donald Trump from the arena.
The newspaper Etmad published on November 8, 2020, an article saying –
The conservatives continue to strongly oppose dialogue concerning the
nuclear agreement. They ignore the fact that the state needs a clear
and even urgent plan to get out of the crisis. After all, under the
terms of the FATF (The Financial Action Task Force) and because of U.S.
sanctions, there is no access to the program or an alternative way other
than the nuclear agreement. Conservatives announced that even funds
frozen in Iraq, South Korea, and China – which are not dependent on the
United States – are not being released.
The newspaper concluded –
having a national dialogue based on national interests in order to
reach an orderly and uniform policy in the face of the conditions that
the future will set for us, is a necessary thing … From a uniform
internal position, it is possible to introduce three-dimensional plans
for a short, middle, and long- term, based on the nuclear agreement, in
order to remove the sanctions and reach proper governance in domestic
politics. The party presenting such plans could prospectively be elected
as the future president in the upcoming elections in Iran in June 2021.7
Conservatives: Biden – A Steel Hand in Silk Gloves
Conservatives, for their part, have attacked the reformist camp,
branding some of “the traitors who want to ‘waste’ the people’s time and
to entrust all aspects of life and livelihood, and economy of the state
and of the citizens to the United States.” Conservative-affiliated
newspapers emphasized that the reformists “beautify” Biden and
Democrats, while Democrats’ hand “was and is still made of steel but
hidden under silk gloves.”
“Trump sheds his skin,” and there is no difference between Trump and Biden (Quds, November 8, 2020)
Conservatives further condemned Biden’s ardent support for the
assassination of Qassem Suleimani. In addition, they noted that Biden
was President Barak Obama’s right-hand man who planned and enacted the
severe and cruel sanctions on Iran that lasted even during the Corona
era. The conservative camp emphasized that there is no real difference
between Biden and Trump and that Democrats are just a “prettier face”
with the same policy and the same intentions that were implemented so
far by the Republicans against Iran. A front page of the newspaper Quds
featured on November 8, 2020, a caricature depicting the shedding of
Trump’s skin and the emergence of Biden out of it, pointing out no
difference between them.9
In the same breath, conservatives and prominent loyalists of the
Iranian Leader point out that recent U.S. elections have most clearly
demonstrated that the United States only appears to be a superpower,
while its society is divided and suffering from many deep problems.
Therefore, Iran should not place any hope in a morally, socially, and
politically declining country.
The front page of the Vatan-e Emrooz newspaper, affiliated with the conservative camp, published on November 7, 2020,
a caricature “The Cemetery of Democracy,” where Biden is depicted
holding an arm bone, hinting at reports of voting fraud, including dead
people voting in the U.S. elections.8
The Keyhan newspaper affiliated with the Supreme Leader
reminded President Rouhani on November 9, 2020, that “American hostility
to Iran did not begin with Trump and will not end with Biden.” The
newspaper wrote that Rouhani and his government became beggars asking
once again for dialogue with Americans instead of investing their full
energy in strengthening the foundations of the state and Iran’s internal
power.
According to the newspaper, the Rouhani government has severely
damaged the livelihood of the people and is once again passing the ball
to other fields to cover up its helplessness. The ultra-conservative
newspaper Keyhan mentioned that President Rouhani “passed the
buck” and told the Iranian people a few weeks ago not to curse his
government because of the difficult economic situation but “to address
the curses to the White House that has implemented the most vicious
sanctions against Iran.”
The front-page of the conservative newspaper, Sobhe No (Morning News),
ran a headline on November 9, 2020: “Iranian Biden supporters are busy
at work,” trying to make Biden pretty and present him as a good-natured
man, with whom Iran can start negotiations.10
Sobhe No: Iranian Biden supporters prettifying the president-elect.
The conservative camp has reiterated that over the past seven years,
the Rouhani government has neglected numerous directives of the Iranian
Supreme Leader Rouhani called for proper and meticulous management of
economic affairs, as well as a real and severe fight against corruption,
and implementation of banking system reforms, and more.
Furthermore, with the year of the presidential election around the
corner, in May 2021, conservatives have expressed deep concern that
reformists will use the dialogue card with the United States as a new
tool to advance their candidates in the Iranian presidential election as
they will try to leverage improvement of the Iranian people’s economic
situation as a result of the dialogue. Among other things, the
conservatives raise concerns that the rival camp will advance Foreign
Minister Zarif’s candidacy for the presidency because only a president
like him can negotiate successfully with Biden.
Conservatives: Return to Nuclear Talks Is Possible But It Depends on Meeting Iran’s Demands
At the same time, the conservatives leave little room to renew talks
with the United States. They state that only if the United States
fulfills a long list of conditions that Iran will impose on it would
they agree to return to the negotiating table with Washington regarding
the nuclear deal. However, they would by no means enter into a dialogue
on other issues, including ballistic missiles, human rights, or regional
issues. Conservatives emphasize that Iran’s ballistic missile
capability is “the heart and soul” of Iran’s national integrity and
security, which makes it a prohibited topic for discussion.
Accounting for Soleimani’s Assassination Was Only Partially Avenged
Prominent conservative sources emphasize that there is no difference
between Biden and Trump. At the same time, there is no doubt that
Trump’s departure is good news for Iran because he was behind the
assassination of Qassem Suleimani. The Javan newspaper,
affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Zeinab Soleimani, the
daughter of Qassem Suleimani, pointed out that Trump’s removal eases
somewhat the heavy burden on the hearts of the Iranian people. However,
the account with those who ordered the assassination of the “great
commander” is still open.
It should be noted that some of the conservatives warn reformists to
refrain from entering into a dialogue with Joe Biden. They use Trump’s
own arguments about “crooked” elections. Among other things, the
newspaper Sobhe No (Morning News) wrote that Biden is the “postal president” who was elected by a majority of the “dubious” votes that arrived in the mail.
Tasnim:
Trump as a fat turtle who turned the polls upside down and said
angrily: “The system is corrupt and I was deceived, otherwise I won!”
On the other hand, the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with
the Revolutionary Guards Corps, published a caricature showing Trump as a
fat turtle flipped on a ballot box. “The system is corrupt and was
deceived; otherwise I won!”11
Support for Trump. Rouhani and Zarif Are Slaves of the Democratic Party
At the same time, figures who are considered senior officials in
former President Ahmadinejad’s government and who are still close to him
express surprising support for Donald Trump and sharply criticize
President Rouhani for neglecting all the opportunities President Trump
had offered Iran in order to engage in a dialogue.
Abdol Reza Dori, a senior official in the Ahmadinejad office,
reiterated that the Supreme Leader gave general permission to hold talks
with the United States. However, both Rouhani and Zarif did not lead
negotiations with Trump because they “became enslaved to Democrats in
the United States” and “promised” officials like John Kerry not to hold
talks with the Trump administration Dori talked about it in lengthy
interviews with TV stations, such as the BBC in Persian. The Iranian
regime considers this station to be allied with Iran’s enemies.
Never
Trump stalwart Jonah Goldberg published an essay Friday in which he
argued that President Donald Trump “is trying to steal an election he
clearly and unequivocally lost.”
The Trump team which sends me text-messages pleading for legal funds, says it's coming up short in the fundraising it needs.
People
are drifting off. They're trying to make peace. And with Sidney Powell
and her team of lawyers having to prove a massive fraud conspiracy in an
incredibly short window of time, there's fear she can't come through.
Fox News's Tucker Carlson seemed fearful of that scenario in the past
week...
As
for a 'President Biden' there's also comfort in knowing he might be
blocked from doing much harm if Republicans can hold the Senate. There
is hope that as a 78-year-old, he will serve just one term. And in the
House, a red wave is building...
That said, it's time to accelerate the fight.
Unfortunately,
this election is not like normal elections. Should this election, with
all its signs of massive fraud succeed for the election thieves, the
U.S. faces a bleak future no different from that of California. It's no
coincidence that Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris is a denizen of
Berkeley, California, with Berkeley values so far-left they top the
stances of Bernie Sanders. Her father was a Stanford professor of Marxism and her mother an authentic Indian Brahmin, from that caste with high-class disdain for the 'untouchables.'
It's an oligarchy we are fighting, as Angelo Codevilla writes in this must-read piece in American Greatness here:
But
the “resistance” took on a life of its own, fed from on high by such as
the CIA’s John Brennan and FBI’s James Comey, and the host of their
politicized subordinates, as well as from below by violent
“intersectional” groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
This
resistance was powerfully sustained in the middle by countless
corporate executives, government employees, editors, and reporters. The
convergence of so many like-minded people quickly and decisively
transmuted a political tactic into the replacement of a republic with an
oligarchy. It replaced government by consent with rule by force.
He
can add billionaires such as Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, George
Soros and whoever the Goliaths are at the Ford Foundation, the Democracy
Alliance, and moneybags NGOs to the top of that cited food chain.
Democrats cower at their very names and such groups would like nothing
better than to force the peasants from their cars into public transport,
their homes into tight cramped apartments, with an end to all that
expensive sports equipment and free airline travel that used to be the
province of what long ago was solely the rich. None of that. The
oligarchy has its interests and rest assured, you're in opposition to
them whether you like it or not.
We
often speak of California as the dreaded example of the one-party state
where government can no longer be changed, no matter how you vote, but
California wasn't always like this. Until 20 years ago, the state would
swing left and right. Today, it's a monopoly party and elections are
useless.
The
model came about as observers from Mexico about a decade ago noticed
the similarities ... of California as it's run now, to the place called
the "perfect dictatorship," as writer Mario Vargas Llosa called it,
Mexico's old Partido Institucional Revolucion, or PRI, which ruled and
ruined Mexico for 70 long years, leaving the country underdeveloped and
by the end of its run, exporting people.
Stolen
elections were a way of life back then. A Mexican friend told me
recently that Mexicans rolled their eyes on U.S. election night and said
to themselves: 'we've seen this rodeo before' when the counting stopped
in the dead of night, and when they resumed, their tallies mysteriously
reversed course. The exact same thing happened in Mexico several years
back. (Africa, too, has seen all the signs of vote-rigging, as described
in this pre-Trump 2016 BBC piece here.)
It's absolutely no surprise that Mexican President Andres Manuel
Lopez-Obrador refused to recognize the results of the election here --
all the things that happened here are the same things that happened to
him when he had an election stolen from him in 2006. He knew.
Several
Latin American heads of state, in fact, have noticed, including
Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro. Elections have also been nakedly stolen in
Nicaragua and Honduras in recent years, the thieves almost always the
party on the left. Venezuela of course is the granddaddy of stolen
elections, pioneering the way with electronic voting machines, courtesy
of its massive seed capital to Smartmatic, which moved into the U.S.
market by acquiring Sequoia, which was later bought up by Dominion. The
owners come and go but the tech remains the same.
Why
must we continue to fight? Because it might be 70 long years before
anything changes politically in the U.S. if we don't. The machines
appear to be rigged and they're all in the uncooperative hands of the
Democrat big city political machines and governors. Bernie Sanders was a
pilot project, Democrats stole his nomination once in 2016, and again
in 2020. Anyone think they'd do less with Trump? Blue state governments are
the ones who refused to cooperate with President Trump in cleaning up
the voter rolls, or ascertaining that everyone who votes is an American
citizen. Rest assured there was a plan in action and allowing them to
remain in power means there will never be reform.
And
the future for us? Well, stolen-election Venezuela is the example -
twenty-two years of humongous, gargantuan popular protests -- and
despite this obvious ferver, rigged elections at the ballot box. After
twenty-two years of protests, Venezuela's opposition has literally
nothing. And socialism is king.
And
yes, Trump won Venezuelan-Nicaraguan-Colombian-Cuban exile citizen
voters decisively in Florida, as well as the Tex-Mex border counties
loaded with Mexican-American voters who know what's what -- and what may
be coming down the pike.
We
can't let this happen to us in the states. We have the examples in hand
as to what can and will happen, and would be fools to ignore them.
Either we fight now, and keep fighting with President Trump for any
scrap of justice that can be found, or we will find ourselves submerged
without remedy in a sea of oligarchic socialism.
