Empowering Islam:  ‘Taqiyya’ in the White House? By MARTIN SHERMAN   05/12/2013 12-5-13 http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=334135 Was this really what well-meaning, gullible American Jews had in mind, when persuaded by Obama’s pledge that “I have Israel’s back,” they gave him their support— both at the ballot and the bank?

That great scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, caution[ed] that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. The Obama administration seems to have raised the thought to the level of doctrine. What has hitherto been unclear is whether this was through design or incompetence. – Mark Steyn, “Surrender in Geneva,” National Review, November 29. These sobering sentiments expressed by Steyn, an incisive conservative columnist of Canadian origin, mirror with almost eerie accuracy those I articulated in my previous column “Will the West withstand the Obama presidency”, posted just one day earlier. In it I remarked: “the really chilling aspect of the Obama incumbency is that it is genuinely difficult to diagnose whether the abysmal results we see represent a crushing failure of his policies or a calculated success, the product of chronic ineptitude or purposeful foresight”. ‘Bungling stupidity cannot be ruled out’ Both pieces were written in response to the P5+1 deal brokered in Geneva on the Iranian nuclear program, largely under the stewardship of Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, in which Tehran won significant gains – both economic and political – in exchange for…well, not a lot. Given how incomprehensibly favorable the terms seemed to be for Iran’s tyrannical theocracy, Steyn was almost charitable in admitting that the possible explanation might lie in the realm of the stupid rather than the sinister. He concedes— caustically: “Certainly, John Kerry has been unerringly wrong on every foreign policy issue for four decades, so sheer bungling stupidity cannot be ruled out.” This is charitable because with the passage of time, there is accumulating evidence that a more ominous possibility may be emerging as increasingly and disturbingly plausible. The Geneva accord is so perplexingly perturbing, its terms so tenuous, so vague, so equivocal, so given to conflicting interpretation, that even some of Obama’s most sycophantic apologists have found themselves expressing unprecedented heretical doubts as to the soundness of its rationale. Some like Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, have been stridently blunt in expressing their misgivings. Others, such as Jeffrey Goldberg, unkindly designated by some as Obama’s court-journalist, seemed almost contritely embarrassed for doing so, promising to balance his commendably well-argued censure of the deal in “a coming post”, in which “I will do my best to represent…the compelling arguments to be made in favor of this deal”. But more on that later. The ‘taqiyya’ thing For those unfamiliar with the term taqiyya in the title, a brief explanation: The notion of taqiyya and its significance have been extensively discussed in the literature on Islam, so clearly we cannot encompass the full scholarly debate here. Accordingly a highly compressed account will have to suffice. Historically, the Koranic-sanctioned practice was first codified by minority Shia Muslims and refers to the dissemblance (i.e. the act of concealing or disguising) of their religious faith to protect themselves from the persecution from the more powerful Sunni Muslims. However today, as the well-known scholar of Islam, Raymond Ibrahim, tells us: ‘Taqiyya is not as is often supposed, an exclusively Shi’ite phenomenon.” To make the point he cites Islamic studies professor Sami Mukaram, author of over twenty books on Islam: ‘Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam. Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.’ Thus, Ibrahim asserts that taqiyya has come to be “deployed not as dissimulation but as active deceit… deceit, which is doctrinally grounded in Islam, [and] often depicted as being equal—sometimes superior – to other universal military virtues, such as courage, fortitude, or self-sacrifice.’  Taqiyya (cont)  Now, while I have no intention of engaging in the ideo-theological debate over the true significance and scope of taqiyya, in general, or the scholarly merits of Ibrahim’s widely quoted interpretation of it, in particular, one thing is indisputable: There is clearly a considerable body of opinion which holds that, in the modern era, taqiyya seems to have become a means not only to defend Islam against the infidels but to advance it among them—particularly in the West. Indeed, in the public discourse the term has come to denote “active doctrinal deceit” not only for the purpose of preserving religious Islamic values but to advance political Islamic goals. It is in this sense that it has become commonly used in the ideo-political debate on Islam and the methods used to advance its objectives in the West. It is in this sense I will refer to it here. Of course, it would be unfair to imply that subterfuge is a purely Muslim stratagem. After all, it has been touted by non-Muslims for centuries. For example, over 2500 years ago, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive.” Indeed even the Bible (Proverbs 24:6) prescribes that “By deception shall thy make war,” which for a while was the motto of Israel’s external intelligence service, Mossad. However, in Islam, there seems to be a far greater doctrinal sanction for a wider, unabashed and overarching use of “active deceit” in contending with the infidel “other”— not so much in the interests of self-preservation among them, but of dominance over them. Why ‘sheer stupidity’ is charitable It is against the backdrop of the foregoing discussion that Steyn’s previously cited dilemma should be evaluated. For it provides the context to judge whether the Obama administration’s penchant for making America seem “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend” is the result of “design or incompetence”; and a criterion for understanding why his assessment that “sheer bungling stupidity cannot be ruled out” tends to the charitable. For as readers will recall from last week’s column, it is difficult to make sense of current US foreign policy unless we accept that, as Dinesh D’Souza, director of last year’s highest-grossing documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” suggests: “Obama has no interest in weakening our adversaries while he does seem to have an interest in weakening our allies”. This is emerging as an increasingly plausible interpretation of the Obama-administration’s undisguised Islamo-philic propensities. Of course the White House has been at pains—albeit not always spectacularly successful—to blur the nature of its true agenda. However, this endeavor is becoming increasing difficult to maintain, as a clear pattern emerges of intervention when this advances Islamist interests, and non-intervention when it does not. This is particularly true in the case of Israel, even more so in the wake of the P5+1 deal, which last week prompted Caroline Glick to charge: “The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power [but] to weaken the State of Israel.” Indeed, the deal struck in Geneva is so implausible that is may actually prove to be a point of inflexion for many hitherto Obama disciples and a moment of revelation for them to grasp the ominous nature of his underlying political credo. Dershowitz & the case for deliberate deception It already sparked some uncharacteristic rumblings in usually Obama-supportive quarters. Arguably, the most outspoken of these was Alan Dershowitz, who has authored several works with titles that begin with the words The Case for…. Indeed, Dershowitz was so scathing in his censure of the deal with the mullahs that one is tempted to wonder whether, in light of his vigorous rebukes, he might not be mulling over the possibility of a new book entitled: The Case for Deliberate Deception. In weekend interviews immediately following the announcement he made the following acerbic assessment of its chances of success and the abilities of those who “cooked it up”: “When you do a risk-benefit analysis, the possibility that this will actually result in ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program is probably in the range of 10%…But when you weigh that against the 30 or 40% chance that they’re dead wrong–nuclear bomb wrong – then it’s a very bad assessment of risk and benefits…This is first-year negotiating theory, and this administration gets a D-minus with grade inflation” Elsewhere, he warned that the agreement “could turn out to be a cataclysmic error of gigantic proportions.” His concern was clearly reflected in an article he penned, warning that “This is not a liberal/conservative issue... Indeed all reasonable, thinking people should understand that ..it is a prescription for disaster.” With evident exasperation, he asked: “Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?” So if the Obama-administration’s policies appear immune to conventional reason and impervious to historical lessons, what could possibly explain its manner of conduct? Surely, then, the case for deliberate deception should not be discounted? Surely, the lawyer in Dershowitz would agree? Is revolt brewing in the court? Perhaps one of the most intriguing sources of criticism of the Iranian deal was none other than Jeffrey Goldberg, rumored to be among the journalists with the closest relations to the White House, at times even acting as a mouthpiece to convey messages on its behalf to the public. It is, therefore, hugely significant that he, of all people, would produce a stingingly skeptical review of the accord. In his very astute (seriously) “Six Reasons to Worry About the Iranian Nuclear Deal”, posted Wednesday on Bloomberg, Goldberg gives a masterful (seriously) critique of the agreement’s fatal weaknesses, which virtually ensure its calamitous failure—unless of course for the authors of the deal, failure is a not calamity, but an objective. Here is a synopsis of Goldberg’s analysis and concerns: 1. The deal isn’t done…nothing was actually signed. The deal is not, as of this moment, even operational. 2. Momentum for sanctions is waning…many nations, many companies and the Iranians themselves are seeing this agreement as the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime. 3. The (still unenforced) document agreed upon in Geneva promises Iran an eventual exit from nuclear monitoring… This is not a comforting idea. 4. The biggest concession to the Iranians might have already been made… Essentially, Obama’s administration has already conceded, before the main round of negotiations, that Iran is going to end up with the right to enrich. 5. The Geneva agreement only makes the most elliptical references to two indispensable components of any nuclear- weapons program…Iran is free, in the coming sixmonth period…to do whatever it pleases on missiles and warhead development. 6. The Iranians are so close to reaching the nuclear threshold anyway—that freezing in place much of the nuclear program seems increasingly futile. Was this really what well-meaning, gullible American Jews had in mind, when persuaded by Obama’s pledge that “I have Israel’s back,” they gave him their support— both at the ballot and the bank? Think ‘taqiyya’ The Obama administration has been disingenuous in portraying virtually every element of the deal with Iran – from its (non)compliance with half a dozen UN resolutions, to its stipulations regarding the right to enrich. The accord will have far-reaching geo-political and geostrategic implications for the region—and well beyond. Whether these will result in a clustering of pliant client- states around a nuclear-armed theo-tyrannical Islamist hegemon, or in a spiraling pan-regional arms race, with Sunni Arabs and Turks scrambling to develop—or purchase— their own non-conventional capabilities to match that of the Shia Persians, the consequences will be bleak— especially for Israel. For whatever the outcome, it is likely to find itself facing a greatly empowered Islamic menace with a nuclear veto on any coercive action it may wish to undertake to ensure its security from external threats (e.g. Hezbollah) or domestic law-and-order (e.g quelling rebellion in the Galilee or Negev). So much for “having Israel’s back. So for anyone struggling to make sense out of all this seemingly inexplicable confusion, here’s some advice: Think taqiyya—and the pieces will all fall into place.

The Siege on Palestinian Arabs That the World Ignores DECEMBER 6, 2013

The Siege on Palestinian Arabs That the World Ignores

DECEMBER 6, 2013 

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/06/the-siege-on-palestinian-arabs-that-the-world-ignores/

The Lebanon Daily Star reported last month:

BEIRUT: Residents and fighters fear they may be starved out of the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk as the siege of the Palestinian area approaches its fifth month, mirroring the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in many of the capital’s suburbs. The relatively new practice of blockading neighborhoods reflects a shifting strategy among rebel and government forces, analysts say, as both sides hunker down for what is expected to be a long war of attrition.

Yarmouk was originally a camp for Syria’s Palestinian refugees but has since expanded into a sprawling neighborhood in Damascus’ rebel-held southern belt. It has been encircled by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad since February.

On the second day of Ramadan, July 10, government forces tightened their grip on the area and sealed off a checkpoint that was the area’s only gateway to the capital, which was previously only sporadically open to allow through aid and fleeing residents.

The movement of food, medicine and people came to a complete halt.

“Civilians are totally forbidden from going out of the camp. At the same time, no food is coming in. They [the soldiers] have refused to let in vaccines for polio, measles, chickenpox and flu,” said Abdullah, an activist who has been stuck inside the neighborhood for over a year.

That siege is now 139 days old.

While the world constantly hears about a “siege” on Gaza, where there are no restrictions by Israel on fuel, medicine,food, or hundreds of other items,and where hundreds of people enter and leave every week, no one is talking about the real siege of tens of thousands of people in Yarmouk, which is now on day 139.

Similarly, the death toll of Palestinians in Syria has now reached 1,781, the vast majority of whom are civilians. But there is no Goldstone Report about this. No UN resolutions about Palestinians in Syria. No special sessions of the Security Council, nothing at the UN Human Rights Council, and very little in the media. No political Christmas carols being sung outside Syrian embassies.

I’m sure there is a rational explanation for why the “pro-Palestinian” crowd is exerting so much little effort on helping Palestinians literally starving to death.

And it probably has to do with the fact that they aren’t “pro-Palestinian” at all.

White House Admits Final Deal Includes Enrichment

Bibi Is Not Crazy: White House Admits Final Deal Includes Enrichment

By: Yori Yanover December 4th, 2013

A final deal with Iran COULD include a capacity for uranium enrichment, the White House said.

"COULD" is what you say when you used to say "COULDN'T" but then the other side insisted they WOULD, and so you add a kind of implied "maybe" to the word by making it "could" instead of, say, "will zealously engage in producing weapons grade plutonium which is what they'd been meaning to do all along while we, here, at the White House were making fun of Netanyahu for being such a panicky sort."

Here's what Bernadette Meehan, the National Security Council spokeswoman actually said in a statement Tuesday in response to a query based on a story first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

“We are prepared to negotiate a strictly limited enrichment program in the end state, but only because the Iranians have indicated for the first time in a public document that they are prepared to accept rigorous monitoring and limits on level, scope, capacity, and stockpiles.”

This is so like the joke about Churchill who asks a lady if she'd sleep with him for a thousand pounds and she said yes, then he asked what about for five, and she said: Sir, what do you think I am, and he said We already established that, now we're haggling over the price.

See, once the White House admits they lied all along, the part about monitoring day and night, with extra binoculars, the really good kind – that doesn't really matter any longer. The fact remains, the president agreed to Iranian enrichment and lied to the Israelis and the Saudis and everybody else who's shaking in their boots on account of they know the crazies in Tehran will happily go down in nuclear flames if they knew they were taking everybody else with them.

Saying now that you've only agreed to low level, not high level enrichment is exactly like low-balling the questionable lady from the apocryphal Churchill story.

Israel and the Saudis and, really, anyone with a healthy fear of Shiites, oppose any Iranian enrichment capacity, because Iran is led by madmen to whom Mutually Assured Destruction is martyrological panacea, not a threat.

“If we can reach an understanding on all of these strict constraints, then we can have an arrangement that includes a very modest amount of enrichment that is tied to Iran’s actual needs and that eliminates any near-term breakout capability,” Meehan said.If we can’t, then we’ll be right back to insisting on no enrichment.”

And a hearty good luck to you on that one, hope you'll visit Yad Vashem II, the Iranian Holocaust Museum. By the time the U.S. gets around to do all that insisting, Iran's economy will have started to blossom, anywhere from $50 to $300 billion will have been injected into their economy and they could do whatever they feel like, no matter what Obama is insisting on.

Folks, the first thing Obama did when he took office in 2009 was to betray the people who voted for him by compensating the bankers for their losses. He didn't invest a trillion dollars in Main Street, like so many of us expected he would – he gave it all to his buddies on Wall Street. We didn't know he had buddies on Wall Street – turns out he did.

This president will betray you just to pass a boring afternoon – of course he'll betray his Israeli and Saudi allies. He has done it already, in fact. Listen to his spokeswoman, for heaven's sake:

“Since the P5+1 would have to agree to the contours of a possible enrichment program, it is by definition not a ‘right’,” she said.

That's it? That's the big time guarantee? Two out of this group—China and Russia—are the heaviest promoters of killing the sanctions. They're going to demand now that Iran stop enrichment should inspectors discovered they'd gone up from 5% to, say, 5.9%? Then 7&? because that's how they'll do it, in inches, when no one's looking. that's how Rouhani did it in 2004.

“It is also important to note that Iran has acknowledged that issues raised in the UN Security Council resolutions have to be addressed and brought to a satisfactory conclusion before we agree to enrichment in the end state,” Meehan said.

Obviously. And then as soon as the UNSC says it's OK – Iran is off to the races.

IS THE US CHANGING SIDES IN THE REGIONAL CONFLICT BETWEEN IRAN AND ITS ENEMIES? JONATHAN SPYER Jerusalem Post 12-4-13

IS THE US CHANGING SIDES IN THE REGIONAL CONFLICT BETWEEN IRAN AND ITS ENEMIES? 

  JONATHAN SPYER Jerusalem Post  12-4-13

   

Even before any comprehensive agreement was reached on the nuclear file, Washington appears to have begun to dismantle the carefully assembled diplomatic structure seeking to contain Iranian regional ambitions.

A report by respected Washington-based journalist Hussein Abdul Hussein in the Kuwaiti Al-Rai newspaper this week revealed details of an indirect US channel with Hezbollah.

The report comes, of course, close on the heels of the interim agreement concluded in Geneva between the P5 + 1 world powers and Iran, allowing the latter to continue to enrich uranium.

News items are also surfacing suggesting a stark split between the US and Saudi Arabia over regional policy in general, and policy toward Syria in particular. Saudi officials are going on the record expressing their alarm at the direction of American policy.

Happily stirring the pot, some Iran-associated outlets have suggested that Washington is actively seeking to rein in Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who favors a hardline against Iranian interference in the region.

Meanwhile, agreement has now been reached over the long-postponed “Geneva 2” conference, to discuss the war in Syria.

The conference will go ahead because US-backed Syrian opposition representatives abandoned their demand that President Bashar Assad could have no part in any transitional phase of government in the country.

What does all this add up to? There are an increasing number of voices which perceive a shape behind all these details: Namely, an effort by the current US administration to turn the Iranian regime from an adversary into a partner. The method: Acceding, in part or whole, to key Iranian demands.

Let’s take a look at each item in more detail.

The usually reliable Abdul Hussein’s report details the mechanism by which the US is speaking to Hezbollah, in spite of that organization being a US-designated terrorist group. British diplomats are the ones doing the talking.

The channel of communication between UK officials and the “political wing” of the movement was recently revived, in tune with the improving relations between London and Tehran.

It is now serving to transfer messages between Washington and Tehran.

An unnamed diplomatic source quoted by Abdul Hussein explained that this dialogue is “designed to keep pace with the changes in the region and the world, and the potential return of Iran to the international community.”

The official went on to explain that because the US does not concur with the (British, entirely fictitious) division of Hezbollah into “political” and “military” wings, direct dialogue is currently not possible.

The report goes on to outline moments in recent months when the US has found itself on the same page as Hezbollah. One of these, very notably, was the occasion in June when the Lebanese Army, together with Hezbollah fighters, fought against the partisans of the pro al-Qaida Salafi preacher Ahmad al-Assir in the Lebanese town of Sidon. The US backed the army, without reference to the key role played by Hezbollah fighters in the action, which resulted in al-Assir’s defeat.

The other was the US condemnation of the recent al-Qaida-linked bombing at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. The condemnation, well-noted in Lebanon, did not contain any reference to the presence of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters in Syria.

The Abdul Hussein report also tells us the US “outreach” to Iran has not been on the nuclear file alone. Rather, even before any comprehensive agreement was reached, Washington appears to have begun to dismantle the carefully assembled diplomatic structure seeking to contain Iranian regional ambitions.

Even Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah, which killed 241 US Marines in Beirut in 1983, is evidently now a fit subject for communication, as part of Iran’s return to the international community.

Reports suggesting American efforts to contain Bandar are somewhat less reliable, coming as they do from pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah media outlets (al-Manar and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards-associated Fars News Agency). But certainly, the deep Saudi frustrations with the direction of US policy are not an invention of pro-Iran propagandists.

Nawaf Obaid, a senior adviser to the Saudi royal family, this week accused Washington of deceiving Riyadh over the Iran nuclear deal. “We were lied to, things were hidden from us,” Obaid told an audience in London, as quoted in The Daily Telegraph. He went on to vow continued Saudi resistance to Iranian machinations across the region. In particular, he expressed Saudi determination to turn back the Iranians in Syria.

“We cannot accept Revolutionary Guards running around Homs,” the adviser said. But this defiant tone appears in stark contrast to the developing US position. 

The Geneva 2 conference is now scheduled to take place on January 22. It is a US-sponsored affair. It is not yet clear if Iran itself will be there. But what is clear is that the conference will take place entirely according to the agenda of the Assad regime and its backers.

That is – the US-backed Syrian National Coalition will directly face the regime, while the regime now flatly rejects any notion of its stepping down.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, humming with the old Ba’athist rhetoric, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said, “The official Syrian delegation is not going to Geneva to surrender power… The age of colonialism, with the installation and toppling of governments, is over. They must wake from their dreams.”

The armed rebels will not be sending representatives to the conference.

They, financed and armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have formed a new “Islamic Front” that is battling the regime around Damascus, in Aleppo and in the border region of Qalamoun this week. The military advantage continues to ebb and flow.

But the stark contrast between the US-led diplomacy and the events on the ground is another clear reminder of the extent to which Washington’s position has moved away from confrontation, away from Riyadh – and toward Tehran.

Assad has revived his fortunes in the course of 2013, mainly because of the massive Iranian assistance he has received. Washington, which officially backs the opposition, appears to be sponsoring a conference which will crown this achievement.

So is the US in fact changing sides in the contest between Iran and those regional forces seeking to contain and turn back its advance? 

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute suggested this week that Washington is in the first phase of seeking a “strategic partnership” with Iran, an “entente cordiale” which would see a US-Iranian alliance forming a lynchpin of regional stability.

If this is truly what the welter of evidence detailed above portends, then the Middle East is headed into a dangerous period indeed. As Doran also notes, there is no reason at all to think that Iranian designs for regional hegemony have been abandoned.

The effect of US overtures to Tehran and undermining of allies will be to build the Iranians’ appetite. This will serve to intensify their continued efforts at expansion.

The corresponding efforts by other regional powers, Israel and Saudi Arabia chief among them, to resist this process will also increase.

That, in turn, is likely to mean greater instability across the region – and an eventual direct collision could result.

FAITH-BASED NEGOTIATIONS

 REUEL MARC GERECHT  12-9-13

When liberals meet mullahs….

 It takes a special effort to ignore the role of religion in Iranian politics and to broadcast the hope that Ayatollah Khamenei will willingly abandon his quest for nuclear weapons.

O believers, when you encounter the unbelievers marching to battle, turn not your backs to them. Whoso turns his back that day to them, unless withdrawing to fight again or removing to join another host, he is laden with the burden of God’s anger, and his refuge is Hell—an evil homecoming!

—Koran, Surah VIII, Anfal (‘The Spoils of War’),
quoted by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his speech
to the Basij and Revolutionary Guards at the Grand Mosque
of Ruhollah Khomeini, November 20, 2013

• 
  

It’s impossible to find a Western parallel to the rahbar, the “supreme leader” of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or to that regime’s particular fusion of church and state. The caesaropapism of a Byzantine emperor, even one as religiously determined as Justinian, or a pope as imperial as Gregory VII, who humbled an emperor at Canossa, just doesn’t capture the revolutionary, quintessentially modern nature of the rahbar. Following in the footsteps of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei tries to steal the charisma attached to Shiism’s magical imams and fuse it to the raw, coercive power of a twentieth-century totalitarian dictator. Like his predecessor as supreme leader, Khamenei sees Islam as under siege from the West, and especially the United States. “In the military, political, and economic wars, in every arena where there is a test of strength, you, the believer, must stand firm against the enemy [the United States], your will must overcome the determination of the enemy,” he told his militant audience at the Grand Mosque the day the Geneva nuclear negotiations began. And in this arduous and awesome struggle, the believer can use “heroic flexibility,” he said, which doesn’t mean “abandoning the ideals and aims of the Islamic regime,” but rather “clever, artful maneuvering that allows for the believer to achieve his goals.” “Step by step” the believer advances, as did the followers of the Prophet Muhammad at the battle of Badr, who were outmanned and underarmed, but proved triumphant and divided the spoils of their routed foe. 

Here is perhaps the biggest contradiction of the nuclear talks: The Obama administration wants to believe that the supreme leader just might forsake his historic mission—the quest for nuclear weapons begun under Khomeini and carried forth at great cost by Khamenei and every single Iranian president—because the United States, “the epicenter of evil,” has rallied the West against the Islamic Republic. The reasons administration officials give for why this extraordinary tergiversation will take place vary, but most spin around the idea that the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards—who oversee the nuclear program, terrorist operations, and domestic riot-control—really aren’t sufficiently committed to developing a nuclear weapon that the forces of moderation can’t seduce them from this dangerous course. The alleged forces of moderation are, in order of importance, newly elected president Hassan Rouhani, foreign minister Mohammad Zarif, and the Iranian people, at least those who voted for Rouhani. 

Those who make these arguments, inside the U.S. government and out, rarely cite any primary material. Yet there is much to ponder in the lengthy speeches of Khamenei and senior guard commanders who scorch America and the West with nearly every breath; in the nuclear memoirs of Rouhani, which reveals a proud revolutionary determined to keep and advance the nuclear program despite European pressure (and, a decade ago, a widespread fear of George W. Bush); and in the recently published memoirs of Zarif, which limn a deeply conservative man wedded to the Islamic Revolution. In an odd twist on Iran’s controlled democracy, administration officials can tell you that since Rouhani received a mandate for change, and since he has promised to get rid of the hated sanctions, then ipso facto he must be prepared to do the thing necessary to achieve that end: Rouhani, they conclude, intends to roll back Iran’s nuclear aspirations. 

Rouhani, they believe, must be more or less a moderate—a talented, politically savvy insider, not an egghead reformer like the former president Mohammad Khatami, whom Khamenei and his minions sliced and diced. He is, after all, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the uncouth, pietistic populist. He has a Ph.D. from a Scottish university (think Duns Scotus, David Hume, Adam Smith, Robert Burns, and Gordon Brown). 

This is such a nonsensical take on Iran’s deeply religious and ruthless power politics, and Rouhani’s personal voyage through the Islamic Revolution, that it’s hard to know where to start deconstructing the fiction and illogic. Suffice it to say that Khamenei has spent considerable energy the last four years destroying the threat of democracy inside his country. He has so elevated the Revolutionary Guards that their power rivals his own. He has given no indication that he now quakes before the very people he’s squashed. Neither, by the way, does Rouhani, who raised not a finger in protest when Khamenei gutted the pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009 and playfully eviscerated Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the former clerical powerhouse, the true father of the regime’s nuclear-weapons program, and Rouhani’s primary mentor. 

The Islamic Republic’s president, moreover, has given no indication that he isn’t still using the same playbook that he deployed against the European Union and the United States in 2003, when many in Tehran seriously feared that President Bush might eliminate one more member of the axis of evil. The six-month nuclear deal struck on November 24—supposedly the prelude to a more definitive pact—compromises nothing that cannot be easily reversed. Rouhani appears to be aiming again to gain time and money to advance the nuclear program—especially its hidden parts, which probably need more experimentation and cash. In 2003, his priority was centrifuge design and manufacturing, heavy-water reactor research, and a more deeply buried, bomb-resistant enrichment facility (Fordow). In 2013, it’s probably ballistic-missile weaponization, advanced-centrifuge manufacturing, and smaller, more-difficult-to-detect cascade sites, where a thousand advanced centrifuges could take the regime quietly beyond an undetectable breakout capacity. 

It’s a perverse twist in the administration’s agreement to provide limited sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for a six-month partial pause: Hard currency frozen by sanctions in overseas bank accounts will soon be transferred back to Tehran, where it can be used freely by the regime to support nuclear research, dual-use imports, ballistic missile development, and clandestine centrifuge manufacturing. As of now, all of Iran’s centrifuges are manufactured at unknown, unmonitored sites; no access has so far been granted to the engineering personnel who could guarantee that the West knows the number and locations of all centrifuge production facilities and determine how the regime has avoided the West’s elaborate net to catch nuclear dual-use imports. 

One would have thought this belonged in the first stage of any Geneva deal, since it will take months, probably years, to determine whether the regime is doing with centrifuge manufacturing what it has continuously done with the entire nuclear program since the 1980s: lie. One must assume that Khamenei is going to use the West’s hard-currency relief, too, to support Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, easily Tehran’s most important and expensive military adventure, and the Lebanese Hezbollah, the always- faithful Arab child of a very Persian Islamic Revolution. Yet the Brookings Institution scholar Ken Pollack, who has sometimes been sharply at odds with the administration on the Middle East, has called criticism of the Geneva deal “specious or tautological, or [afflicted by] … the kind of tenuous conspiracy thinking that we disparage when it comes from the Iranians.” 

But a basic understanding of international trade, a bit of common sense, and a quick glance at how the administration has conducted foreign policy in the region might make one skeptical about President Obama’s achievement in Switzerland. Every billion in hard currency counts, especially abroad, where Iran’s accessible hard-currency reserves are only around $20 billion. Even the administration’s dubious figure for sanctions relief—$7 billion over six months—is a lot of money for the Islamic Republic, which has probably burned up several billion dollars in Syria since Damascus’s savage dictatorship almost cratered last year. If that $7 billon figure is low, then the aid that President Obama has now given the mullahs is far from paltry. Anyone who has tracked how the administration calculated its gold-trading offer to the Iranians at the nuclear negotiations in Almaty in February and April 2013 (Turkish customs data clearly show that Iran pocketed $6 billion in a U.S. sanctions loophole; the administration claims it gave away nothing to Tehran) cannot be sanguine that the White House has any firm idea of how international commercial markets operate. Rouhani’s post-Geneva bragging about “breaking” the West’s sanctions regime is probably premature. But given his plausible assertion in his memoir that it was he who cleverly protected Iran’s nuclear program in 2003, one might want to give the cleric a bit more time before damning him as “specious.” 

At the core of Washington’s debate about Iran’s nuclear program is a confluence of naïveté and fear of another war in the Middle East. The latter reinforces the former and bends the analysis of Iran’s internal politics. It makes America’s foreign policy elite, which has never been a particularly God-fearing crowd, even more blind to the role of religion in Iran’s politics. The president himself appears to believe passionately that an irenic American foreign policy insulates the United States from Muslim anger and terrorism. Yet who knows for sure whether Barack Obama has the will to preempt Tehran’s nuclear program militarily? If Khamenei got caught enriching uranium to bomb-grade or kicked IAEA inspectors out of the country, the president might strike. Even the president’s omnipresent desire to pivot the United States away from any region of conflict might not be enough to stop him from launching preemptive raids against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. The closer we get to an Iranian breakout capacity, the more serious Washington’s deliberations on the ramifications of an Iranian nuke become. The most deadly and probably the most powerful man in uniform is Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the paramilitary and terrorist expeditionary unit within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, who unquestionably authorized the plan to bomb the Saudi ambassador in a Georgetown restaurant in 2011. Imagining Suleimani with atomic weapons is appreciably more disturbing than imagining Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Kim Jong-un with a nuke. 

No one in the Middle East, however, believes that Obama would strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in particular revel in mocking the president’s occasional “all-options-are-on-the-table” rhetoric. The left-wing base of the Democratic party certainly doesn’t think the president will lead America into another war. Mention Obama’s pledge to take out Tehran’s nuclear sites to the nonproliferation soldiers at the Ploughshares Fund and they yawn or snicker. The only man in Washington who may still seriously believe that Obama retains the requisite bellicosity after his red-line debacle in Syria is Dennis Ross, the president’s former Middle Eastern adviser and über Israeli-Palestinian peace-processor, whose capacity for perseverance and faith in the darkest circumstances is unparalleled. 

Much of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, especially that residing in influential left-of-center think tanks, long ago conceded the bomb to Iran. Pollack’s new book, Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy, advances an argument for containment, a position he has held for years. For those who want to default to containment, any diplomatic path will take them there. It doesn’t really matter whether Geneva is a good deal or bad one; the only thing that matters is that we not bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. And for most on the left—who unlike Pollack don’t envision any need for a militarily strong and aggressive United States pushing back against Iranian adventurism—containment has become a synonym for patient, peaceful engagement and American withdrawal. (The crippling weakness of Pollack’s grand strategy is that it presupposes tough Democrats and Republicans guiding American foreign policy; but the toughness necessary for containment is no less than that required for preemption.)  

President Obama’s heart and mind are, in all probability, in the same orbit as those of the nonproliferation crowd, who really liked nuclear nonproliferation so long as the United States was disarming and Washington didn’t have to go to war to stop a third-world country from going nuclear. The president’s post-Geneva stop-the-“endless cycle of violence” speeches certainly make one think that Obama will fold when Khamenei’s men have made it crystal clear that nuclear rollback isn’t an option. Ramping up sanctions globally—recapturing the momentum that Congress and the European Union had built by ever-escalating sanctions—will likely prove much more difficult than the White House now thinks. The all-important psychology of escalating sanctions, and the increasing American willpower that produced them, will soon be replaced by a spirit of compromise and, among foreign businesses, greed and a new resolve to test the administration’s willingness to punish companies, especially European and Chinese firms, that violate U.S. sanctions. 

European unity on Iran has always been in part a function of fear of American and Israeli preemptive military action. Fear of Israel has dissipated in Europe. In Paris, London, and Berlin, few now have much regard for—let alone fear of—President Obama. In the White House, transatlantic relations have become an afterthought, as French foreign minister Laurent Fabius made furiously clear during the first round in Geneva. And without crippling sanctions, Washington will have no real leverage left over the Iranian regime. President Obama’s eagerness to avoid an unpleasant binary choice—surrender publicly to Tehran’s nuclear fait accompli or preempt militarily—will have led him to a situation where he confronts the same choice, but with Iran’s hand stronger and America’s weaker. Khamenei will have called Obama’s bluff—and will have billions more in his bank account. In all probability, the president has bought into a process of diminishing returns that he cannot abandon for fear of the cruel binary choice. For that matter, he may already have decided that the left wing of the Democratic party is right: Better Khamenei and Suleimani with a nuke than America in conflict. The odds are, he has. 

In about six months’ time, Khamenei’s “step-by-step” counsel to his most loyal followers may well prove prescient. His loyal servant Rouhani, who jumped off Rafsanjani’s sinking ship in 2005 for a stronger alliance with the supreme leader, will have again proven that Western-educated Iranians with decent English can do wonders with Americans. Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, when asked about Khamenei’s November 20 speech at Khomeini’s Grand Mosque, remarked that “comments like these are not helpful, but we still believe that both sides are negotiating in good faith.” More than she probably knew, Ms. Psaki was right.

IRAN IS HAPPY. NEXT UP: THE PALESTINIANS RICHARD BAEHR 12-2-13

IRAN IS HAPPY. NEXT UP: THE PALESTINIANS  RICHARD BAEHR 12-2-13 http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6519 In the inverted worldview of President Barack Obama, the problem with Iran's nuclear program was most of all that Israel threatened to attack it. Such an event would have been a catastrophe for Obama, who has been "outreaching" to Iran for the entirety of his term, and negotiating with the Iranian regime behind the backs of all of America's presumed allies for more than a year. With a complete drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq accomplished, and one in Afghanistan near complete, a new broader conflict in the region that an Israeli attack might precipitate, drawing Americans back into the fighting, had to be prevented. The deal announced last week in Geneva backtracks on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agreement that Iran has signed, and a multitude of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibited Iran from enriching uranium. The agreement will not prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and at most will extend the so-called "breakout period" by a few weeks. In the term of the agreement, nothing prevents Iran from continuing to enrich uranium, no enriched uranium will leave the country, none of the near 20,000 centrifuges will be disabled or destroyed, and nothing will prevent Iran from further steps at weaponizing their nuclear program at locations in Iran the P5+1 nations do not know about and hence, will not inspect. Coupled with sanctions relief, and a new rush by foreign companies lining up to be first to invest in the "new no longer toxic Iran," it is a very good deal for Iran. Al Arabiya is reporting that a joint Iranian-United States chamber of commerce is in the works, as well as the possible resumption of airline service between the two countries. What is next? Will President Hassan Rouhani be invited to sit with the first lady for the State of the Union address, and asked to take a bow? One might think that a deal that is so overwhelmingly favorable for Iran -- ending their international isolation, granting billions of dollars in sanctions relief, protecting their rights and their nuclear program -- would be seen as a bad deal in the United States. But for Obama, it is a good deal as well, because it makes it a near certainty that Israel will not strike at Iran during the six-month period of the initial agreement. That six-month period, we learned this week, has not even begun, since there are "details" still to be worked out between the parties, or in reality more concessions Irandemands before signing a real agreement . A State Department spokesperson estimated this week that maybe the six-month clock would start running in January, meaning that Iran bought itself two more months with no restrictions whatever on its nuclear activities (and no new sanctions), and at least eight months in total without fear of Israeli action, and almost certainly no new American sanctions as well. Other parts of the supposed historic agreement were also unraveling, as U.S. officials agreed that the shutdown of activity at the Arak heavy water facility was not so complete. And of course, since lying has become so endemic with this White House, the denials by John Kerry that the P5+1 had granted any enrichment rights to Iran, completely collapsed, as the language of the agreement revealed that those rights were enshrined in the agreement, details to follow. Just in case Israel had not gotten the message, or if any Israelis were foolish to even entertain the notion that they retained any free will in the matter, Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague made it quite clear this week that such independence would be frowned upon. "We would discourage anybody in the world, including Israel, from taking any steps that would undermine this agreement and we will make that very clear to all concerned," Hague told parliament, as he noted that Britain would be "on guard." Britain, along with the United States, have now become the protectors of Iran's nuclear program. This is not an agreement designed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, nor the beginning of a policy of containment once they do, but a welcome wagon to the nuclear club though a Western security blanket. All presidents are concerned with their legacy, and how they will be judged by historians. No president, however, seems to have been as fiercely committed to his legacy as Obama, since he was trying to define it at a time before he was even nominated in 2008! That legacy, as laid out to an audience of several hundred thousand breathless and politically intoxicated Berliners in June 2008 included such glorious achievements as the planet (Gaia?) starting to heal, and the oceans no longer rising. It was promises such as these that enabled the solons in Oslo to decide to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama even before he took office, which also seemed to "jump the gun," so to speak. On a policy level closer to that of mere mortals, Obama has focused most on two policy objectives -- one domestic, one foreign. The domestic objective was to bring America closer to providing universal health insurance. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) passed in early 2010 on a strict party-line vote was the magic elixir designed to achieve the president's domestic goal. Unfortunately, the extraordinary executive branch incompetence on display since the enrollment process began in October and the repeated lies about the impact of the legislation (revealed once millions of Americans started receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies), have been a severe embarrassment to the White House, such that the president's approval ratings have dropped to 40%, their lowest level since he took office. It is becoming increasingly clear, that Iran has been an obsessive focus of the administration from the beginning and that the administration's goal was not to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but rather to end its international isolation and create a new American-Iranian rapprochement . Lee Smith summarizes what has occurred this way: "The interim deal makes official what Obama has long been pursuing -- a strategic realignment integrating Iran into a multipolar Middle East, where once-traditional American allies will no longer enjoy a privileged relationship with Washington. The signs pointing to Obama's new configuration, downgrading Saudi Arabia and Israel and upgrading Iran, have long been apparent, if incredible." That Iran might obtain nuclear weapons was a secondary issue, if a concern at all. After all, in a fairer world, if Israel had nuclear weapons, why shouldn't Iran, a far larger and more important nation on the world stage (one of the seven world powers, John Kerry supposedly assured his Iranian interlocutors last weekend)? Obama called Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the deal was reached with Iran last Saturday night, but rather than trying to reassure the Israelis, the president's message seems to have been that Netanyahu should stop whining about it, since Israeli unhappiness with the deal makes life more difficult for Obama with Congress. American relations with Israel during the Obama years have been on two tracks -- stopping Iran from going nuclear (Israel's desire), and forcing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (Obama's desire). With Israel visibly unhappy with the American deal with Iran, what does it signal for the Israeli-Palestinian track? Jonathan Freeland, the resident Israel-basher at The Guardian, thinks now is the time for Obama to ratchet up the pressure on Israel to finally get a deal done with the Palestinians. Freeland, his paper, The New York Times, Obama himself, and the other "great minds" with whom the president discusses grand strategy -- Valerie Jarrett, Tom Friedman, and David Ignatius among them -- are all convinced that nothing has prevented a deal in the past except for Israeli intransigence (which some of them can even spell), and Israeli settlement policy. The time has come for one more attempt to break Israel's back (all for Israel's own good, of course, as the encouragers of backbreaking will argue). I think the expectation that Obama will give Israel time to salve its wounds is misguided. This is a president who came to office determined to weaken the influence of the pro-Israel community, and "rebalance" Israel's relationship with its neighbors, Iran and the Palestinians. Rebalancing of course, can be defined here as weakening Israel's strategic position, since Israel's relative strength is perceived to be unfair and some of its power (and wealth) needs to be redistributed. The president, a narcissist to the end, may think he is on a roll in the Middle East. His press clippings are certainly better these days on this front than for his health care reform. So with a bit of momentum, he may well think now is the time for him to slam down the hammer on the so-called "peace process," or rather, slam it down once again on Israel. And if he needs a workman to do the job, he can count on John Kerry, who, once again, will be "reporting for duty."

Why Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal Is a Good Thing November 25, 2013 by Daniel Greenfield

Why Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal Is a Good Thing

November 25, 2013 by Daniel Greenfield

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/why-obamas-iran-nuke-deal-is-a-good-thing/#.UpMCrOE7qbk.email