Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Isi Leibler: The Obama administration’s unprecedented outburst against Israel
The exceptionally vicious US condemnation of Israel with regard to housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem is not merely misguided, but also reflects irrational bias.ISIS: Can the West Win Without a Ground Game?
Incidentally, this behavior also has many ominous parallels to the inhumane incarceration of Jonathan Pollard, despite pleas for the commutation of his sentence from all sectors of American society.
The harsh outburst relates to a 2,600-unit housing project planned as an extension of an exclusively Jewish neighborhood adjacent to the suburb of Talpiot and Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, both within the Green Line. It incorporates primarily barren land on which Ethiopian and Russian immigrants had been housed temporarily in mobile homes. Highly significant – but a fact that is ignored – is that nearly half of the construction was designated to provide housing for Arabs. Construction permits were approved two years ago, but it was the far-left group Peace Now that saw fit to highlight the issue in a press release on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama in a calculated effort to embarrass the prime minister and provoke tension.
The successive statements by both the White House and State Department spokesmen must be considered among the most bitterly prejudiced and unbalanced condemnations of Israel ever expressed by the US. They make a mockery of repeated claims by the Obama administration that it considers Israel to be a close ally.
The United States and its allies have launched a military campaign whose stated goal is, in the words of President Barack Obama, to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State (I.S., also known as ISIS or ISIL) established by Sunni jihadis in a contiguous land area stretching from western Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border.Who Does Turkey Support?
As the aerial campaign begins in earnest, many observers are wondering what exactly its tactical and strategic objectives are, and how they will be achieved. A number of issues immediately arise.
Any state—even a provisional, slapdash, and fragile one like the jihadi entity now spreading across Iraq and Syria—cannot be “destroyed” from the air. At a certain point, forces on the ground will have to enter and replace the I.S. power. It is not yet clear who is to play this role—especially in the Islamic State’s heartland of Raqqa province in Syria.
In Iraq, the national military and the Kurdish Pesh Merga are now having some successes at chipping away at the Islamic State’s outer holdings. The role of U.S. air support is crucial here. But the center of the Islamic State is not Iraq, and both the Iraqi forces and the Pesh Merga have made clear that they will not cross the border into Syria. This leaves a major question as to who is to perform this task, if the objectives outlined by President Obama are to be achieved.
The Mavi Marmara incident was a wake-up call to Jerusalem, where diplomats had earlier been unrealistically optimistic about building a working relationship with Erdogan despite several other, earlier, warnings, including Erdogan's famous tirade in Davos against (then) Israeli President Shimon Peres that, "You (Jews) know well how to kill!" The Turkish government has since frozen ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel, and Erdogan has increased his calculated explosive rhetoric against Israel.
Erdogan's principal argument was that a foreign military had killed Turkish nationals outside of Turkey; that those who were killed were martyrs; and that he would never allow a foreign military to harm one single Turkish citizen. Once again, he was wrong.
One of the lucky survivors of the Mavi Marmara was Yakup Bulent Alniak, an Islamist activist for the Turkish "humanitarian aid group" IHH which organized the Gaza-bound flotilla. IHH is listed by many Western countries as a terrorist organization; but its members, including Alniak, were simply heroes for Erdogan.
Alniak survived the IDF raid in 2010 but lost his life recently, at the end of September, when a U.S.-Arab coalition struck one of the largest ISIS camps in Syria. A coalition of foreign armies had killed a Turkish citizen whom the Turkish leader had declared a hero, but since then Erdogan has remained mute.
Will Erdogan downgrade Turkey's diplomatic ties with the U.S. and five Muslim nations because their militaries killed a Turkish citizen outside of Turkish territory? No. Probably because, in the pragmatic Islamist thinking, one does not properly qualify as a "martyr" if he gets killed by an army (or armies) other than Israel's.
As of this writing, on the Turkey-Syria border, CNN correspondent Phil Black hourly beams pictures of the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, with a black ISIS flag atop a building in the eastern part of the city, as Turkish soldiers in tanks lined up along the Turkish border "observe" ISIS troops close in for the approaching massacre.
Washington is expecting Ankara wholeheartedly to fight the rougher boys of the Islamist camp to which it belongs? Good luck.
Indyk Bashes Israel, Obama on Yom Kippur
The U.S.-Israel alliance “is crumbling” due to waning support for Israel among Democrats and “total disrespect” for the Obama administration among segments of the Israeli government, according to President Barack Obama’s former Middle East envoy Martin Indyk, in what was described as "a frank off-the-record talk" at the Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C., during the Yom Kippur holiday.Kerry Urged to Investigate Misuse of UNRWA Facilities in Gaza
Indyk, who left his role as U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in July, lashed out at the Jewish state for showing “disrespect” to the Obama administration and warned that the historically strong U.S.-Israel “relationship is in trouble,” according to an audio recording of the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Indyk—who was revealed by the Free Beacon earlier this year to have spent time bashing Israel over drinks at a bar—has been identified by officials in both Israel and Washington as the primary source for numerous recent stories in the media blaming Israel for the failure of peace talks with the Palestinians, the Free Beacon adds.
In his comments Indyk also criticized the Obama administration for fueling perceptions that the United States is withdrawing from the region, a view that he said is the result of both the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq and Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Congressman Brian Higgins (NY) and Representative Doug Collins (GA) on Tuesday led a bipartisan effort in writing to Secretary of State John Kerry regarding the use of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facilities to maintain rocket stockpiles during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.EU Illegally Building Structures in Area C with PA
In the letter, Higgins and Collins urge the State Department to conduct an independent investigation to uncover the extent to which UNRWA facilities are being misused in Gaza.
No fewer than three UNRWA schools were found, during the course of Israel’s 50-day Operation Protective Edge, to be serving for storage of rockets for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
After the first finding of rockets at an UNRWA school, it was reported that rather than destroying the rockets, UNRWA workers called Hamas to come remove them to use in their terror war on Israeli civilians.
In another incident, three IDF soldiers were killed and seven others wounded in a booby-trapped UN clinic that was situated on top of terror tunnel entrances, showing the complicity of the UN in Gaza-based terror against Israel.
The Regavim organization discovered that the European Union together with the Palestinian Authority are illegally building school buildings and other structures along Road 60 near the town of Adam in the Binyamin region.Liberman: Sweden’s Palestine move not meant to advance peace
The section is in Area C, which is under full Israeli control.
Regavim says the EU is trying to create facts on the ground, and test Israeli’s interest and capability to protect its land from PA incursions and treaty breaches.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman rejected claims by Stockholm that its planned recognition of a Palestinian state is designed to jumpstart peace talks, writing in a Swedish newspaper Wednesday that the announced move aimed to scapegoat Israel as a salve for local ills.EU set to reassess ties if Israel doesn’t move on peace
Writing in major daily Dagens Nyheter, Liberman said that Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s statement Friday announcing the planned recognition for Palestine “was not meant to bring a true solution to a problem in the international arena, but to give an answer to internal political needs and to conciliate the opinion of a certain faction in Swedish public opinion.”
“Friendly governments don’t act to undermine the national security of their friends, and don’t presume to know better than them how to deal with the host of challenges they face. The Swedish government would do well to reverse its intentions to act in this way toward its friend Israel,” Liberman wrote.
In his piece, entitled “Unilateralism doesn’t solve anything,” Liberman questioned why the Swedish prime minister focused on the Palestinian issue instead of more pressing issues in the Middle East, like the Islamic State, Iran’s nuclear program, or al-Qaeda.
“Focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used by various parties to compensate for the multitude of failures and frustrations of the international community as it tries to deal with the host of complicated problems on the global agenda,” the foreign minister wrote, charging that the term “a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is presented as a false panacea for the region’s problems.
The European Union is inconspicuously but determinedly threatening to reevaluate bilateral ties with Israel if the Netanyahu government fails to make progress toward a two-state solution and continues its current policy of allowing construction beyond the pre-1967 lines.IDF Special Ops Unit's Heroism in Gaza Revealed
The EU’s new policy has gone largely unnoticed due to this summer’s Operation Protective Edge, but EU officials are already busy at work on a set of sanctions against Israel that Brussels could enact whenever the union’s political echelon gives a green light. Indeed, some in the EU are currently considering implementing a mechanism that would immediately penalize Israel for every step deemed unhelpful to the peace process (such as settlement expansion), a senior European diplomat told The Times of Israel.
While there has been public controversy over the ceasefire ending to the 50-day Operation Protective Edge, the IDF has been lauded for its brave actions in the war fighting Hamas terrorists embedded deep in the civilian population of Gaza.US government restores Pollard online release date
That heroism was displayed by the elite Duvdevan special operations undercover unit, which was in Gaza to locate terror tunnels and sites of combat. The unit conducted a recently revealed daring rescue in Khirbat Ahza, located in southern Gaza, during the fourth day of ground combat in the operation.
A company of the unit headed by a captain, identified only by the initial S, had infiltrated into a 12-building compound of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization where it was searching for rocket-launch sites, weapons and terror tunnels. The company quickly realized the compound was full of active terrorists, travelling through underground tunnels.
Suddenly through the sporadic gunfire in the background a loud explosion was heard, and members of the unit reported that an army bulldozer had run over a planted explosive, with terrorists firing on the trapped driver from several directions and pinning him down.
Fearing an abduction of the driver, captain S and reserves communications combat soldier A broke off from the tunnel-finding mission to race towards the bulldozer, reports Walla!.
A day after The Jerusalem Post reported that the US Federal Bureau of Prisons had changed Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard's projected release date on its website from November 21, 2015, to life, it was changed back Monday.Rioters hole up in mosque amid fierce Temple Mount melee
Pollard and his wife, Esther, had expressed hope on Sunday that efforts to bring about his release would be reinvigorated by removing what they saw as false hope people had that he would automatically be released next year on the 30th anniversary of his November 21, 1985, arrest.
Parole is unlikely to be granted because Pollard's judge, his prosecutor, and the US government are on record in his sentencing docket as emphatically against early release at any date, making it nearly certain that he would be refused.
Pollard’s lawyers would not be able to effectively contest those recommendations, because they have been prevented from seeing the classified portions of his sentencing file. Barring parole, Pollard's sole legal redress would be a commutation of his sentence by the US president.
Police and masked rioters clashed on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount Wednesday morning, as tensions ramped up ahead of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.Netanyahu Said ‘Furious’ Over Lack of Police Response to Low Intensity Terror in Jerusalem
Rioters were chased by police into the al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Mount’s esplanade, after fighting broke out following the opening of a gate for non-Muslim visitors.
Protesters inside the mosque tried to spray flammable liquid out of windows toward officers.
They also threw Molotov cocktails from within the mosque for the first time, according to Israel Radio.
Four policemen were wounded in the clashes, and five arrests were made, according to police.
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported dozens of Palestinians were injured in the clashes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday demanded Israeli police and security agencies take a harsher stand against escalating firebombing, stoning, and vandalism attacks against Jewish residents by pro-Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem in recent months.Elliott Abrams: A word from Saeb Erekat
Calling to bolster police presence in the streets of the capital as a show of deterrence, Netanyahu “instructed that forces be increased in the confrontation areas and that vigorous action be taken against those who disturb the peace.”
Palestinian youths, mostly, but not exclusively, in the capital’s eastern sectors have perpetrated hundreds of rock and vandalism attacks against Jewish homes and businesses, and destroyed dozens of gravestones on the Mount of Olives. Rioters and vandals have stoned and firebombed motorists, and bus and light rail passengers, injuring dozens of passengers and pedestrians, and causing millions of shekels in direct, and indirect damage.
So, given that even Hamas never claimed that 96 percent of those killed were civilians, where did Erekat get this number? Again, we must admit that he simply made it up.ISIS Claims Attack on French Cultural Center in Gaza
This is not exactly the first time: Erekat was one of the inventors of the "Jenin Massacre" in 2002. In fighting in the West Bank city, 52 Palestinians were killed, as were 23 Israeli soldiers. Yasser Arafat claimed at the time that the "Jenin Massacre" could only be compared to the siege of Stalingrad in World War II. Erekat himself said "the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. The Jenin refugee camp is no longer in existence, and now we've heard of executions there."
An announcement was released Wednesday morning by Islamic State's (ISIS) branch in Gaza, claiming responsibility for an explosion late Tuesday night on the French Cultural Center in western Gaza City.Hamas TV fabrication: Israel is suffering massive civilian casualties during the Gaza War
The blast, which caused a fire that inflicted damage mostly to the center's restaurant but no casualties due to the late hour, was played down by the Hamas terrorist group running Gaza as likely being a generator malfunction - but according to the Arabic announcement, it was ISIS's first attack in Gaza.
The declaration opened saying "our fighters succeeded in exploding the center of immorality and heresy known as the French Center, after a surveillance of several weeks," reports Yedioth Aharonoth.
French language courses are the mainstay of the center, which also transfers visa applications for France to the French Consulate in Jerusalem. Construction on the center's fancy building was completed a mere two years ago
The statement detailed that a 200 kilogram explosive was planted adjacent to the building's gas tanks, which are used to provide power to the center's electric generator.
Daniel Pipes: Hunger growls in Egypt
Egypt, famed for millennia as the "breadbasket of the Mediterranean," now faces alarming food shortages. A startlingly candid report in Cairo's Al-Ahram newspaper by Gihan Shahine, titled "Food for Stability" makes clear the extent of the crisis.With brazen attack inside Israel, Hezbollah lays down new ground rules
To begin, two anecdotes: Although compelled by her father to marry a cousin who could afford to house and feed her, Samar, 20, reports that they "have only had fried potatoes and eggplants for dinner most of the week." Her sisters, 10 and 13, who left school to take up work, are losing weight and suffer chronic anemia.
These children are not unusual. According to the U.N.'s World Food Program, malnutrition stunts the growth of 31 percent of Egyptian children between six months and five years of age, one of the highest rates in the world. It also found in 2009 that malnutrition reduced Egypt's gross domestic product by about 2 percent. One in five Egyptians faces food insecurity and "a growing number of people can't afford to purchase enough nutritious food," according to Australia's Future Directions International. To fill their stomachs, Egypt's poor rely on low-nutrition, calorie-dense foods (such as the infamous all-starch kushari) that cause both nutritional deficiencies and obesity. And 5.2 percent of the population is actually going hungry, an Egyptian state agency, CAPMAS, reports.
The Shiite organization, meanwhile, is taking advantage of Israel’s wariness in order to establish a new set of ground rules. And yet one doubts whether Hezbollah, which doesn’t have many available fighters, is seeking to escalate the situation to all-out war or even a more limited conflagration. The organization is tied up with a war that has already been raging for three years, fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces. This week, eight of its fighters were killed in battles in Syria’s Qalamoun region. In all, a third of Hezbollah’s forces are currently in Syria, where they’re battling a plethora of Sunni extremist groups, including the notorious Islamic State.Hezbollah sends message to Israel: No more carte blanche for the IDF in Lebanon
It’s thus likely that in the coming months we’ll see occasional flare-ups along the border but no all-out escalation. And yet, the outcome of Tuesday’s attack, which wounded two soldiers, could have been much worse, and one is forced to recall that in July 2006, no one predicted that a cross-border attack (with far more dire results) would precipitate the Second Lebanon War.
Hezbollah, which sees itself as the defender of the Lebanese nation, has decided to change its approach. It responds to any incident that it views as an Israeli attack on Lebanese sovereignty or as a breach of the rules of the game. And not only does it respond, it usually also takes responsibility. Hezbollah’s responses were also noted on the Golan Heights, where it has operated “envoys,” Syrian mercenaries, this year.Former Lebanese PM Hariri slams Hezbollah for Israel border attack
Hezbollah is up to its neck in the civil war in Syria, where it sent about 5,000 of its 30,000 fighters. The battle is spilling over from Syria to Lebanon.
Hezbollah has suffered, and is suffering, difficult losses in these two fronts. But it hasn’t lost its confidence or its military capabilities.
With the help of its up-to-date weapons, and especially its massive stockpile of up to 100,000 missiles, Hezbollah believes in its ability to challenge Israel, and, if need be, even stand up to it for a long period of time and to wear it out if the situation deteriorates to a war that none of the players in the equation – Israel, Hezbollah, and its patron Iran – wishes for.
Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday condemned as "unacceptable" Hezbollah's border attack on Israel the day before.Watch Hezbollah Lose Battle With al-Nusra Front for Crucial Outpost (VIDEO)
The Shi'ite Lebanese terror group claimed responsibility for two bombs that detonated in the Har Dov region along the border with Lebanon, with one device injuring two IDF soldiers.
Lebanese media cited Hariri, an ardent rival of Hezbollah, as slamming the organization for its attack on Israeli targets, saying it contributes to "disrupting national efforts in the fight against terrorism and extremism."
He also criticized what he said was the tendency by many in Lebanon to overlook the actions of Hezbollah.
After years of robust control in Lebanon, Hezbollah suffered a serious blow Monday after Jabhat al-Nusra fighters managed to briefly take control of a hilltop outpost on the northeastern border with Syria and kill between eight and 10 Hezbollah fighters, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Tuesday.Hezbollah: We're Ready to Fight Israel
Hezbollah said they killed 16 al-Nusra militants, and captured five.
After being rebuffed by Hezbollah forces in the Qualamun mountains last year, the al-Nusra Front is apparently succeeding in dragging the bitter civil war in Syria westward into Lebanon.
In the well-executed operation, the organization’s militants took over the Hezbollah outpost on the hilltop bluffs inside Lebanon, at a key control point overlooking the area.
The deputy leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, Naim Qassem, said on Tuesday evening that his group is prepared to fight Israel if necessary.IDF Exposes Hezbollah's 'Killer Deal' for Lebanese Citizens
Speaking hours after Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a bomb attack along the Lebanese-Israeli border which wounded two IDF soldiers, Qassem was quoted by the Daily Star as having said the attack was meant to demonstrate the group’s ability to “respond to Israeli violations”.
“The Shebaa Farms (where the explosion occurred) are occupied and it is the right of the resistance to conduct operations to liberate the land,” Qassem said in a televised interview..
The explosion was meant to signal that the group is ready to fight Israel, despite Hezbollah’s intervention in other regional battle fields, he added.
“We wanted to tell Israelis that we are ready and that there is no way they can assault us while we stand by and watch,” said Qassem, according to the Daily Star.
Hezbollah said earlier that Tuesday afternoon’s attack was carried out by the "martyr Hassan Ali Haidar unit," which is named for a Hezbollah member killed on September 5 when an Israeli listening device in Lebanon was detonated remotely as he tried to dismantle it.
The IDF's Spokesperson Unit lost no time returning fire in the media battle on Tuesday, hours after Iran-proxy Hezbollah terrorists wounded two IDF soldiers by detonating two explosives set on the Israeli-Lebanese border near Har Dov.Hezbollah's Exploitation of Southern Lebanon's Civilian Population
In a new animated video, the IDF illustrated how the terror group gives Lebanese citizens a "killer deal," building them free homes - in return for the privilege of using the homes as weapons storehouses.
Hezbollah "is deeply rooted within the population, exploiting its infrastructure for terror activity and using its civilians as human shields. Hiding weapons in private homes is just one of the many ways Hezbollah exploits the people of Lebanon," read a statement with the clip.
UN: Syria declares another 4 chemical facilities
Syria has declared four chemical weapons facilities it hadn’t mentioned before, a special representative of the UN secretary-general told the Security Council on Tuesday. The news heightened concerns that the Syrian government hasn’t been fully open about its chemical weapons program.Biden spoke the truth – WSJ
Diplomats said Sigrid Kaag told them during closed consultations that three of the facilities are for research and development and one is for production, and that no new chemical agents have been associated with the four sites.
The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, tweeted: “Must keep pressure on regime so it doesn’t hide CW capability.”
The jester speaks the darndest truths. The Arab Gulf states did bankroll and arm extremists in Syria, as they also did in Libya. Turkey did little to stop foreign jihadists from crossing from Turkey into Syria to join ISIS. These countries now support the U.S. military campaign in Iraq and Syria, but they helped create the problem.Busted ISIS Cell Planned Beheadings on London Streets
If Mr. Biden is feeling contrite, he ought to apologize to the Syrian and American people. For three years, the Obama Administration sat on its hands in Syria. Proposals to arm and train genuinely moderate opposition forces were turned down. President Obama refused to strike Assad’s air force, even after the dictator crossed the American leader’s “red line” and gassed thousands of civilians with chemical weapons.
As the moderate Free Syrian Army was marginalized on the battlefield, ISIS and other extremists moved in. Some 200,000 people have died in the three-year civil war that earlier American action might have mitigated. The American abandonment also enabled ISIS to come over from Syria and lay siege to a third of Iraqi territory. The veep should apologize for claiming victory in Iraq even as his abdication was letting disorder spread.
New details in connection to the arrest of four Islamic terrorists on Tuesday reveal that the cell was affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS), and planned a brutal beheading - or beheadings - on the streets of London.Mordechai Kedar: ISIS Will Try for Tunisia Next
MI5 (British intelligence) and police monitored the four, arresting them while they were in the "early stages" of planning a "significant" attack. Scotland Yard indicated the four intended to import ISIS's beheadings of westerners in Syria that have shocked the world, reports the UK's The Telegraph.
Con Coughlin, defense editor of the British paper, confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday that the plan was to behead civilians in public citing intelligence officials.
"The material that we have from Scotland Yard and the intelligence services is they have uncovered the first ISIS plot here in the UK," Coughlin said. "Basically, (they were) British jihadists coming back to London and wanting to carry out a plot, and I’m told the plot was to behead people on the streets of London."
The danger that Tunisia poses to Europe is in no small part due to its proximity to that continent, and an armed terrorist boat can reach Italy from Tunisia in one night's rapid sailing. European intervention in Tunisia will take place much earlier than serious intervention in Syria or Iraq, which is why the Tunisian arena may turn out to be even more incendiary than that of Syria and Iraq.50 Police Officers Called to Muslim-Yazidi Brawl in Germany
Without doubt, the time has come to rewrite the rules of war and the international agreements that stand at the foundations of international law regarding conflict management. These were decided on when the world talked in terms of armies and nations, and they are irrelevant in the present wars, in which a modern nation finds itself fighting militias using methods taken from the seventh century.
Noble Ideas such as "distancing the war from civilians", "human rights of fighters", "the treatment of prisoners" that were laid down in post World War Europe have lost their relevancy in recent years. Most of the wars fought in the past twenty years were against organizations not subject to international law and unaffected by it. These militias attempt to paralyze the organized armed forces facing them, who,forced to battle fighters in civilian clothing who hide in populated areas, are prevented from hitting them effectively because of their extreme sensitivity to the possibility of harming peaceful citizens.
Fifty police officers had to be deployed to break up an enormous brawl between Kurds and Muslims in North-West Germany last night, as angry migrants took to the streets to vent frustrations as the violence being visited upon the Yazidi Kurds in Northern Iraq by radical ISIS forces spills over onto European soil.Harvard Students: America Greater Threat to World Peace than ISIS
The confrontation, which involved sixty Yazidis and thirty Muslim counter-protestors was described as a ‘running battle’ when the officers moved to separate the two groups at around 1730 last night. According to theLocal.de those involved used street furniture as well as their fists, and six were injured. So far no arrests have been made, but police have indicated they expect more violence. The fight followed a Europe-wide day of protest by Kurdish groups, who are trying to bring attention to the plight of the Kurdish people, which has involved occupations of radio stations and street protests. The ethnic Kurds in Northern Iraq now appear to be trapped between rapidly advancing ISIS forces from the South, and the Turks to the North who are fundamentally opposed to an independent Kurdish state.
A new Campus Reform video asked Harvard students to name the greater threat to world peace: America or Isis. They chose America, of course.Obama’s Parchin Nuclear Wake-Up Call
Here are some of their reasons why:
- Because America is making decisions that are much more likely to affect the world
- American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East
- Destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power
- The outlandish amount of spending that America has on causes of potential destruction in the world
- Spending on defense mechanisms
One student recounted his "interesting conversation" with neighbors in which they concluded that ISIS has a "skewed view" of America in the same way that "a lot of Americans" have a "skewed view" of ISIS.
Sunday night, the residents of Tehran got a light show when an explosion at a military complex east of the city shook the Iranian capital. According to the New York Times, an orange flash lit up the city, but officials denied that the incident occurred at Parchin–though how exactly an “ordinary fire” would create such a display was left unsaid. But whatever it was that happened at the place where Iran has been conducting military nuclear research, the incident is a reminder that despite the all-out push for détente with the Islamist regime being conducted by the Obama administration, its nuclear program presents a clear and present danger to the world.Middle EastIranian Opposition Reveals Nuke Weapon Research at Secret Site
Parchin is famous because it is not just another of Iran’s many nuclear facilities. What makes it special is the fact that the regime has consistently denied inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to it. Western and Israeli intelligence agencies as well as the UN monitoring group believe Parchin is where Iran has conducted high-explosive experiments related to nuclear-weapons research. In other words, Parchin is the locus of some of the world’s worst fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as of its government’s most egregious lies and deceptions of the international community.
As Iran continues negotiations with world powers on its nuclear program ahead of a November 24 deadline, members of an Iranian opposition movement revealed Wednesday that the Islamic regime is continuing its nuclear weapon research at a secret location.Iran Bans Nuke Expert From Inspection Team
According to the Iranian resistance movement in exile Mujahedin-e Khalk, also known as MEK, Tehran is developing nuclear weapons after having relocated its research facilities to avoid detection, reports the Associated Press.
MEK cited unidentified Iranian government sources in saying that "in recent months" Iran's Organization of Defensive Information and Research (SPND) moved the most sensitive weapons research programs to a new Tehran location.
Iran has dismissed criticism by the International Atomic Energy Agency of its refusal to let one IAEA expert into the country as part of a team investigating allegations of nuclear weapons research.EU removes sanctions from Iranian oil tanker company
Tehran said it had a sovereign right to decide who to let onto its territory. But its failure to issue a visa to an IAEA official, that diplomatic sources said was probably a Western atomic bomb expert, may add to longstanding Western suspicions it is stonewalling the U.N. agency’s inquiry.
The IAEA said last month that Iran had not issued a visa for one member of a team that visited Tehran on Aug. 31 to try to advance the investigation into what the U.N. agency calls the possible military dimensions of the country’s nuclear program.
It was the third time the person, whom it did not identify, had not obtained an entry permit.
It is important, the IAEA added in a Sept. 5 report on Iran’s nuclear program, that “any staff member identified by the agency with the requisite expertise is able to participate in the agency’s technical activities”.
European Union sanctions against Iran’s leading oil tanker firm were dissolved on Tuesday — at least temporarily — after the union failed to appeal a court ruling which annulled them, Reuters reported.JCPA: Yemen Changes Hands. Will an Iranian Stronghold Emerge Near the Entrance to the Red Sea?
The sanctions, imposed in 2012, prevented any dealings between the EU and the National Iranian Tanker Company, but the NITC argued in a Luxembourg court that it was privately owned and not tied to the Iranian government, and thus should be exempt from punitive measures. The court accepted this position in July, giving officials two months to appeal its ruling — something they did not do.
In an analysis of scenarios for Yemen’s future, Abdulbari Atwan, editor of the English-Arabic Al-Rai Al-Youm newspaper, suggested four options:
a. The Houthis could takeover power and return imamate rule, just like the pre-1962 revolution period.
b. Yemen could end up with an Iran-style theocracy: Abdulmalik Al-Houthi could [end up] ‘a supreme guide,’ copying Ali Khamenei in Iran. This scenario refers to the allegedly strong connection between Iran and the Houthis. They have been accused of providing arms, financial support, and even training for the rebels. [At least two Iranians, along with two Lebanese nationals, were released from custody this week after being accused of training Houthi fighters.]
c. The actual President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi could become a puppet President for the Houthis, maintaining his formal title but taking orders from the Houthis, who will be the real decision makers.
d. Chaos and disintegration of the state. The Houthis have no interest in ruling the south in the midst of a growing secessionist movement, so the Houthis in this scenario would grant the south independence and focus on the north and the areas bordering the Arabian and the Red seas. Of the four scenarios the last is the most likely.
Indeed, despite not having as sectarian a history as many other Arab countries in the region, Yemen may well follow the path of other Arab Spring countries such as Syria, Iraq and Libya. The current conflict in Yemen is but another expression of the wider sectarian struggles currently destroying the Middle East’s heterogeneous nation-states and could foreshadow the emergence of new political entities based on political Islam and in some cases along ethnic and sectarian lines.
