Category World Economic Form

Apr 9 2015

The Diplomatic Track to World War III


by CAROLINE GLICK April 7, 2015

The world powers assembled at Lausanne, Switzerland, with the representatives of the Islamic Republic may or may not reach a framework deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But succeed or fail, the disaster that their negotiations have unleashed is already unfolding. The damage they have caused is irreversible.

US President Barack Obama, his advisers and media cheerleaders have long presented his nuclear diplomacy with the Iran as the only way to avoid war. Obama and his supporters have castigated as warmongers those who oppose his policy of nuclear appeasement with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism.

But the opposite is the case. Had their view carried the day, war could have been averted.

Through their nuclear diplomacy, Obama and his comrades started the countdown to war.

In recent weeks we have watched the collapse of the allied powers’ negotiating positions.

They have conceded every position that might have placed a significant obstacle in Iran’s path to developing a nuclear arsenal.

They accepted Iran’s refusal to come clean on the military dimensions of its past nuclear work and so ensured that to the extent UN nuclear inspectors are able to access Iran’s nuclear installations, those inspections will not provide anything approaching a full picture of its nuclear status. By the same token, they bowed before Iran’s demand that inspectors be barred from all installations Iran defines as “military” and so enabled the ayatollahs to prevent the world from knowing anything worth knowing about its nuclear activities.

On the basis of Iran’s agreement to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, the US accepted Iran’s demand that it be allowed to maintain and operate more than 6,000 centrifuges.

But when on Monday Iran went back on its word and refused to ship its uranium to Russia, the US didn’t respond by saying Iran couldn’t keep spinning 6,000 centrifuges. The US made excuses for Iran.

The US delegation willingly acceded to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue operating its fortified, underground enrichment facility at Fordow. In so doing, the US minimized the effectiveness of a future limited air campaign aimed at significantly reducing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

With this broad range of great power concessions already in its pocket, the question of whether or not a deal is reached has become a secondary concern. The US and its negotiating partners have agreed to a set of understanding with the Iranians. Whether these understandings become a formal agreement or not is irrelevant because the understandings are already being implemented.

True, the US has not yet agreed to Iran’s demand for an immediate revocation of the economic sanctions now standing against it. But the notion that sanctions alone can pressure Iran into making nuclear concessions has been destroyed by Obama’s nuclear diplomacy in which the major concessions have all been made by the US.

No sanctions legislation that Congress may pass in the coming months will be able to force a change in Iran’s behavior if they are not accompanied by other coercive measures undertaken by the executive branch.

There is nothing new in this reality. For a regime with no qualms about repressing its society, economic sanctions are not an insurmountable challenge. But it is possible that if sanctions were implemented as part of a comprehensive plan to use limited coercive means to block Iran’s nuclear advance, they could have effectively blocked Iran’s progress to nuclear capabilities while preventing war. Such a comprehensive strategy could have included a proxy campaign to destabilize the regime by supporting regime opponents in their quest to overthrow the mullahs. It could have involved air strikes or sabotage of nuclear installations and strategic regime facilities like Revolutionary Guards command and control bases and ballistic missile storage facilities. It could have involved diplomatic isolation of Iran.

Moreover, if sanctions were combined with a stringent policy of blocking Iran’s regional expansion by supporting Iraqi sovereignty, supporting the now deposed government of Yemen and making a concerted effort to weaken Hezbollah and overthrow the Iranian-backed regime in Syria, then the US would have developed a strong deterrent position that would likely have convinced Iran that its interest was best served by curbing its imperialist enthusiasm and setting aside its nuclear ambitions.

In other words, a combination of these steps could have prevented war and prevented a nuclear Iran. But today, the US-led capitulation to Iran has pulled the rug out from any such comprehensive strategy. The administration has no credibility. No one trusts Obama to follow through on his declared commitment to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

No one trusts Washington when Obama claims that he is committed to the security of Israel and the US’s Sunni allies in the region.

And so we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. The disaster is that deal or no deal, the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. And they are in fact behaving in this manner.

They may not have a functional arsenal, but they act as though they do, and rightly so, because the US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.

As a consequence, all the regional implications of a nuclear armed Iran are already being played out. The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons. The path to a Middle East where every major and some minor actors have nuclear arsenals is before us.

Iran is working to expand its regional presence as if it were a nuclear state already. It is brazenly using its Yemeni Houthi proxy to gain maritime control over the Bab al-Mandab, which together with Iran’s control over the Straits of Hormuz completes its maritime control over shipping throughout the Middle East.

Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Eritrea, and their global trading partners will be faced with the fact that their primary maritime shipping route to Asia is controlled by Iran.

With its regional aggression now enjoying the indirect support of its nuclear negotiating partners led by the US, Iran has little to fear from the pan-Arab attempt to dislodge the Houthis from Aden and the Bab al-Mandab. If the Arabs succeed, Iran can regroup and launch a new offensive knowing it will face no repercussions for its aggression and imperialist endeavors.

Then of course there are Iran’s terror proxies.

Hezbollah, whose forces now operate openly in Syria and Lebanon, is reportedly active as well in Iraq and Yemen. These forces behave with a brazenness the likes of which we have never seen.

Hamas too believes that its nuclear-capable Iranian state sponsor ensures that regardless of its combat losses, it will be able to maintain its regime in Gaza and continue using its territory as a launching ground for assaults against Israel and Egypt.

Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq have reportedly carried out heinous massacres of Sunnis who have fallen under their control and faced no international condemnation for their war crimes, operating as they are under Iran’s protection and sponsorship. And the Houthis, of course, just overthrew a Western-backed government that actively assisted the US and its allies in their campaign against al-Qaida.

For their proxies’ aggression, Iran has been rewarded with effective Western acceptance of its steps toward regional domination and nuclear armament.

Hezbollah’s activities represent an acute and strategic danger to Israel. Not only does Hezbollah now possess precision guided missiles that are capable of taking out strategic installations throughout the country, its arsenal of 100,000 missiles can cause a civilian disaster.

Hezbollah forces have been fighting in varied combat situations continuously for the past three years. Their combat capabilities are incomparably greater than those they fielded in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There is every reason to believe that these Hezbollah fighters, now perched along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, can make good their threat to attack and hold fixed targets including border communities.

While Israel faces threats unlike any we have faced in recent decades that all emanate from Western-backed Iranian aggression and expansionism carried out under a Western-sanctioned Iranian nuclear umbrella, Israel is not alone in this reality. The unrolling disaster also threatens the moderate Sunni states including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The now regional war in Yemen is but the first act of the regional war at our doorstep.

There are many reasons this war is now inevitable.

Every state threatened by Iran has been watching the Western collapse in Switzerland.

They have been watching the Iranian advance on the ground. And today all of them are wondering the same thing: When and what should we strike to minimize the threats we are facing.

Everyone recognizes that the situation is only going to get worse. With each passing week, Iran’s power and brazenness will only increase.

Everyone understands this. And this week they learned that with Washington heading the committee welcoming Iran’s regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities, no outside power will stand up to Iran’s rise. The future of every state in the region hangs in the balance. And so, it can be expected that everyone is now working out a means to preempt and prevent a greater disaster.

These preemptive actions will no doubt include three categories of operations: striking Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; striking the Iranian Navy to limit its ability to project its force in the Bab al-Mandab; and conducting limited military operations to destroy a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear installations.

Friday is the eve of Passover. Thirteen years ago, Palestinian terrorists brought home the message of the Exodus when they blew up the Seder at Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 30, wounding 140, and forcing Israel into war. The message of the Passover Haggada is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it.

That war was caused by Israel’s embrace of the notion that you can bring peace through concessions that empower an enemy sworn to your destruction. The price of that delusion was thousands of lives lost and families destroyed.

Iran is far more powerful than the PLO. But the Americans apparently believe they are immune from the consequences of their leaders’ policies. This is not the case for Israel or for our neighbors. We lack the luxury of ignoring the fact that Obama’s disastrous diplomacy has brought war upon us. Deal or no deal, we are again about to be forced to pay a price to maintain our freedom.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Caroline Glick, Chicago-born, is deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. A former officer in the Israel Defense Forces, she was a core member of Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians and later served as an assistant policy advisor to the prime minister. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the widely-published Glick was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division. She was awarded a distinguished civilian service award from the U.S. Secretary of the Army for her battlefield reporting.

Apr 8 2015

Democracy in an Age of Thermonuclear Weapons


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

In an age of ballistic-tipped thermonuclear weapons, the basic principles of democracy, including freedom of speech and of the press, due process of law, and limited government break down.

Imagine prosecuting an individual or a group of individuals for a hate crime when your country is threatened by Muslims who not only have access to weapons of mass destruction, but whose leaders gleefully chant “Death to America.”

How would a member of the American Civil Liberties Union react in a lawsuit against an Imam who uttered that malediction in a mosque? Would he invoke the “clear and present danger” doctrine associated with the First Amendment of the American Constitution, which liberals call a ”living constitution?

Would Muslims in America invoke that doctrine against limitations on their freedom to advocate the teachings of Islam, including that which regards Jihad as a major religious obligation?

It is well known to legal scholars that America has two constitutions, one for times of peace, and one for times of war. But they also know that there is no clear line between the two.

Although Senator Rand Paul is correct in saying that the Constitution invests Congress with the authority to declare war, would he engage in a debate on the Senate floor on that issue if, ten minutes after the commencement of the debate, the president pro tempore is informed that an Iranian ballistic missile is heading toward Washington, D.C.?☼

 

Apr 8 2015

Decoding the Obama Doctrine


by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
April 6, 2015

Are the Obama administration’s policy failures in the Middle East a random series of errors by an incompetent leadership, or does some grand idea stand behind the pattern?

James Jeffrey, Barack Obama’s former ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Iraq, has this to say about the administration’s current record in the Middle East: “We’re in a goddamn free fall.”

Count the mistakes: Helping overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, leading to anarchy and civil war. Pressuring Husni Mubarak of Egypt to resign, then backing the Muslim Brotherhood, leading now-president Sisi to turn toward Moscow. Alienating Washington’s most stalwart ally in the region, the Government of Israel. Dismissing ISIS as “junior varsity” just before it seized major cities. Hailing Yemen as a counterterrorism success just before its government was overthrown. Alarming the Saudi authorities to the point that they put together a military alliance against Iran. Coddling Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, encouraging his dictatorial tendencies. Leaving Iraq and Afghanistan prematurely, dooming the vast American investment in those two countries.

As a man of the left, Obama sees the U.S. historically having exerted a malign influence on the outside world.

And, most of all: Making dangerously flawed deals with the nuclear-ambitious mullahs of Iran.

Is this a random series of errors by an incompetent leadership or does some grand, if misconceived, idea stand behind the pattern? To an extent, it’s ineptitude, as when Obama bowed to the Saudi king, threatened Syria’s government over chemical weapons before changing his mind, and now sends the U.S. military to aid Tehran in Iraq and fight it in Yemen.

But there also is a grand idea and it calls for explanation. As a man of the left, Obama sees the United States historically having exerted a malign influence on the outside world. Greedy corporations, an overly-powerful military-industrial complex, a yahoo nationalism, engrained racism, and cultural imperialism combined to render America, on balance, a force for evil.

Saul Alinsky, the community organizer par excellence, on Chicago’s south side in 1966 (the author of this article met him around this time).

Being a student of community organizer Saul Alinsky, Obama did not overtly proclaim this view but passed himself off as a patriot, though he (and his charming wife) did offer occasional hints of their radical views about “fundamentally transforming the United States.” On ascending to the presidency, Obama moved slowly, uneager to spread alarm and wanting to be reelected. By now, however, after six full years and only his legacy to worry about, the full-blown Obama is emerging.

The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.

Several assumptions underlie this approach: The U.S. government morally must compensate for its prior errors. Smiling at hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate. Using force creates more problems than it solves. Historic U.S. allies, partners, and helpers are morally inferior accessories. In the Middle East, this means reaching out to revisionists (Erdoğan, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran) and pushing away cooperative governments (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia).

The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.

Of these actors, two stand out: Iran and Israel. Establishing good relations with Tehran appears to be Obama’s great preoccupation. As Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute has shown, Obama during his entire presidency has worked toward rendering Iran what he calls “a very successful regional power … abiding by international norms and international rules.” Contrarily, his pre-presidential friendships with truculent anti-Zionists such as Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said point to the depth of his hostility toward the Jewish state.

The Obama Doctrine demystifies what is otherwise inscrutable. For example, it explains why the U.S. government blithely ignored the Iranian supreme leader‘s outrageous “Death to America” yelp in March, dismissing it as mere domestic pandering, even as Obama glommed onto the Israeli prime minister‘s near simultaneous electoral campaign comment rejecting a two-state solution with the Palestinians during his term of office (“we take him at his word”).

The doctrine also offers guidelines to predict possible developments during Obama’s remaining tenure, such as: Wretched P5+1 deals with Iran compel Israel’s government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Gentle policies toward Damascus clear the way for the Assad regime to re-extend its power. Ankara chooses to provoke a crisis in the eastern Mediterranean over Cypriot gas and oil reserves.

The great question ahead is how, in their wisdom, the American people will judge the Obama Doctrine when they next vote for president in 19 months. Will they repudiate his policy of shuffling and contrition, as they comparably did in 1980 when they elected Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter? Or will they choose four more years of it, thereby turning the Obama Doctrine into the new norm and Americans into European-style remorseful masochists?

Their verdict in 2016 has potentially world-historical implications.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.

Apr 8 2015

A Legacy of Propaganda


By Tabitha Korol

We’ve seen the way the Associated Press skews its commentaries, and this latest approach to delegitimize the State of Israel is to challenge her democratic values amid an expanse of dictatorships. After Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election to his post of Prime Minister, Dan Perry, AP’s Middle East editor, writes, “with the occupation of the West Bank grinding on toward the half-century mark, and with Netanyahu’s election-week statement that no change is imminent, hard questions arise.” His question and answer are, “Is Israel a democracy?  The answer is not so straightforward.”

Editor Perry’s premise is an immediate indictment against Israel, crafted to set the reader’s mind in motion to join in the attack.  Surely, he calculatedly omits the history that explains why these Arabs (now renamed Palestinians) remain in the West Bank.  Not only did he fail to recap that it was because Israel was attacked by Jordan and won that war that she acquired this territory, but he also excluded the fact that Israel offered land for peace on eleven separate occasions.  The Palestinian leaders emphatically rejected the idea.  Their strategy was to keep these Palestinians as pawns for as long as it takes to change world opinion and paint Israel as the aggressor and punishing “occupier,” until they succeed in hijacking all of Israel for Islam.

Thus, these Palestinians became the world’s eternal ‘victims” of oppression, set up to receive perpetual support monies from the United Nations, Europe, America, and Israel, even as the original victims have long been replaced by succeeding generations.  Meanwhile, the new Palestinians wage evermore-creative wars against Israel, including increasingly lethal rocket and human attacks; and myriad propagandist accusations of apartheid, illegal housing and roads; accusing Israelis of causing floods, droughts, and shortages.  One effective accusation was the Jenin “Massacre that wasn’t,”   when the majority of 52 dead were combatants, and  Doctors Without Borders confirmed that Palestinians had disinterred old corpses for authentic scenography.

Perry doesn’t remind his readers that just as non-citizens’ living outside of America have no voting rights within America, so non-citizen Palestinians’ living outside of Israel have no voting rights in Israel.  The two million Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel, of course, have the same voting rights as other Israelis, Jew and non-Jew alike.  If these Palestinian Arabs ever show themselves to be civilized enough to lay down their weapons and seek peace, and to create their own democratic state, they may one day be able to vote for their own leadership.  Unfortunately, Palestinian parents and teachers are coaching their small children to hate and to kill – to even practice beheading skills on dolls.  Surveys show that the majority of Muslims worldwide prefers Islamic law, Sharia, which is antithetical to democracy, so that these long suffering people will be more harshly ruled than ever by their authoritarian clergy and perhaps never experience an authentic election.

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The author makes at least three off-the-wall accusations that show a decided, preconceived effort to blemish the Jewish state.

  • The first was his expectation that non-citizens have the right to vote in their occupiers’ elections.  When the United States and our allies occupied Japan and Germany after winning the Second World War (and the US still maintains military bases in Japan), neither Axis voted in the elections of the victors.
  • Second, Perry claimed that Israelis are concerned that the West Bank Palestinians have no voting rights for Israel’s parliament.   There are no such foolhardy concerns.  The West Bank is Judea and Samaria, long acknowledged as the original Jewish homeland by the United Nations.  Israelis know the unfeasibility of a two-state solution as long as the Palestinians adamantly maintain their enemy status.  A handshake for peace requires two hands.
  • The third bears mention because it is so ludicrous.  Perry must accuse Israel as “indirectly” dominating Gaza because Israel completely vacated Gaza in 2005.  Gazan Palestinians are occupied and dominated by Hamas, terrorists whose activities consistently put the civilians in harm’s way and inhibit the potential for democracy.

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Associated Press is notorious for its false accusations against Israel, America’s ally, while defending Islamic countries, those that produce terrorists who maim, kill, and enslave innocents by the thousands, the same countries that vow Israel’s and America’s destruction. Perry is one of numerous unethical journalists who are willfully dishonest and unreliable.  They use selective inattention (or willful blindness) straight from the Muslim playbook. Rather than write that the Arab nations control their people to such a degree that torture and death are commonplace, that hangings and beheadings are done in the public arena, that children begin their lessons of hate and acceptance of death with Kindergarten, he falsely accuses Israel of violating human rights.

One can’t help but wonder if these degenerate journalists comply with Associated Press’s directives to consciously misrepresent the facts for their own biases or gain, or that they are habitual liars who actually come to believe the untruths they spew.  Contrary to what Perry himself concluded, I think the answer is quite straightforward.  They are in collusion: it is AP and its journalists.

Apr 8 2015

The 21st Century Munich Agreement


Post by Jeff Longo

The more we learn about the “framework” for an Iranian nuclear deal, the more apparent it becomes that we have sold out our Israeli allies. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will be left intact, economic sanctions will be lifted and unannounced snap inspections will not be permitted.

In a desperate attempt to sell this framework to a deal, President Obama assures us the world will become a much safer place. He insists the only alternative to his deal is a war with Iran. The truth is the alternative to this bad deal is a good deal and anything short of that must be rejected.

America has come to expect lies and deceit from Iran’s leadership. Unfortunately we’ve come to expect the same from Barack Obama. Our negotiations have come from a position of weakness and the results are a framework for disaster. This president no longer deserves the benefit of any doubt and it’s past time for Congress to stand up to him and kill this horrible deal once and for all.

 

 

Apr 8 2015

Greece: High Stakes Poker – A tectonic shockwave looming that could smash the unity lie


As goes Greece so goes the European Union

Apr 4 2015

Israel Jet Strikes Weapons Depots in Libya


Assuming this is true the Libyan weapons were not the story. Israel is more than capable of defeating Hamas without doing this.

The destruction of the weapons was a message to Obama that Israel will protect itself and it will take out the Iranian nuclear program on it’s own; if Israel decides that it is in Israel’s best interest.

Mar 31 2015

Obama Release Of Secret Report On Israel Nukes Betrays Ally


Obama is also betraying America.

By Paul Eldelberg

Therefore, as a former officer in the United States Air Force, I call on all Americans to devise ways and means short of violence–but not excluding massive civil disobedience on a state and national level — to compel Barack  Obama — who is (1) disarming America, (2) destroying her economy, (3) betraying our NATO Allies in Europe, (4) scorning out Declaration and Federal Constitution, thus serving, in effect, either as an instrument or an agent, of Global Islam.

Accordingly, I urge all patriotic Americans to speak up and organize local and national protest movements with the objective of pressing all members of Congress to demand Obama to resign from office.

And if this fails, to support the proposals of former members of Congress Lt. Col. Allen White and Michelle Bachmann to initiate impeachment proceedings against Obama, and for this purpose to rally support from eminent Black American such as Alan Keyes, who tried to get BO disqualified for the Presidency on legal grounds in 2008.

Mar 30 2015

Judge Jeanine: Why is Obama dancing with the devil?


Mar 26 2015

Obama Declares War on Israel


Its looking more and more like Obama wants to be the next Muslim Caliphate; the only real issue is, is he Sunni or Shea?.