Kerry Doubts Iran Wants to Destroy Israel - Ryan Mauro

by Ryan Mauro

Kerry's statement comes despite the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei published his strategy to eliminate Israel in a new book published last week.

US SEc. of State John Kerry testifying before Congress about the nuclear deal with Iran (Photo: © Reuters)

Iran may not mean it when it says it wants to destroy Israel—that's the shocking statement that Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview published yesterday. And his reason for thinking that the Iranian regime is nicer than its calls for genocide make it seem? Because Iran hasn't tried it yet.

The telling exchange with Jeffrey Goldberg is as follows:

"Goldberg: Do you believe that Iranian leaders sincerely seek the elimination of the Jewish state?

Kerry: I think they have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment. Whether or not that translates into active steps to, quote, “Wipe it,” you know...

Goldberg: “Wipe it off the map.”

Kerry: I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t seen anything that says to me—they’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here."

If the Iranian regime doesn't believe in destroying Israel, then why does it say it when the regime gains nothing from it? If the regime's tyrants are fundamentally no different than other tyrants, then why not drop the calls to genocide and open the doors to better satisfying their power-hungry, selfish desires?

See Related Story: Ayatollah Khamenei Publishes Book on How to Destroy Israel

The Israeli Prime Minister made the point that the deal creates a "more difficult path to one or two bombs today and a much easier path to hundreds of bombs tomorrow." Agreeing to the deal—and even complying with the deal—is not at all inconsistent with Iran's ideologically-based grand strategy.

Kerry is mistakenly equating Iran's rational strategic thinking with having a rational ideology and rational objectives. It is true that Iran is not like the Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State terrorist groups who hold nothing back, often causing self-inflicted wounds in the process. But all that means is that the Iranian regime has a rational strategy for acting upon its irrational ideology. An irrational ideological enemy with smart, rational strategic calculations is an enemy that is much more dangerous, skilled and difficult to understand.


Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio.

Source: www.clarionproject.org/analysis/kerry-doubts-iran-wants-destroy-israel

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic State: Germany and Austria are Next - Clarion Project

by Clarion Project

German jihadists to bring terror to the streets of Germany and Austria in ISIS' latest German-language execution video.

Screenshot from video.

The Islamic State has threatened to bring slaughter to Germany and Austria in its latest execution video, calling on Muslims living there to move to the Islamic State, or if they cannot for whatever reason, to kill non-Muslims in their countries.

The video was shot in Palmyra and featured jihadists executing two soldiers of Assad’s army. It is in German with Arabic subtitles, speaking directly to its target audience.

One of the two jihadists featured in the video praised Allah and made the journey himself to the Islamic State (termed ‘hijrah’ – migration).

He called on German Muslims saying “My dear brothers, make hijrah with Allah’s permission. I swear in the name of Allah if you do this you will be very happy. You will live here knowing that the sharia of Allah rules all around you.”

The emphasis in the video was on moving to the Islamic State, with carrying out terrorist attacks in the West framed as a last resort only if hijrah is not possible.

The second jihadist, shortly before the pair executed their prisoners, called on Muslims who can’t move to Syria to kill their non-Muslim neighbors saying “You don’t need a lot to do this. Take a big knife, go out into the street & slaughter every infidel you see.”

Warning: This video contains graphic images of execution


This is not the first time the Islamic State has attempted to radicalize German Muslims. Rapper turned jihadist Denis Cuspert released a rap song earlier in the year. Entitled ‘Fisabillilah’ (fighting in the cause of Allah), it threatened jihad in Germany from sleeper cells within the country and called on German Muslims to rise up.


Clarion Project

Source: http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-germany-and-austria-are-next

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

This Isn’t about Bibi and Obama - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

Israelis' united opposition to the Iran nuke deal isn't personal. It's about survival.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

It was obvious the fight over President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran would get very ugly, very quickly. And so it has.
It was obvious that it would be ugly because the fight over Obama’s appeasement policy toward Iran has been going on since he took office six-and-a-half years ago. And it has always been ugly.
Every time Obama has sided with the mullahs against domestic opponents he has played the Jew card in one way or another. He has blown more anti-Semitic dog whistles than many in Washington even realized existed.
Now the stakes are far higher than a mere sanctions bill. Obama has gotten his deal with Iran. And he’ll be damned if he allows it to go down.
So it is open season on Israel and its supporters.

Secretary of State John Kerry made this clear two weeks ago when he said it will be Israel’s fault if the deal goes down. Since the administration threatens that torpedoing the deal will cause war, Kerry is threatening that the administration will blame Israel if war breaks out.
As for Obama, in his conference call with leftist supporters last Thursday, he attacked AIPAC and the other Jewish organizations for daring to lobby Congress to vote against removing US sanctions from Iran and conflated their opposition to the deal with Jewish Republicans’ support for the invasion of Iraq.
In the president’s words, opposition to his deal comes “partly from the $20 million that’s being spent lobbying against the bill,” and “partly from the same columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for getting us into the Iraq war.”
One of the ironic things about this statement is that while AIPAC studiously avoided taking a position on the Iraq war, (while both of Obama’s secretaries of state and his vice president supported it), two years ago Obama strong-armed AIPAC – against the wishes of its members – to lobby Congress to support his plan to bomb regime targets in Syria. He then left AIPAC high and dry, with its credibility in tatters, when he changed his mind at the last minute and did nothing.
Moreover, Obama’s in-house Jewish organizations – J Street and the National Jewish Democratic Council – are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congressional Democrats to support the deal.
But irony is not the point. The point is demonization.
By casting aspersions on the motives and character of his opponents Obama seeks to end debate on the merits of his plan in order to force Democrats to support it.

And he will need to end that debate quickly. The longer it goes on, the less the public likes his deal.
A Quinnipiac University poll published this week showed that the US public opposes the deal nearly two to one. Although other polls carried out by The Wall Street Journal and CNN indicate near parity between supporters and opponents of the deal, the trend seems to favor opponents of the deal. And some Democrats – including Senator Chuck Schumer – are reportedly beginning to feel the heat.
For Obama to end this debate he needs to make this a popularity contest. And the only nemesis big enough to block debate as far as Obama is concerned in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Obama apparently sees things, if he can secure Democratic support for himself against Netanyahu, then his firewall against Democratic abandonment is safe.
Obama has a problem though. In Israel, this isn’t about Netanyahu.
Whereas Americans oppose Obama’s deal two to one, according to a New Wave poll taken for Israel Hayom, three-quarters of Israeli Jews support Netanyahu’s vocal opposition to the deal and want him to keep it up.
Only 15 percent believe he should stop voicing opposition to the deal.
Similarly, 73% of Israelis believe Obama is not attending to Israel’s interests.
In an attempt to neutralize the inconvenient fact that there is no significant Israeli support for the agreement, the administration has seized upon the small group of retired generals from the IDF, Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) and Mossad who have spoken out against Netanyahu’s opposition to the deal. According to J Street, these men will play a key role in the effort to secure the support of Congressional Democrats.
Some of these retired security brass are radicals with records of politicized service. Retired Lt. Col. Uzi Even, who wrote an op-ed in support of the deal last week, compromised Israel’s bombing raid on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 when he leaked the planned operation to then opposition leader Shimon Peres. In recent years Even, who served in high-level positions in Israel’s nuclear program, called for the closure of the Dimona nuclear facility. He also served as a member of Knesset for the radical Left Meretz Party for a year or so. To refer to his positions as fringe is an understatement.
Most of the generals who oppose public opposition to the deal and support its promise to keep Iran’s nuclear ambitions at bay for a decade or more, like former Shin Bet directors Ami Ayalon and Carmi Gillon, have no expertise in nuclear issues. So their opinion holds no more validity than that of the average man on the street.
Many of the generals that have been cast as supporters of the deal by Obama’s defenders have actually not supported the deal. They have simply claimed that Israel lacks the means to cancel it and that we need to learn to live with it. Among these voices are former OC Military Intelligence and current Labor Party member Amos Yadlin and former OC Operations Yisrael Ziv.
This view is apparently making headway among some Democratic lawmakers. In an interview explaining his decision to support the deal, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff from California channeled Yadlin and Ziv’s position. The only problem is that whereas Yadlin and Ziv are powerless to block the US from implementing the nuclear deal as currently negotiated, Schiff has significant power to do so. By voting down the deal he can force the administration to return to the negotiating table and bring back a better deal.
It is still unknown whether the administration played a direct role in organizing the retired generals to support it against three quarters of the public.
But over past few years, the Obama administration has aggressively sought to subvert Israel’s security establishment. The goal has always been to mobilize a significant number of retired generals to side with the administration against the elected government.
Two years ago former OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrachi revealed that the State Department had hired retired Israeli generals, led by his predecessor in Central Command Gadi Shamni, to lobby the Israeli public to support an Israeli surrender of the Jordan Valley. Both the government and the public opposed such a withdrawal.
It is possible that some of the generals who oppose Netanyahu’s handling of the Iran dispute with the administration are convinced by the merits of the administration’s talking points. It is possible that they simply don’t like Netanyahu and want to weaken him. But the fact is that whatever their motivations and regardless of whether or not they are being paid for their statements, these men represent a fringe opinion both among the general population in Israel and among the security establishment.
Whatever their intentions may be, these retired generals are helping Obama get Congress to sign a deal that threatens far more than Israel.
This deal, which guarantees Iran a nuclear arsenal in 10-15 years and permits it to purchase and develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, will enable Iran to develop the means to achieve its highest goal – the destruction of America. This is the substance of the deal. This is why Americans oppose it. And this is why Democratic lawmakers must also oppose it.
For Netanyahu, as for the three quarters of Israelis who support him, opposition to the deal is not the consequence of ill will toward Obama. This isn’t personal. Netanyahu opposes this deal because it is disastrous for Israel. The more Americans know about the deal, the more they will be convinced that it is a disaster for their country as well. It is a shame that some Israelis are helping Obama to hide the truth from them.


Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source:  http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259696/isnt-about-bibi-and-obama-caroline-glick

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Analyst: Soon to be Broke Saudis 'Fooled Themselves' on Oil - Yaakov Levi

by Yaakov Levi

A gambit by Saudi Arabia to break the back of its oil competition has fallen flat on its face, a respected UK analyst said Wednesday.

 

Oil rig (illustration)

Thinkstock

 

A gambit by Saudi Arabia to break the back of its oil competition – the North American shale oil business – has fallen flat on its face, a respected UK analyst said Wednesday. As a result, Saudi Arabia and OPEC face a bleak economic future, according to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. “If the oil futures market is correct,” Pritchard wrote in the Daily Telegraph Wednesday. “Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade.”

That crisis will gravely affect not just Saudi Arabia, Israeli analysts said, but also the clients of what had until now been the Sunni Muslim “money machine” that funded projects the world over for the advancement of Arab and Muslim causes. Among the biggest victims is likely to be the Palestinian Authority, which has been a major recipient of aid from the Saudi government and Gulf oil moguls.

Oil prices started to slip late last year, after the Saudis continually pumped up production, despite a worldwide glut. Prices fell, but still Saudi – and eventually OPEC – production was not cut, or even increased, to the point where oil now regularly trades in the area of $50 a barrel, a third of its price just a few years ago.

Analysts at the [sic] believed that the Saudi strategy was to “starve” the American shale oil industry, which has emerged as a major competitor to OPEC oil. Thanks to shale production and new oil well discoveries, the U.S. this year became the world's leading oil producer.

However, shale oil, the Saudis believed, could not be produced profitably at rates below $60-$70 a barrel – and if oil were to be maintained at prices like that, they believed, the U.S. shale producers would shut down, leaving OPEC once again the “kings” of the international oil market, and its prices.

But Riyadh was wrong, said Pritchard. “If the aim was to choke the US shale industry, the Saudis have misjudged badly, just as they misjudged the growing shale threat at every stage for eight years,” he wrote. “The problem for the Saudis is that US shale frackers are not high-cost. They are mostly mid-cost. Advanced pad drilling techniques allow frackers to launch five or ten wells in different directions from the same site. Smart drill-bits with computer chips can seek out cracks in the rock. New dissolvable plugs promise to save $300,000 a well.”

Pritchard quoted a Saudi oil expert as admitting that the policy has failed. “The policy hasn't worked and it will never work,” the expert said – but according to Pritchard, it's too late to change things. “OPEC now faces a permanent headwind. Each rise in price will be capped by a surge in US output. Saudi Arabia is effectively beached. It relies on oil for 90pc of its budget revenues. There is no other industry to speak of, a full fifty years after the oil bonanza began.”

The implications of this situation will be profound, he wrote. “The government can slash investment spending for a while - as it did in the mid-1980s - but in the end it must face draconian austerity. It cannot afford to prop up Egypt and maintain an exorbitant political patronage machine across the Sunni world.

“Social spending is the glue that holds together a medieval Wahhabi regime at a time of fermenting unrest among the Shia minority of the Eastern Province, pin-prick terrorist attacks from ISIS, and blowback from the invasion of Yemen. Diplomatic spending is what underpins the Saudi sphere of influence caught in a Middle East version of Europe's Thirty Year War, and still reeling from the after-shocks of a crushed democratic revolt.”

The Saudis, he added “took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn. Bank of America says OPEC is now 'effectively dissolved.' The cartel might as well shut down its offices in Vienna to save money.”


Yaakov Levi

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/199104#.VcNw3vmzchR

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why History will Curse the Democrats - James Lewis

by James Lewis

The world is entering unknown territory, with the first sworn Armageddon cult equipped with nukes. Destroy a stable balance of power and the world becomes much more dangerous, not less. That is exactly what Obama has done, and not a single liberal newspaper has had the guts to say it.

What will happen when the fanatics of Iran explode their first bomb? What if they drop a dirty bomb on Tel Aviv or Riyadh, as they can already do today? What if they stage an armored blitzkrieg against Saudi Arabia by way of Syria and Jordan, under the protection of their own nuclear umbrella?

They have threatened to do all those things -- and if they do, Obama will not escape the blame.

These are real scenarios that strategists around the world are studying in detail. Given Obama's disastrous weakening of U.S. and allied power, and especially his failure to act years ago when the nuclear program was vulnerable, the risk of major war is now much greater than ever before. Nothing like this has happened in the 66 years of the nuclear age. The world is entering unknown territory, with the first sworn Armageddon cult equipped with nukes. Destroy a stable balance of power and the world becomes much more dangerous, not less. That is exactly what Obama has done, and not a single liberal newspaper has had the guts to say it.

The rest of Obama's term may therefore be very dangerous. America's enemies will try to solidify their gains before a stronger U.S. president can be elected.

The only gain from major Iranian aggression would be a historic punch in the nose to the Democrats. Because this is not just Obama's failure. It all started when Jimmy Carter let the ayatollahs take power over the modernizing and relatively enlightened Shah in 1979. Bill Clinton had eight years to catch Bin Laden before 9/11/01, which could have been avoided. Nearly 3,000 innocents died that day because of Clinton's inability to take the danger seriously, and he has escaped any responsibility. Hillary committed gross malfeasance on the night of the Benghazi attack, along with Obama himself. Add to that the evidence for Muslim Brotherhood influence buying and infiltration, according to Admiral James Lyons (USN, ret) and defense journalist Bill Gertz, and we can imagine a scenario where disaster in the Middle East will turn American voters against the guilty party.

The Democrats are now associated with willful domestic destruction, as in the Baltimore riots, bankruptcy in Detroit and other Democratic cities, systematic sabotage of our borders, massive national security hacks, criminal leaking of national security secrets, predictable economic malaise, enormous misallocation of tax resources to fantasy energy projects, and finally, abject surrender to nuclear cults in North Korea and Iran. Mass murdering terrorists are now much stronger than six years ago, and we are weaker. That is not an accident. It follows directly from Obama's actions.

Nations and parties can drift into self-destructive behavior, as the Democrats keep doing. When things get bad enough, frustrated voters have been known to take their revenge.

Major voter rebellions have happened several times in U.S. history. You may not remember the Whigs, the Federalists, or the German Bund. Those movements went extinct when Americans turned against them. Just before the Civil War, voters turned to Lincoln's Republicans, throwing out the Democrats as the party of slavery and rebellion.

Major electoral reverses happen when voters see repeated failures of leadership in frightening times. It took Ronald Reagan to defeat Carter after four years of economic and foreign policy weakness, and Obama hasn't done any better.

In 1948 CPUSA party stooges almost took control of the Democratic Party. Democrats were saved by the skin of their teeth by Harry Truman's victory. It took George Meany's AFL-CIO to drive Stalinists out of the unions, saving the Democrats from extinction in the 1950s.

However, since the McGovern Commission of 1968, which introduced affirmative action in Democratic delegate selection, the Dems have swung hard left again. Their yen for destructive radicalism has never been as more dangerous than it is today, under the angriest anti-American president in history, Barack Hussein Obama.

None of the Democrats seem to see the yawning abyss in front of their eyes. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who could resist the nuclear surrender, is so fixed on becoming Senate majority leader that he is willing to open the gates of Hell in the Middle East. American voters turned against the Left when Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. In the early 50s Soviet nuclear bombs helped elect a Republican Congress and president.

Today we see the most astonishing American surrender in history. If it leads to disaster, Obama and the Democrats will not escape the blame. Too many people know the truth. Even as Democrats are under relentless pressure to vote for the surrender, the ayatollah has issued a book detailing exactly how he plans to nuke Tel Aviv and New York City.

Shades of Mein Kampf!

But Obama tells us the mullahs don't really mean it.

The odds are heavily against Obama's gamble, but he is planning to be out of town when the inevitable crisis hits.

Americans haven't seen this kind of nuclear crisis since Stalin's and Khrushchev's sabre rattling in the 1950s. The Soviets never publicly threatened nuclear destruction in Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But the mullahs have been boasting about nuclear Armageddon ever since Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to be chased out of power.

Will American voters respond to obvious dangers? Or are we so stultified that nothing will wake us up?

So far, Republicans haven't broken through media censorship. Donald Trump may finally be showing us how to do it. Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson seem to have the courage of their convictions. They will be attacked by the media mob, of course. The question is whether Republicans will stick by their guns. Today it's not politics as usual, but national survival.

But our voters seem more ignorant, more intellectually lazy and more media-whipped than ever. Our candidates are easily intimidated. Mitt Romney ducked far too many incoming blows, while missing open chances to strike back. Dole and McCain were too old and worn out to run. Republicans should never yield to the vanity of old men.

When the Obama trance wears off, I have to believe that Americans will still respond to clear and present danger. But by then it could be too late.

Maybe the voters should put the Democrats on notice. If the nuclear balloon goes up, today's surrender to the mullahs is the one thing they will never walk away from.

Let them go the way of the Whigs. 

James Lewis

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/why_history_will_curse_the_democrats_.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Nuclearizing Iran, Sabotaging Arabs - Bassam Tawil

by Bassam Tawil

• Obama's solution? To let Iran have legitimate nuclear bombs in a few years, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them to the U.S. -- or perhaps from America's soft underbelly, South America, where Iran has been acquiring uranium and establishing bases for years. Or perhaps launched from submarines off America's coast, which would make the identity of the attacker unknowable and a response therefore impossible. Incredibly, America's politicians do not even seem to seem to be concerned about that.
• We have just sacrificed Sunni stability for American ideology: empty slogans fed to us by clueless, if well-meaning, American officials.
• As we watched one stable Arab regime fall after another, we have allowed ourselves to be destroyed from within by these bungling diplomats -- from America, Europe, China and Russia. Instead of keeping our eyes on the real threat, we exhausted ourselves in wasteful, unending battles against the Jews -- meanwhile letting the Iranian menace slip out of sight.
• Obama really does deserve a Nobel Prize, but it should have been awarded by the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in gratitude for America's surrender.

"Nation building" seems to have fallen into disrepute in the West, but it should not. It is vitally important -- as the successes of Germany, Japan and South Korea attest.

Over the past few years, in our foolishness, we in the Middle East swallowed the deceptive bait of "democracy" dangled before us, even though we knew that it could not, in the misguided way it was presented, be implemented in the Middle East.

The idea was superb, but here in the Middle East, possibly in being impatient to "get credit" before the diplomats' term of office were over, no one ever took the time to establish the institutions of democracy -- equal justice under law, freedom of speech, property rights, the primacy of the individual rather than the collective, separation of religion and state -- to show us in the Middle East how democracy actually operates, and to allow those institutions to take root before ever holding an election.

So eager were Western leaders to take credit right away that they refused "let the rice bake." Had the West introduced democratic elections to Japan and South Korea (where they eventually worked brilliantly) in the same way it muscled democracy into Iraq, it would never have taken root in those countries either. Had the Germans had been asked to vote right after World War II, they would most likely have reelected the Nazis -- that was what they knew. It took seven years to re-educate the public to understand and accept a Konrad Adenauer.

What seems clear is that we have sacrificed Sunni stability for empty slogans -- and for clueless, if well-meaning, American officials. As we watched one stable Arab regime fall after another, we allowed American ideology to destroy us from within. Instead of keeping our eyes on the real threat, we exhausted ourselves in wasteful, unending battles against the Jews -- meanwhile letting the Iranian menace slip out of sight.

If we try to look at the positive side of the Iran nuclear agreement, it is just possible that Obama looked at the Sunni Arab states, fractured and at each others' throats, and at the ruthless terrorist groups gaining ground in the expanding battle zones, and decided that we were too fractious for the U.S. to protect.

Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have been worsening the situation in the Arab world by funding Sunni terrorist organizations, thereby putting it on a course of complete chaos. Despite Arab wealth and power, we have been dealing almost exclusively with the marginal issue of Palestine and the Jews, to excuse our inability to be effective in giving U.S. President Barack Obama what he really needs: regional stability.

Obama sees Iran and its terrorist organizations, which are all unified, organized and obedient, opposing the Sunni Arabs. Obama may be betting on Iran to bring order to the Middle East.

Imagine if we and our fundamentalist Sunni terrorist organizations had actually focused on stopping the Iranians in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Imagine if we had abandoned, even momentarily, the dream of the Muslim Brotherhood (what the West calls "political Islam") ruling the world. Imagine if we had stopped our stupid, useless acts of hatred, and could instead have focused on our common enemy, Iran. Our situation now would be immeasurably better. We would not be deviating from the teachings of Muhammad, because first we have to focus on the near enemy and then on the distant one. Iran is nearer and more dangerous than Europe and the United States, so Iran should have been -- and still should be -- the first Sunni target. We might have led Obama to adopt a different approach than allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb in ten years or sooner -- but we did not, because of our weakness and distraction with marginal "causes." Thus Obama, from a desire to stabilize the Middle East, seems to be betting on the strong horse, Iran.

The truth, however, may be somewhat different. It is entirely possible that Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, is employing a policy of "divide and conquer." In the U.S., instead of trying to improve how children in the inner cities are being educated, he has been busy stoking racial and economic conflict. The Arabs are becoming increasingly suspicious that he is a historic "divide and conquer" manipulator. He may deliberately be creating fitna (civil strife) in the Arab world by whipping up conflict with Iran, so that America will once again look like the big power-broker -- but at the expense of the Arabs.

We Arabs are expert conspiracy theorists, and interpret every political agenda as a hidden plot, but one only has to look at the Obama administration's fawning support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey and Egypt, and how America supported the fall of Mubarak, and it immediately becomes obvious that the U.S. is trying to manipulate the fate of the Arabs.

Anyone following America's rejection of, and now only reluctant support for, the reformist regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi understands that the Americans prefer what they consider "backward Arabs": those controlled by regressive Islam.

That is the reason we see Obama's policies as backing both the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and the theocrats in Iran. The ideologies of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran's mullahs would lead to most dangerous and regressive fate of both Sunni and Shiite Muslims around the world, as well as Americans at home -- and these are the Muslims most loved by the current American administration. Or maybe, as many of us say here on the street, Obama is just trying to "get even" with the West and bring it to its knees, for being white, "imperialist" and non-Muslim. Obama's solution? To let Iran have legitimate nuclear bombs in a few years, with the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them to the U.S. -- or perhaps from America's soft underbelly, South America, where Iran has been acquiring uranium and establishing bases for years. Or perhaps launched from submarines off America's coast, which would make the identity of the attacker unknowable and a response therefore impossible. Incredibly, America's politicians do not even seem to seem to be concerned about that.

Obama really does deserve a Nobel Prize, but it should have been awarded by the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in gratitude for America's surrender.

Perhaps President Obama's Nobel Prize should have been awarded by the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in gratitude for America's surrender.

 

 

Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6303/nuclearizing-iran

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Netanyahu's duty is to thwart Iran, not applaud Obama - Boaz Bismuth

by Boaz Bismuth

The time for pleasantries and politeness is over. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected to fight a nuclear Iran. It is not his job to secure a foreign policy legacy for U.S. President Barack Obama.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu | Photo credit: AP

What didn't Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's detractors say about his speech to Congress in March? They said he was jeopardizing Israeli-American relations, thus putting Israel's security at risk. They said he was ruining his relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama; they said the Iran issue was nothing more than election propaganda. Today, in hindsight, we see that the fight against Netanyahu's speech was the election propaganda, and that the speech itself was part of a crucial campaign on behalf of Israel's security.

In retrospect, Netanyahu wasn't wrong: The trip to Washington, while the timing was perceived as problematic, was extremely necessary. Congress has become the last barricade able to stop the bad deal from materializing. Congress members on Tuesday had already begun formulating the opposition document. 

Now that the superpowers have capitulated to the regime of the ayatollahs, to the charms of rekindling business relations and to the atmosphere of appeasement hovering in the air since November of 2008, it is only us and Congress, along with Israeli and American public opinion (all the latest polls in the U.S. point to adamant objection to the deal). In other words, Netanyahu is not alone. Israel is not alone. No one is promising that Israel will win this fight in Congress. But Netanyahu was elected in May, among other things, to fight the Iranian nuclear program. Not to clap his hands for Obama.

The same chorus that wailed against his speech in March will now do the same against the speech he gave on Tuesday to American Jews. Suffice it to say, we will likely hear the same chirping voices telling us that Netanyahu is worsening his relationship with Obama (can it get any worse?) and therefore putting Israeli interests at risk. Is it not at all possible that Obama worsened his relationship with Netanyahu, or that the terrible deal with Iran is a severe detriment to Israel's topmost interest -- its security and existence?

America needs to understand that Israel is not trying to stir up war -- quite the opposite. Netanyahu didn't say Tuesday (or any other day) that war is the preferred option to a bad deal. He simply thinks that capitulation is not necessarily the best option, and that a good deal is better than a bad one. 

The White House needs to understand that the prime minister of Israel has moved beyond the realm of pleasantries and politeness. He is engaged in managing a conflict. Not only does the nuclear deal with Iran fail to foster regional stability, it bolsters terrorism, energizes a nuclear arms race and primarily strengthens the Iranian regime. And this is before mentioning that when the deal expires, it will be easier for the ayatollahs to snag a bomb than it was for them to snag the country in 1979. 

Obama on Wednesday will respond to Netanyahu's speech by defending the deal to the American people. In the meantime, Obama has met with representatives of the Jewish community to explain the merits of the deal. What Obama will not do, presumably, is utter the quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Necessity never made a good bargain." Indeed, the necessity for a legacy.

The fight being put up by Netanyahu is forcing Obama on the defensive. Of course there are those who will see this and posit that Netanyahu is making the whole thing personal (between him and Obama). But it is not personal; it is a matter of principle between Israel and the regime of the ayatollahs. The administration is signing a deal with a terrorist regime that calls for Israel's destruction; a Holocaust-denying regime with anti-Semitic leanings; a regime that over the past two decades has secretly built nuclear facilities for military purposes, which can lead to another holocaust. Yet after taking all this into account, the prime minister of Israel is the one who must keep silent, lest he harm Obama's legacy?

Boaz Bismuth

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=27377&hp=1

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Improving Ties between India and Israel - Prof. Efraim Inbar

by Prof. Efraim Inbar

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 304, August 6, 2015
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Relations between Israel and India are improving. The planned visits to Israel of India’s president and prime minister reflect this change. These shifts in Indian foreign policy are related to changes in the domestic and international arenas.

Relations between India and Israel are changing and improving. It was recently announced that Indian president Pranab Mukherjee will hold a state visit to Israel in October, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to visit – the first visit of an Indian prime minister to Israel – early next year. In February 2015, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon visited India, during which the two countries finalized a major defense deal worth more than $1.5 billion.

No less significantly, we have witnessed a shift in India’s traditionally pro- Palestinian stance at the United Nations. New Delhi abstained from voting on a UN Human Rights Council motion in favor of the Palestinians. (The vote was to accept the Inquiry Commission Report on the 2014 Israeli strikes in Gaza, and transfer the file to the International Criminal Court). Indeed, India had already abstained in June on a vote to give UN recognition to an NGO with Hamas links. It should however be noted that India still does not vote with Israel and the United States, and that both abstentions were related to Hamas (an Islamist terrorist organization). It remains to be seen whether a similar shift can be expected on other Palestinian issues.

This long-awaited shift in India’s position toward Israel is the result of several domestic and international developments.

First, the Hindu nationalist BJ Party (BJP) returned to power in May 2014. The BJP has always been more favorably disposed toward the Jewish State – a natural ally against Muslim extremism – than the left-leaning Congress Party. Moreover, the BJP’s charismatic leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been a good friend of Israel.

The BJP is also less sensitive to the large Muslim minority in India (180 million) that is believed to be more critical of close ties with Israel. And in any case, Islam in that part of the world is more tolerant than in the Middle East. While for many Muslims around the globe, Islam is the dominant component of their identity, this is not necessarily true of India’s Muslims. The Indian component of their identity, several thousand years old, precedes the Muslim one. Indeed, about 8 percent of India’s Muslims voted for Modi.

Second, a large part of the Indian political and bureaucratic establishment, which in the past had evinced a lukewarm attitude toward Israel, nowadays shares the view that the bilateral relations that have intensified since the mid-1990s are very beneficial to India. The multi-faceted interactions in the areas of defense industries, counter terrorism, intelligence, agriculture, health, science, and technology have blossomed in recent years. The defense ties, in particular, have been a significant factor in the increased closeness between Jerusalem and New Delhi. Moreover, the lobbies of the two states cooperate in Washington.

Israel understands the importance of India as a rising global power, and has directed efforts toward increasing its presence there. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University has led the way in making inroads with think tanks and academics in India, and has also been very explicit in calling for a change in India’s UN voting patterns.

Third, international factors that had inhibited good relations with Israel have lost some of their power. As India gradually acquires greater global importance, it feels less pressure to please the Muslim, and particularly the Arab, bloc. The Arab world is in the midst of a deep sociopolitical crisis that will probably last for decades.

Moreover, the balance of power in the international oil market has shifted largely towards the buyer. Hence despite the fact that over eight million Indians are employed in the Gulf, and that most of Indian’s oil comes from that area, the international leverage of the Arab countries has been weakened. India has also been bitterly disappointed by the lack of support it receives from Arab states on the Kashmir issue.

Fourth, India can still plausibly claim that its abstentions at the UN are not a betrayal of its historic support for the struggle of the Palestinians. Nevertheless, New Delhi realizes that Muslim and other states merely pay lip service to the Palestinian issue.

The shift in India’s position on Israel also reflects several international trends.

First, it shows that India is gradually growing into its elevated status on the world scene and increasingly behaves in accordance with its own interests, and with diminished sensitivity to other actors. Although India has always claimed a special role in international affairs, following the end of the Cold War and the liberalization of the Indian economy its potential for great power status is coming to fruition.

Second, it reveals the true power of the Arab world. As the Arab tragedy unfolds, particularly since the so-called Arab Spring, the Arab world is in disarray and unable to wield much international pressure.

Third, it indicates that the Indo-Israeli relationship has matured and entered into a new stage. India recognizes the importance of the relations with the Jewish State and is willing to take into consideration Israel’s interests. Obviously, the contents of the bilateral relationship are more important than votes at the United Nations – a morally bankrupt institution. But India’s gesture is welcome nonetheless.

Finally, India’s shift is likely to resonate beyond the corridors of the United Nations, and Third World countries might follow its example. After all, India is considered one of the leaders of the Third World bloc. We have already seen how African countries such as Nigeria have sided with Israel at the United Nations. Israel is a strong country with much to offer the international community, while its Arab enemies are losing influence in the international arena. Indeed, one important lesson from India’s behavior is that the fears of international isolation among Israelis are greatly exaggerated.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family


Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/improving-ties-between-india-and-israel/

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Obama Administration Modifies U.S. Oath of Allegiance to Accommodate Muslims - Raymond Ibrahim

by Raymond Ibrahim

The original oath required incoming citizens to declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when required by the law.

Now the USCIS says, “A candidate [to U.S. citizenship] may be eligible to exclude these two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.”

The Obama administration recently made changes to the Oath of Allegiance to the United States in a manner very conducive to Sharia, or Islamic law.

On July 21, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced some “modifications” to the Oath of Allegiance that immigrants must take before becoming naturalized. 

The original oath required incoming citizens to declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when required by the law.

Now the USCIS says, “A candidate [to U.S. citizenship] may be eligible to exclude these two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.”

The new changes further add that new candidates “May be eligible for [additional?] modifications based on religious training and belief, or conscientious objection arising from a deeply held moral or ethical code.”

These changes serve incoming Islamic supremacists especially well.  For, while Islamic law allows Muslims to feign loyalty to non-Muslim “infidel” authorities, it bans Muslims from living up to the pretense by actually fighting or killing fellow Muslims on behalf of a non-Muslim entity, such as the United States.

The perfectly fitting story of Nidal Hassan -- the U.S. army major and “observant Muslim who prayed daily” but then turned murderer -- comes to mind and is illustrative.

A pious Muslim, Hasan seemed a “regular American,” even if he was leading a double life -- American Army major and psychiatrist by day, financial supporter of jihadi groups and associate of terrorists by night.  However, when time came for this American soldier to “bear arms on behalf of the United States” -- to quote the original Oath of Allegiance -- against fellow Muslims, things got ugly: he went on a shooting spree in Fort Hood, killing thirteen Americans, including one pregnant woman in 2009.

Much of Hasan’s behavior is grounded in the Islamic doctrine of Loyalty and Enmity.  According to this essential teaching, Muslims must always be loyal to Islam and fellow Muslims while having enmity for all non-Islamic things and persons. 

However, whenever Muslims find themselves under the authority of non-Islamic institutions and persons, they are permitted to feign loyalty -- even to the point of cursing Islam and pretending to have abandoned it -- with one caveat: Muslims must never take up arms on behalf of “infidels” against fellow Muslims.  In other words, their loyalty to non-Muslims must be skin deep.

Many are the verses in the Koran that support this divisive doctrine (3:28, 4:89, 4:144, 9:23, and 58:22; the last simply states that true Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims -- “even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin”).

Most germane is Koran 3:28:

“Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels rather than believers: and whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah -- unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.”

The words translated here as “guard” and “precaution” are derived from the Arabic word taqu, from the trilateral root w-q-y -- the same root that gives us the word taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine that permits Muslims to deceive non-Muslims whenever under their authority.  

Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), author of one of the most authoritative commentaries on the Koran, explains taqiyya in the context of verse 3:28 as follows: “Whoever at any time or place fears … evil [from non-Muslims] may protect himself through outward show.”  As proof of this, he quotes Muhammad’s close companion Abu Darda, who said, “Let us grin in the face of some people while our hearts curse them.”[1]

Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (d. 923), author of another standard commentary on the Koran, interprets verse 3:28 as follows:

If you [Muslims] are under their [non-Muslims'] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them with your tongue while harboring inner animosity for them … [know that] God has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels rather than other believers -- except when infidels are above them [in authority]. Should that be the case, let them act friendly towards them while preserving their religion.[2]

And therein lies the limit of taqiyya: when the deceit, the charade begins to endanger the lives of fellow Muslims -- who, as we have seen, deserve first loyalty -- it is forbidden. As al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri puts it in his treatise on Loyalty and Enmity, Muslims may pretend to be friendly and loyal to non-Muslims, so long as they do “not undertake any initiative to support them [non-Muslims], commit sin, or enable [them] through any deed or killing or fighting against Muslims” (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 75).

Thus the idea that Nidal Hasan might be deployed to a Muslim country (Iraq or Afghanistan) was his “worst nightmare.”   When he realized that he was about to be deployed, he became “very upset and angry.”  The thought that he might injure or kill Muslims “weighed heavily on him.” He also counseled a fellow Muslim not to join the U.S. Army, since “Muslims shouldn’t kill Muslims.”  

Hassan is not the only Muslim to expose his disloyalty when pushed into fighting fellow Muslims on behalf of the United States.

In 2010, Naser Abdo, another Muslim soldier who joined the U.S. Army, demanded to be discharged on the claim that he was a “conscientious objector whose devotion to Islam has suffered since he took an oath to defend the United States against all enemies.”  The Army agreed, but while processing him, officials found child pornography on his government-issued computer and recommended that he be court-martialed.  Abdo went AWOL and later tried to carry out a terrorist attack on a restaurant with the use of weapons of mass destruction.

And in April 2005, another Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait: “He launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq.”

In short, the first loyalty of any “American Muslim” who follows the Koran is to fellow Muslims, regardless of their nationality -- and not to American “infidels,” even if they be their longtime neighbors whom they daily smiled to (see here for examples).  Hence why American Muslim Tarik Shah, who was arrested for terrorist-related charges, once boasted: “I could be joking and smiling [with non-Muslims] and then cutting their throats in the next second” -- reminiscent of the aforementioned quote by Muhammad’s companion.

Now, in direct compliance with Islamic law, the Obama administration has made it so that no Muslim living in America need ever worry about having to defend her -- including against fellow Muslims or jihadis.
____

[1] 'Imad ad-Din Isma'il Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Karim (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiya, 2001), vol. 1, p. 350, author's translation.

[2] Abu Ja'far Muhammad at-Tabari, Jami' al-Bayan 'an ta'wil ayi'l-Qur'an al-Ma'ruf: Tafsir at-Tabari (Beirut: Dar Ihya' at-Turath al-'Arabi, 2001), vol. 3, p. 267, author's translation.

Raymond Ibrahim

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/_obama_administration_modifies_us_oath_of_allegiance_to_accommodate_muslims.html

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Turkey and Its Kurds: At War Again - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

• "We have only one concern. It is Islam, Islam and Islam." – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, July 31, 2015.
• Why should they be fighting? After all, they are both Sunni Muslims.
• Once again, Erdogan, an Islamist, relied too much on religion in resolving what is essentially an ethnic (not religious) conflict.
  

Even President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's critics, including this author, praised him when, after 40,000 lives lost in a bloody conflict, he (as then prime minister) bravely launched a difficult process that would finally bring peace to a country that suffered much from ethnic strife. His government would negotiate peace with the Kurds; grant them broad cultural and political rights, which his predecessors did not; and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurds' armed group, would finally say farewell to arms. Erdogan (and the Kurdish leaders) would then be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But now Turkey is in flames again; the country smells of death. Dozens of members of the security forces, as well as civilians, have been killed in clashes in just the two weeks after an Islamic State suicide bomber murdered 32 pro-Kurdish activists in a small Turkish town on the Syrian border on July 20. Several hundred people were injured and more than a thousand were detained by the police.

Turkish cities have once again become a battleground in an almost century-old Turkish-Kurdish dispute: Kurdish militants attack security forces on a daily basis, while the Turkish military buries its fallen soldiers and strikes Kurdish guerrilla camps in northern Iraq. What happened to the Turkish-Kurdish ceasefire and the prospect of sustainable peace?

There are three main reasons why all the effort of the last few years has gone into the political wasteland:

1) Erdogan's obsession with Islam(ism): Speaking at a conference in Jakarta on July 31, Erdogan unsurprisingly said: "We have only one concern. It is Islam, Islam and Islam. It is impossible for us to accept the overshadowing of Islam."

In the same vein, Erdogan's prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu said in a 2014 interview: "In Turkey's periphery you cannot explain anything without the religion factor."

Erdogan (mis)calculated that he could successfully use Islam as a glue keeping Muslim Turks and Muslim Kurds in unity. Why should they be fighting? After all, they are both Sunni Muslims. He thought he could convince the Kurds to surrender their arms and live happily ever after with their Turkish Muslim brothers. For a historic end to the conflict, Islam had to take a central role. Erdogan would therefore restructure Turkey along multi-ethnic lines but a greater role for Islam would be the cement keeping the nation united. Once again, Erdogan, an Islamist, relied too much on religion in resolving what is essentially an ethnic (not religious) conflict.

2) A dishonest negotiator: Erdogan was not an honest negotiator from the beginning. His counterparts, the PKK leadership, were smart enough not to trust him. They agreed to a ceasefire in 2013, but have never really buried their arms since then, thinking that they would one day need them. Erdogan's real intention was to keep the PKK "inactive," away from bombings and other acts of terror, and therefore minimize the risk of losing votes as the masses turn angry at his government in the face of the tragic loss of human life. Prolonged negotiations with the Kurds would give him enough peaceful time to win one local election (March 2014), one presidential election (August 2014) and one parliamentary election (June 2015). If, afterward, there is peace, that would be fine. If not, the Kurds could go to hell, with the next election scheduled for 2019. In other words, he pretended to negotiate in order to buy time and delay any renewed wave of violence.

3) An unbridgeable gap: It is true that Erdogan's governments granted Turkey's Kurds far more than any other Turkish government did in the past. In 2009, the state broadcaster launched the country's first TV channel in Kurdish. A new electoral law allowed, for the first time, campaigning in Kurdish. Universities and private courses could now teach the Kurdish language. The use of letters like q, w, x, which are necessary for Kurdish Romanization, would no longer be prohibited. Kurdish also would be allowed in courtrooms and at prisons when families visited inmates (previously the language was forbidden).

All of that was nice, but not enough to win Kurdish sympathies for peace. The Kurds simply wanted autonomy in Turkey's southeast, where they are in predominant majority. They wanted to have their own police force, elected governors and budgetary control. They wanted two more things: Official (constitutional) recognition of their ethnicity as co-founders of the Turkish Republic; and the introduction of Kurdish language in school curricula. Erdogan accurately calculated that granting the Kurds relatively minor rights would keep them his loyal voters, and away from arms. He knew that the Kurds would want more. But he also knew that granting the Kurds what they actually want would be political suicide in a notoriously nationalist country. Even to this day, the Kurdish demands remain a taboo for most Turks. Speaking of Kurdish education in schools or Kurdish ethnic identity as part of the constitution could earn anyone a nasty label: Traitor!

But Kurds have more self-confidence today than a decade or two ago. Their next of kin in Iraq have a functioning autonomous administration that is waiting for the right time officially to split from the central government in Baghdad. Syrian Kurds are trying to unite a Kurdish strip of cantons along the Turkish border. The PKK has proven that it did not lose its firepower during the ceasefire.

The PKK did not lose its firepower during its years-long ceasefire with Turkey.  (Image source: VICE video screenshot)

And more importantly, the Kurdish vote in Turkey has dramatically risen from a mere 5.24% (cast for independent candidates) in 2007 to 13.1% in 2015, when the Peoples' Democratic Party overcame the 10% national threshold and became the first Kurdish party to enter the Turkish parliament. Today, in another first, the Kurds have exactly the same number of seats in the Turkish parliament as the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has -- 80 seats each.

Erdogan's "Kurdish gambit" worked, to a certain extent, when the ceasefire helped him maintain his popularity. Now, it seems, it's payback time.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6288/turkey-kurds-war

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