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Netanyahu Outraged at World Powers’ Concessions to Iran: Times of Israel, June 28, 2015 — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed outrage Sunday at world powers for backtracking on terms they’d set for themselves during nuclear negotiations with Iran.
U.S. Says Iran’s Support of Terrorism ‘Undiminished’: Felicia Schwartz, Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2015— The State Department said Iran’s support for terrorism was “undiminished” in 2014, and the U.S. remains very concerned about the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its proxies in the Middle East.
Transformational Diplomacy: Reuel Marc Gerecht, Weekly Standard, June 8, 2015 — Many supporters of an Iranian nuclear agreement believe that a deal could help to moderate, even democratize, Iranian society.
Still Unhidden Connections: Israel, Iran and ‘Palestine’: Louis René Beres, Jerusalem Post, June 28, 2015 — Although a seemingly separate issue, the Middle East peace process cannot be properly assessed without considering the simultaneous impact of a nuclear Iran.
Liberal Party Defends Trudeau Statements on Iran: Paul Lungen, Canadian Jewish News, June 26, 2014
Team Obama Just Crossed its Own Nuclear Red Line: New York Post, June 19, 2015
No Miracle in Sight for Nuclear-Free Middle East: Yossi Melman., Jerusalem Post, Apr. 29, 2015
At Home With Our Iranian Nuclear Partners: Jared Genser & Sara Birkenthal, Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2015
NETANYAHU OUTRAGED AT WORLD POWERS’
Times of Israel, June 28, 2015
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed outrage Sunday at world powers for backtracking on terms they’d set for themselves during nuclear negotiations with Iran. Netanyahu’s remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting came as representatives of the P5+1 and Iran met in Vienna to try and reach a final nuclear deal before the June 30 deadline. “We see before us a clear diversion from the red lines set by the world powers recently and publicly,” the prime minister said. “Iran tramples on human rights, spreads terrorism, and is building a huge military infrastructure, yet the talks with [Iran], despite these reports, continue as usual.”
Negotiations between Iran and the US enter a “critical phase” Sunday with tensions rising just three days from a deadline to nail down a deal thwarting any Iranian nuclear arms drive. Netanyahu, for his part, asserted that there was no reason to sign an agreement which was “becoming worse with every passing day.” The prime minister also pointed out that a recently published US State Department report on terror activity noted that the Islamic Republic’s “state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished.”
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was due to arrive in Vienna during the day after US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart appeared to have made little headway when they returned to the negotiating table on Saturday. “Obviously we are at a critical stage now,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s become more tense in the final days. But that was always likely to happen.”
Global powers known as the P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — are seeking to flesh out the final details of a historic accord to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. They are seeking an accord by Tuesday’s June 30 deadline, building on guidelines set by a framework deal agreed in Lausanne on April 2. Kerry told reporters that although he remained “hopeful” there was still “a lot of hard work to do.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif agreed, saying negotiators “need to work really hard in order to be able to make progress and move forward”.
But his deputy Abbas Araqchi suggested parts of the Lausanne framework no longer applied because other countries had changed their positions. “In Lausanne we found solutions to many things, but some issues remained unresolved,” he told an Arabic-language Iranian television channel Al-Alam. “And now some of the solutions found in Lausanne no longer work, because after Lausanne certain countries within the P5+1 made declarations… and we see a change in their position which complicates the task.”
Officials have acknowledged the June 30 deadline may slip by a few days, but several diplomats have categorically ruled out any further formal months-long extension of the talks which have dragged for almost two years now. With diplomatic pressure growing, other ministers from Britain, China, Germany and Russia are due to follow Mogherini to Vienna over the coming days. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who flew in Saturday, said at least three “indispensable” demands remained unresolved. “We want a robust accord that recognizes Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear program, but which guarantees that Iran renounces definitively nuclear weapons,” he said…
According to the Lausanne framework, Iran will slash by more than two-thirds its uranium enrichment centrifuges, which can make fuel for nuclear power or the core of a nuclear bomb, and shrink its uranium stockpile by 98 percent. Iran also agreed to change a planned reactor at Arak so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium and no longer to use its Fordo facility — built into a mountain to protect it from attack — for uranium enrichment. In return it is seeking a lifting of a complicated web of EU, US and UN sanctions which have choked its economy and limited access to world oil markets.
But on Tuesday Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, set out key “red lines” for a final agreement that appeared to go against Lausanne. These included the timing of sanctions relief and UN access to military bases, needed to investigate claims of past bomb-making efforts and to probe any future suspicious activity.
U.S. SAYS IRAN’S SUPPORT OF TERRORISM ‘UNDIMINISHED’
Felicia Schwartz
Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2015
The State Department said Iran’s support for terrorism was “undiminished” in 2014, and the U.S. remains very concerned about the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its proxies in the Middle East. The U.S. worries about Iran’s activities were included in an annual report of global terrorism between 2013 and 2014, released Friday. Of particular concern, the report said, was Iran’s continued support of the powerful Hezbollah militia and political party in Lebanon; and its assistance to fighters supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Iran also hasn’t identified or initiated judicial proceedings against senior al Qaeda leaders it has in custody.
The release comes less than two weeks before a June 30 deadline for a deal on limiting Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. officials say those talks are separate from any destabilizing activities in the region by Tehran.
“We think it’s essential that we pursue those negotiations,” said Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism. “None of that implies that we would be, again, in any way taking our eye off the ball with respect to what Iran is doing as a supporter of terrorism.” She said sanctions on Iran related to terrorism would remain in place even if a nuclear deal is reached.
The report said “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished” in 2014 and Ms. Kaidanow said the U.S. continued to be “very, very concerned” about its activities, adding that Tehran hasn’t changed its behavior this year. The U.S. and five other world powers are negotiating with Iran to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Critics of the deal fear Iran will funnel funds it gains access to into supporting terrorist activities.
President Barack Obama told The Atlantic magazine last month that Iran supports terrorism despite the current sanctions, and that its leaders will be under pressure to improve the Iranian economy. More broadly, the report found that global terror attacks surged 35% between 2013 and 2014 and the violence caused deaths to jump more than 80%. That came on top of a 43% increase between 2012 and 2013. Last year’s report connected the increase to the rise of aggressive al Qaeda affiliates while this year’s sources the surge to Islamic State and the conflict in Syria.
The State Department report said nearly 33,000 people were killed in almost 13,500 terror attacks around the world last year. It attributed the surge in deaths in part to attacks that were “exceptionally lethal,” including 20 attacks that killed more than 100 people compared with two on that scale in 2013. In 2013, there were 9,707 terrorist attacks that killed more than 17,800 people. The increase in global terror attacks follows Islamic State’s unprecedented seizure of territory in Iraq and Syria and the continued prevalence of weak or failed governments in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Nigeria and Iraq. More than 9,400 people were kidnapped or taken hostage in terrorist attacks in 2014, three times as many as in 2013. Most of the kidnappings occurred in Iraq, Nigeria and Syria.
The report also pointed to troubling trends in the flow of foreign fighters to Syria and Islamic State’s use of social media to attract recruits as well as communicate with local Sunni Arab populations. Though Islamic State has begun to form relationships with affiliates beyond Iraq and Syria, it is unclear if those contacts are simply opportunistic or more significant, the report said.
Lone wolf terror attacks are becoming an increasing concern, the report found, pointing to killings in Quebec and Ottawa last October and Sydney last December. As Western nations have increased border security, groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State might increasingly rely on inspiring “lone actors” to wage attacks. The report said the threat of core al Qaeda decreased in 2014 as the group continued to lose leaders and Islamic State touted itself as a leader of a global movement. Still, al Qaeda continues to inspire affiliates like AQAP in Yemen, the Nusra Front in Syria and al-Shabaab in North Africa to carry out attacks.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Weekly Standard, June 8, 2015
Many supporters of an Iranian nuclear agreement believe that a deal could help to moderate, even democratize, Iranian society. Barack Obama’s constant allusions to the transformative potential of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for U.S.-Iranian relations suggest that he believes an agreement, which would quickly release tens of billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic and reintegrate it into the global financial system, would improve the clerical regime’s behavior.
Democrats and Republicans have often touted the transformative power of global markets; our bipartisan China policy is built upon this pedestal. As much as free-trading corporate Republicans, the Clinton administration loved advancing the idea that business spreads amity. A former State Department adviser to Richard Holbrooke and now the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Vali Nasr, wrote a well-received book, Forces of Fortune, which argues that commerce and capitalism are the best ways to vanquish the Middle East’s demons, authoritarianism and Islamic militancy. Although Obama likely doesn’t care too much for Nasr, who also wrote a scathing critique of the president’s foreign policy, he’s advocating the scholar’s medicine for the Islamic Republic.
A cynic might suggest that such apostles of economic determinism are reverse-engineering their ultimate goal: a smaller U.S. military role overseas. Economic “engagement” tends to gain ground in Washington when the alternatives, war and containment, are too unpleasant and expensive to contemplate. Like war-averse enthusiasts of sanctions, trade diplomatists are essentially saying you can have it all: greater global security and prosperity without the blood and guilt of Pax Americana. There is certainly a wide overlap between those in Washington who have already conceded the Islamic Republic atomic weapons and those who find the president’s developing nuclear deal to be an imperfect, but still pretty splendid, arrangement.
But it’s best not to be too cynical. Although most fans of realpolitik do have a soft spot for the gospel that American commerce can soothe the foreign savage beast, Obama has never been a convincing practitioner of this morality-lite school. He’s too uncomfortable with power politics and American hegemony. He cares too deeply about transforming the United States and mirror-imaging his national aspirations overseas. Quintessentially an American liberal, the president really does seem to believe that familiarity, even with Islamist regimes, ought not to breed contempt.
Many Iranians, too, cling to the idea that domestic liberalization cannot happen unless foreigners—principally Americans—do the right thing. Prominent dissidents have advocated trade and diplomacy with the West as a means of opening up their own society. A huge fan of the president’s foreign policy, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, recently highlighted Akbar Ganji, a famous journalist and dissident who was once a hard-core member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as an example of an Iranian democrat who believes that the West’s nuclear diplomacy with the clerical regime could lead, eventually, to a more open, democratic society. Military threats and sanctions against the mullahs are, Ganji emphasizes, always counterproductive.
As a tool of regime change or nuclear diplomacy, sanctions have been predicated on the assumption that economic coercion can deliver unsustainable political pain. Many Iranian dissidents still hold fast to the belief that the Islamic Republic can have a smooth transition from autocracy to representative government, that the ugliness of the revolution, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the continuing brutal repression of dissent and democracy (especially the Green Movement in 2009), and the blood-soaked denouement of the Arab Spring have created a nation of fallen and depressed revolutionaries who don’t have the stomach for confronting head-on the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards. They envision a peaceful, more prosperous, sanctions-free future in which the ruling elite will evolve. Islamist ideology may not disappear from Iran’s discourse, but the appetite for violence will evanesce. Although many Iranian dissidents are socialists (Marxism is far from dead in Persia), they still see global commerce and greater foreign contact as a softening force, at least vis-à-vis the clerical state. An Iranian Thermidor will arrive in part courtesy of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Boeing, and Western tourists.
For Ganji and many other dissidents, Iranians can’t “build democracy under impossible circumstances. They cannot foster liberty and human rights for their people in the fires of hell, created by war, bloodshed, and destruction”—which is, in Ganji’s mind, what inevitably happens with American military actions against authoritarian Middle Eastern states. Unlike President Obama, who has a nuclear clock ticking against his political aspirations, Ganji appears to be happy to wait out the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards, confident that history is behind the triumph of democracy. Since Ganji was once close to Saeed Hajjarian, a founding father of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence ministry, he might know something about the early days of the nuclear-weapons program. Like so many Iranian dissidents, however, Ganji gives the impression that he really doesn’t care much about the bomb. He’s consumed by the frustrating, so far intractable question: How does a (Shiite) Muslim country escape from a religious revolution?…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
STILL UNHIDDEN CONNECTIONS: ISRAEL, IRAN AND ‘PALESTINE’
Louis René Beres
Jerusalem Post, June 28, 2015
Although a seemingly separate issue, the Middle East peace process cannot be properly assessed without considering the simultaneous impact of a nuclear Iran. A nuclear Iran, however unwitting, would enlarge the regional stability costs of a Palestinian state – any Palestinian state. More precisely, should Iranian nuclearization and Palestine emerge at more or less the same time, the cumulatively corrosive impact would be substantially greater than the mere sum of these “parts.”
Since 2012, the Palestinian Authority has been recognized by the UN as a “Nonmember Observer State.” Looking ahead, if Fatah (PA) and Hamas are able to restore a minimally functional level of cooperation and “unity,” a fully sovereign Palestine could emerge. In notably short order, this 23rd Arab state would rapidly become an optimal platform for expanded war and terrorism, against Israel, and also against additional area allies of the United States.
Both Israel and the US must remain keenly aware of what the generals would call “force multipliers.” Among assorted other regional consequences, virulent synergies between Iranian nuclearization and Palestinian statehood could create an existential threat to the Jewish state. Oddly, these potentially lethal and multiplying interactive effects are unhidden, yet largely unrecognized. What exactly might these destabilizing effects be? To respond, Jerusalem and Washington must first consider pertinent geo-strategic context. In the steadily unraveling Middle East, certain core adversarial patterns remain unchanged. Most conspicuously, Israel endures under still-coordinated international pressures to 1) renounce its undeclared nuclear forces, and 2) reciprocally, to join in a disingenuously proffered “Nuclear Weapon Free- Zone.”
If Iran and its allies should come to believe that Israel had been sufficiently weakened by their “nonproliferation” demands, a previously calculated annihilation strategy against Israel could proceed. Seamlessly, perhaps, this military strategy could advance from terror to mega-terror, and, in successively added increments, from mega-terror, to war, to mega-war.
With US President Barack Obama’s explicit and continuing support, nuclear weapons are now widely regarded as destabilizing, or even as inherently evil. In the specific case of Israel, however, the recognizable possession of such weapons could actually sometime become all that protects civilian populations from catastrophic aggression. Doubtlessly, maintaining successful nuclear deterrence – whether still ambiguous, or newly disclosed – will ultimately prove indispensable to Israel’s survival.
In its Advisory Opinion of July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled: “The Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense….” Where “the very survival of a State would be at stake,” continued the ICJ, even the actual use of nuclear weapons could at times be permissible. There is more. Israel is not Iran. Israel makes no threats of aggressive war or genocide. None. For the moment, at least, it does not even publicly acknowledge its advanced nuclear capabilities.
Geo-strategic truth may be counterintuitive. Not all nuclear weapon states are created equal. Not all states with nuclear capability are automatically a menace. Some may even offer a distinct benefit to world peace. On its face, the plainly small size of Israel precludes national tolerance of any nuclear attack. This point has even been made openly by a senior Iranian official, who stated ominously: “Israel is a one-bomb state.”
Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan. To be sure, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not the problem. In the Middle East, the only persistent source of war and terrorism remains a far-reaching and still-unreconstructed Arab/Islamist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” Faced with this literally genocidal threat, Israel and its few allies will finally need to understand that the “Road Map” is just another enemy expedient. To wit, on official Palestinian maps – which all describe Israel proper as “Occupied Palestine” – the Jewish state has already been eliminated. With these disingenuous maps, a cartographic genocide has already been imposed.
What about Iran? With a more openly declared nuclear weapons posture, Israel could more reliably deter a rational Iranian enemy’s unconventional attacks, and also most of its large conventional aggressions. With such a suitably updated posture, Israel, if necessary, could launch appropriately non-nuclear preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets, and against associated counterforce capabilities. Significantly, these assets could otherwise threaten Israel’s physical survival with impunity. In the absence of acknowledging its possession of certain survivable and “penetration-capable” nuclear weapons, therefore, Israeli acts of anticipatory self-defense would most likely represent the onset of much wider war. The reason is simple: There would then remain no aptly convincing threat of Israeli counter-retaliation.
The decision to bring its “bomb” out of the “basement” would not be an easy one for Israel. Nonetheless, the realities of facing not only a nuclear- capable Iran, but also other potential nuclear aspirants in the region – in compelling synergies with anti-Israel terrorists – obligate a serious reconsideration of “deliberate ambiguity.” As corollary, Jerusalem would need to clarify that its multiple-level active defenses will always operate in tandem with its decisive nuclear retaliations.
What about “Palestine,” the other half of a prospectively corrosive synergy? Soon, it will soon become apparent that Islamic State (IS) and other related jihadist fighters plan to move against certain state and sub-state enemies. Already, in fact, IS is challenging Hamas control of Gaza, and is preparing to march westward, across the vulnerable country of Jordan. In time, of course, IS forces are likely to find themselves “at the “gates” of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), the territories still widely presumed to become Palestine. If, when IS arrives, a Palestinian state has not yet been created, these forces will effectively occupy the strategic territories for themselves. If a Palestinian state has already been formalized, they would then make quick work of the new state’s predictably ragtag army, and more-or-less easily become the de facto government of “Palestine.”
What should all of this mean? For Israel, the disturbingly plausible narrative ought to suggest the unreasonableness of clinging to any residual notions of a discredited “two-state solution.” For the Palestinians and their supporters, this same scenario should confirm that the single greatest hindrance to a Palestinian state – any Palestinian state – will not be Israel, but rather another even-more barbarous band of Sunni Arab terrorists. Exeunt omnes?
Liberal Party Defends Trudeau Statements on Iran: Paul Lungen, Canadian Jewish News, June 26, 2014 —Justin Trudeau would “hope to re-open [Canada’s] mission in Iran,” but doing so would be conditional on several factors, a spokesperson for the Liberal leader told The CJN.
Team Obama Just Crossed its Own Nuclear Red Line: New York Post, June 19, 2015 —Yet another Obama red line has been crossed. Only this time, Team Obama are the ones who crossed it.
No Miracle in Sight for Nuclear-Free Middle East: Yossi Melman., Jerusalem Post, Apr. 29, 2015—One thing is clear. The Middle East will not witness the creation of a miracle: the establishment in the region of a nuclear free zone (MENFZ). It neither will happen after the end of the NPT Review Conference next month nor in many years to come.
At Home With Our Iranian Nuclear Partners: Jared Genser & Sara Birkenthal, Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2015 —The world recently has played down criticism of Iran on human rights in hopes of securing an elusive nuclear deal, which may or may not actually affect its nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has doubled down its repression of domestic dissent.
