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Fighting ISIS Shouldn’t Mean Appeasing Iran: Clifford D. May, National Post, Oct. 2, 2014 — In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Barack Obama called the conflict in the Middle East “a fight no one is winning.” I think the evidence suggests he’s wrong. I think Iran is making significant gains.
Iran vs ISIS: Jerusalem Post, Sept. 22, 2014 Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) resumed…
Iran Orders Elite Troops: Lay Off U.S. Forces in Iraq: Eli Lake, Daily Beast, Oct. 6, 2014— Pay no attention to the Shi'ite militias threatening to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The elite Iranian forces backing those militias have been ordered not to attack the Americans.
A Year of Iranian 'Moderation': Adam Ereli, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2014 — Iran's President Hasan Rouhani is scheduled to speak at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.
Barbarism of Iranian Militias Based in Iraq, Syria Being Seriously Overlooked: Benjamin Weinthal,
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 29, 2014
Iran's "Political Prisoner Cleansing": Shadi Paveh, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 3, 2014
Compared to Iran, ISIS is a ‘Junior Varsity’ Team: Eytan Sosnovich, Algemeiner, Oct. 5, 2014
Iran's President Is Still the Ayatollah's Man: Matthew McInnis, Real Clear World, Sept. 25, 2014
FIGHTING ISIS SHOULDN’T MEAN APPEASING IRAN
Clifford D. May
National Post, Oct. 2, 2014
In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Barack Obama called the conflict in the Middle East “a fight no one is winning.” I think the evidence suggests he’s wrong. I think Iran is making significant gains. That should distress us because the Islamic Republic, no less than the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL), is committed to waging jihad. Iran’s 1979 revolution was led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — a Persian, Shi’a, Islamist version of Lenin. His intention: to spark a global uprising against the West.
Khomeini championed social justice — of a sort. “If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the earth,” he said in a 1984 speech celebrating the birth of Mohammed, “the infidel’s moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him.” Among Khomeini’s disciples: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s current president, the “moderate” Hassan Rouhani. Last year, Rouhani observed: “Saying ‘Death to America’ is easy. We need to express ‘Death to America’ with action.” His most strategic action to date: pushing back Obama’s red lines on Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. My colleague Mark Dubowitz observes that Obama has gone from “dismantle and disclose” to “disconnect, defer and deter.”
In other words, the U.S. president had been demanding that Iran’s rulers dismantle key elements of their nuclear program and disclose past weaponization activities. Now, he appears prepared to settle for disconnecting some centrifuges or reducing the uranium gas fed into them (both easily reversible), deferring demands that Iran’s rulers admit past weaponization until after a deal is signed, and hoping that breakout to nuclear weapons can be deterred through enhanced inspections and whatever economic leverage the West retains — probably not much since a senior official in charge of the negotiations is already promising to suspend major sanctions soon after a deal. Obama’s retreat also is reflected in his rhetoric. A few years ago, he was vowing to use “all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” Last week: “America is pursuing a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. This can only happen if Iran takes this historic opportunity. My message to Iran’s leaders and people is simple: do not let this opportunity pass.” Opportunity?
This should be big news. Among the reasons it is not: The Islamic State’s flamboyant barbarism in Syria and Iraq has been consuming the oxygen, making it easy to forget that Iran has long been, according to the U.S. State Department, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It was Iran’s rulers who instructed Hezbollah, their Lebanon-based militia, to bomb the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. It was Iran’s elite Quds Force that was implicated in the unsuccessful 2011 plot to blow up a Washington D.C. restaurant. Since 2003, Iran and its militias have, with impunity, killed as many as 1,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Right now, both the Quds Force and Hezbollah have “boots on the ground” in Syria, fighting in support of the Assad regime. They have been responsible for a high percentage of the 200,000 deaths there over the past three years.
Within Iran, since Rouhani became president, roughly 1,000 Iranians have been executed. Just last week, Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s special investigator on human rights in Iran, released a report detailing multiple cases of torture, rape, electroshock, burnings, amputations and floggings. Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-American Christian pastor, has spent more than two years in Iranian prisons, charged with “attempting to sway Iranian youth away from Islam.” Arizona-born Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine who went to Iran in 2011 to visit his grandmother, remains incarcerated on charges of spying for the CIA. Robert Levinson, a private investigator and former FBI agent, has been held in Iran since 2007. Iran has ranked “among the world’s top three worst jailers of the press every year since 2009,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Among those being held: Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a reporter. Arrested in July, they have yet to be charged with any crime.
Iran’s rulers don’t like the Islamic State — it’s a Sunni rival — but they are largely responsible for its growth. “At Iran’s behest, Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government in Iraq systematically arrested, tortured and murdered members of that country’s Sunni minority,” wrote Adam Ereli, former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain. Such policies, “paved the way for the stunning political and military conquests in Iraq by Islamic State terrorists.” It was Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq — with not even a residual force left behind — that made it possible for Tehran to start calling the shots in Baghdad. And his passive response to the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters in 2011 created the vacuum that soon was filled by foreign jihadis. At this point, dropping bombs on Islamic State fighters is a treatment — not a cure. Worse yet: The current campaign could succeed in weakening the Islamic State while strengthening the Islamic Republic. If that happens, if Khamenei achieves his ambition to become the world’s first nuclear-armed jihadi, President Obama will be responsible for a blunder of world-historical proportions — one that will shape the remainder of this century. Not much time is left to avoid that outcome. Negotiations with Iran are to conclude Nov. 24. The president would be wise to make clear that no agreement is preferable to a bad agreement. Such a decision will require courage, resolve and recognition that negotiations, like wars, do produce winners and losers, and that it matters which the United States turns out to be.
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 22, 2014
Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) resumed last week. After seven months of on again, off again talks, the parties have made no substantive progress on curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program. If there was little reason for optimism in previous rounds of discussions, there is even less reason to be hopeful for a breakthrough now with Western states’ attention focused on the threat present by Islamic State. The wily President Hassan Rouhani hopes that in exchange for agreeing to join a US-led coalition against Islamic State, the P5+1 will be more lenient in allowing Iran to develop its nuclear program. Diplomats involved with the negotiations say the West remains adamant that the talks should deal exclusively with the nuclear program.
But as the November 24 deadline set for the talks approaches, representatives of the P5+1 might soften their stance to strike a deal. “Iran is a very influential country in the region,” Reuters quoted an unnamed senior Iranian official quoted as saying. “But it is a two-way street. You give something, you take something.” Outgoing EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who chairs the P5+1 team negotiating, seems particularly keen on reaching an agreement before stepping down. Ashton would like to show a major accomplishment and an agreement with Tehran would be a perfect end to her stint.
The Obama administration also seems to be getting soft on Iran. At least that was the impression one could easily get from Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz after he returned last week from a meeting with White House officials. After noting that the Iranians have not budged on the two most important issues: centrifuges and the heavy water reactor in Arak, he encouraged Washington not to compromise. “We are deeply concerned that a deal might a bad deal, and therefore want to reemphasize President Obama’s very important principle and statement that no deal is better than a bad deal,” Steinitz said. “This principle should really be adopted and implemented, because it really is the case.” Steinitz was apparently under the impression after meeting with US officials that the Obama administration was in need of a reminder of its commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Linking the fight against Islamic State with talks on the nuclear program would be misguided for a number of reasons. First, the Islamic Republic’s Shi’ite leadership will fight to defeat the Sunni Islamic State whether or not Tehran joins a US-led coalition. For the mullahs, this is an existential war against an implacable enemy that directly threatens Iranian influence in Shi’ite-majority Iraq. There is no reason to cave in to Iranian demands in exchange for support against Islamic State that the Iranians will have to supply regardless.
More substantively, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has pointed out, allowing Iran more leeway in developing nuclear weapons would be like allowing Syria’s Basher Assad to hold onto chemical weapons in order to fight Islamic State. The Iranians are more desperate than ever to attain nuclear weapons capability. They realize that having a nuclear bomb would be a game changer in the Sunni-Shia clash. They see nuclear weapons as an existential imperative. There is no reason to believe the mullahs will willingly stop developing nuclear arms. Only crippling sanctions combined with a credible military threat have any chance of compelling them to slow, if not stop altogether, their march toward nuclear weapons capability.
The risks presented by a nuclear-capable Iran are sobering. The Islamic Republic, not unlike Islamic State, is governed by irrational theological dictates that call for conquering and disseminating a radical stream of Islam through violence. Iran supports terrorism in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gaza Strip. Armed with a nuclear umbrella, the Islamic Republic would be infinitely more dangerous. The preoccupation with Islamic State is principally the result of the recent gains made by the terrorist organization, its savagery and the fact that it took the world by surprise. The group’s ability to maintain gains and persevere, however, is less clear. In the long term, a nuclear Iran would be far more dangerous than Islamic State. It should treated as such.
IRAN ORDERS ELITE TROOPS: LAY OFF U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ
Eli Lake
Daily Beast, Oct. 6, 2014
Pay no attention to the Shi'ite militias threatening to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The elite Iranian forces backing those militias have been ordered not to attack the Americans. That’s the conclusion of the latest U.S. intelligence assessment for Iraq. And it represents a stunning turnaround for Iran’s Quds Force, once considered America’s most dangerous foe in the region. U.S. intelligence officials tell The Daily Beast that the apparent Iranian decision not to target American troops inside Iraq reflects Iran’s desire to strike a nuclear bargain with the United States and the rest of the international community before the current negotiations expire at the end of November. “They are not going after Americans,” one senior U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast familiar with the recent assessments. “They want the nuclear talks to succeed and an incident between our guys and their guys would not be good for those talks.”
The Quds Force, named for the Arabic word for Jerusalem, are believed to have hundreds of troops in Iraq. As the primary arm of the Iranian state that supports allied terrorist organizations, their operatives worried Obama’s predecessor so much that the Treasury Department began sanctioning its members in 2007 for sabotaging the government of Iraq. The U.S. military accused the Quds Force of orchestrating cells of terrorists in Iraq. In 2012, Wired magazine dubbed Quds Force leader Qassem Suleimani the most dangerous person on the planet. In 2013, the New Yorker arrived at a similar conclusion, and claimed he has "directed Assad’s war in Syria.” More recently, the Treasury Department has accused the Quds Force of international heroin trafficking and conducting terrorism and intelligence operations against the Afghanistan government. That’s why it’s so extraordinary that the Quds Force would be perceived to be laying off U.S. forces in Iraq.
But in some ways, the assessment is not surprising. Both Iran and the United States share a common enemy in the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). In late August, U.S. airpower and Iranian-backed militias broke the ISIS siege on the town of Amerli. Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, was photographed in Amerli, after the town was liberated from ISIS. The latest assessments from the U.S. intelligence community also interpret Iran’s behavior in part as linked to the ongoing negotiations between Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China. A U.S. intelligence official said the Quds Force behavior was the equivalent of a confidence building measure, a diplomatic term that refers to a concession offered to improve the atmosphere of negotiations. (Iran had already offered to play a more “active role” in the regional fight against ISIS, in exchange for nuclear concessions.)
The latest U.S. nuclear proposal to Iran would be favorable to the Islamic Republic and allow Iran to keep many of its declared centrifuges so long as they were disconnected from one another. Iran’s declared facilities in Qom and Natanz use a centrifuge process to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel. The latest U.S. assessment also undercuts the public warnings from Iranian backed militias in Iraq that are doing much of the fighting now against ISIS. Last month, the three largest Shiite militias told President Obama not to send ground troops into Iraq. But because the Quds Force is so instrumental in funding, training and in some cases providing strategic direction to these militias, it would suggest these public warnings were merely idle boasts.
To date, the Pentagon acknowledges that there are more than 1,600 U.S. forces inside Iraq, but these forces do not engage in combat missions, according to the Defense Department. Instead, the U.S. presence in Iraq is to advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces, assess the state of those forces and protect U.S. facilities inside Iraq.
Earlier this month in New York, Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif said the presence of foreign forces inside Iraq “creates domestic opposition and domestic resentment.” But in response to a question about the Shi'ite militias’ warnings against the United States, he also stressed that Iran did not support “anything that would complicate the situation” in Iraq.. The recent public warnings from groups like the Mahdi Army and the Asa’ib al-Haq were reminiscent of Iraq between 2006 and 2009. That’s when Shiite militias, working closely with Iran’s Quds Force, placed the sophisticated improvised bombs on routes traveled by U.S. forces. In the later years of the conflict, American forces captured what they said were dozens of Quds Force operatives working inside Iraq.
Exactly how long this informal Quds Force truce lasts is anyone’s guess. But Kimberly Kagan, the president of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War and a one-time adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, cautioned that this alliance of convenience could break down quickly. “Without a doubt, Iranian backed elements have declared their intention many times in the past to attack the U.S. inside Iraq,” she said. “Whether or not those elements have immediate intentions to attack the United is irrelevant. They are declared enemies of the United States.” That said, Kagan added that she believed “The Iranians do have a short term interest in being on their best behavior during these nuclear negotiations.” Those negotiations are set to expire at the end of November.
A YEAR OF IRANIAN 'MODERATION'
Adam Ereli
Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2014
Iran's President Hasan Rouhani is scheduled to speak at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. Last year he attended this global gathering of heads of state to great fanfare. He had just replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office, and the world held out great hope that a reform-minded moderate leader for the Islamic Republic meant that the country's aspirations to be a nuclear power and its sponsorship of terrorism might soon be a thing of the past. In his General Assembly speech on Sept. 24, 2013, Mr. Rouhani pledged "to open a new horizon in which peace will prevail over war, tolerance over violence, progress over bloodletting, justice over discrimination, prosperity over poverty and freedom over despotism." One year on, how have these promises fared?
Peace over war? Hamas in Gaza rained hundreds of Iranian-supplied missiles on Israel in a seven-week campaign to terrorize civilians. In Syria, Iran's infusion of cash, weapons, military advisers and its Hezbollah-backed militias have kept Bashar Assad in power and over the past year produced tens of thousands more casualties. Tolerance over violence? At Iran's behest, Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government in Iraq systematically arrested, tortured and murdered members of that country's Sunni minority, not to mention the deadly attacks on Iranian dissidents, which killed five dozen, 52 of them execution-style. Iraq's armed forces and intelligence services were systematically purged of Sunnis. These deliberately repressive policies paved the way for the stunning political and military conquests in Iraq by Islamic State terrorists.
Progress over bloodletting? The one arguable bright spot in Iran's relations with the civilized world has been its willingness to negotiate over its nuclear program. Yet with a November deadline looming, there are few if any signs of progress toward an agreement. Iran has kept enriching uranium 235 to reactor grade levels, thus accomplishing nearly 70% of the enrichment necessary to reach weapons-grade levels. Iran's weaponization research and ballistic-missile development are not limited in any respect and proceed apace.
In violation of its obligations, Iran has blocked or severely limited access by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to key nuclear facilities. In its latest report, on Sept. 5, the IAEA wrote that it is unable "to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities." More troubling are statements by Iran's leadership. On July 7 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Iran needs to "significantly increase" its number of centrifuges. In April this year he told a group of Iranian scientists: "None of the country's nuclear achievements can be stopped."
Prosperity over poverty? Mr. Rouhani has leveraged the nuclear negotiations for significant financial gain. The easing of U.S. and European Union sanctions has provided Iran access to more than $6 billion in frozen assets and tens of millions more through oil sales. The Iranian people have seen little from the sanctions relief, while the regime in Tehran continues to bankroll its terrorist proxies and military-industrial complex.
Freedom over despotism? Since taking office, Mr. Rouhani's government has executed 1,000 Iranians, according to human-rights monitors inside Iran and ranks first in the world in per capita executions, which included hundreds of women, youths, ethnic minorities and dissidents. The State Department documented Iran's dismal record of respect for human rights in its 2014 report on human-rights practices. The list of Iranian excesses is sickening, "including judicially sanctioned amputation and flogging; politically motivated violence and repression, such as beatings and rape; harsh and life-threatening conditions in detention and prison facilities, with instances of deaths in custody."
The legal and political system is a travesty, including "arbitrary arrest and lengthy pretrial detention; continued impunity of security forces; denial of fair public trials; the lack of an independent judiciary; political prisoners and detainees; arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence; severe restrictions on freedoms of speech (including via the Internet) and press; censorship and media content restrictions; severe restrictions on the freedoms of assembly, association, and religion; legal and societal discrimination and violence against women, children, ethnic and religious minorities; incitement to anti-Semitism; and trafficking in persons."
Delegates to the U.N. General Assembly might want to keep Mr. Rouhani's dismal record in mind when he mounts the podium on Thursday, no doubt offering fresh promises of Iran's peaceful and just intentions. It is time that the international community held his government to account and insisted that words be matched by deeds. Absent that, we must be clear-eyed and under no illusion about the regime with which we are dealing.
Barbarism of Iranian Militias Based in Iraq, Syria Being Seriously Overlooked: Benjamin Weinthal,
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 29, 2014—The US’s deadly strike on the al-Qaida-linked Khorasan group leader Mohsin al-Fadhli shone a spotlight on Iran’s nefarious activities in Syria and Iraq.
Iran's "Political Prisoner Cleansing": Shadi Paveh, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 3, 2014—Iran continues to hide behind the world's focus on ISIS to accelerate political arrests, executions, "prison cleansing" and above all, its program to achieve nuclear capability.
Compared to Iran, ISIS is a ‘Junior Varsity’ Team: Eytan Sosnovich, Algemeiner, Oct. 5, 2014 —Last month, in a primetime national address, President Obama laid out his four-pronged strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS.”
Iran's President Is Still the Ayatollah's Man: Matthew McInnis, Real Clear World, Sept. 25, 2014—Iranian President Hassan Rouhani today takes the podium at the U.N. General Assembly.
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