Appeasing Iran?

The following is an article written by Alan J. Kuperman in The Hill on Wednesday, August 26th. Kuperman is associate professor in the Global Policy Studies graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin, and editor of “Nuclear Terrorism and Global Security: The Challenge of Phasing out Highly Enriched Uranium.”
As Congress reviews the Iran nuclear deal, it faces the hardest choice in foreign affairs: whether to threaten or appease an adversary.  The proper choice, scholars agree, depends on the rival’s intent.
If the other country is “status quo” – just wants to be left alone to prosper without dominating other countries or flouting international rules – we should concede its limited demands.  Appeasement is not a dirty word in such a case, but the ideal foreign policy.  However, if the other country is “revisionist” – seeking to dominate others and overturn the global order – we must deter it through coercion including the threat of force.
Such advice may sound simple, but misreading intent can lead to disaster.  If we threaten a status quo country, the result can be unnecessary war, such as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The opposite mistake – appeasing a revision state – can be even worse.  Conciliating Nazi Germany led to a war so terrible that “appeasement” has forever been transformed into an epithet.
Though no two historical moments are identical, the similarities between the pending Iran nuclear deal and the Munich agreement of 1938 are haunting.
In each case, our adversary clearly demonstrated its intent to upend the international order by taking control of neighboring countries, starting with co-ethnics.  The Nazis absorbed Austria, then set their sights on Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, which had a large ethnic German population.  Similarly, revolutionary Iran has deployed forces or provided arms to militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen – which have significant populations of fellow Shiite Muslims or related sects.  It also funds the military wing of Hamas and threatens to destroy our ally Israel.
Prior to negotiation, our adversary in each case repeatedly broke international legal commitments.  Nazi Germany violated the Versailles Treaty by expanding its military, reoccupying the Rhineland, and taking Austria.  Iran violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by separating plutonium, testing nuclear weapons components, and constructing multiple secret facilities for uranium enrichment and heavy-water production.
Rather than reversing these violations, negotiators in both cases acquiesced to them and further rewarded the adversary.  In Munich, Britain authorized Germany to seize part of Czechoslovakia, whose industries greatly enhanced the Nazi war machine.  Under the nuclear deal, Iran not only keeps its uranium enrichment and heavy-water programs, but gets sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen, enabling expansion of its nuclear program, regional aggression, and terrorism.
After 15 years, Iran’s enrichment program would be permitted to grow so large, according to U.S. expert Gregory Jones, that “Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for five nuclear weapons in just over one week.”  The consequence, reports the Institute for Science and International Security, is that Iran’s “breakout with enough weapon-grade uranium for one, two, or three nuclear weapons could occur without the International Atomic Energy Agency being aware it happened until after the fact.”  This means our military option effectively would be off the table – contrary to President Obama’s repeated claims – since we would not dare attack a nuclear-armed country.  Iran’s rewards would thus include an unstoppable path to the bomb.
Perhaps the eeriest parallel is that each deal was promoted as the only alternative to war.  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proudly declared that his Munich agreement had “averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilization as we have known it.”  President Obama likewise declares that his agreement is the only way to prevent “another war in the Middle East.”
In retrospect, of course, Britain should have stood firm at Munich.  At best, Hitler would have been deterred from further aggression.  At worst, the allies’ war effort would have been facilitated by not gifting Czechoslovakia’s industrial base to Nazi Germany.  Similarly, Iran should be confronted before it has nuclear weapons, not after.
Proponents of the Iran deal say it is too late to reverse course because other countries favor it and will lift sanctions anyway.  But Munich also was a multilateral negotiation, including both France and Italy.  Has anyone ever argued that Chamberlain was right to appease Hitler because Mussolini favored doing so?
To the contrary, Winston Churchill argued eloquently at the time that the only responsible policy was to reject appeasement of a country, “which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force.”  That perfectly describes revolutionary Iran, whose supreme leader calls for “Death to America.”
In 1938, Chamberlain reassured the British people that his agreement was “bringing peace with honor. I believe it is ‘peace for our time.’ Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Let us hope that Congress is not lulled to sleep this time.

Traitor Senators Took Money from Iran Lobby, Back Iran Nukes

Senator Markey has announced his support for the Iran deal that will let the terrorist regime inspect its own Parchin nuclear weapons research site, conduct uranium enrichment, build advanced centrifuges, buy ballistic missiles, fund terrorism and have a near zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb.

There was no surprise there.

Markey had topped the list of candidates supported by the Iran Lobby. And the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) had maxed out its contributions to his campaign.

After more fake suspense, Al Franken, another IAPAC backed politician who also benefited from Iran Lobby money, came out for the nuke sellout.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Iran Lobby’s third Dem senator, didn’t bother playing coy like her colleagues. She came out for the deal a while back even though she only got half the IAPAC cash that Franken and Markey received.

As did Senator Gillibrand, who had benefited from IAPAC money back when she first ran for senator and whose position on the deal should have come as no surprise.

The Iran Lobby had even tried, and failed, to turn Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. Iran Lobby cash had made the White House count on him as the Republican who would flip, but Flake came out against the deal. The Iran Lobby invested a good deal of time and money into Schumer, but that effort also failed.

Still these donations were only the tip of the Iran Lobby iceberg.

Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee was Hillary’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an IAPAC trustee and had helped set up the organization.

Bill Clinton had nominated Hassan Nemazee as the US ambassador to Argentina when he had only been a citizen for two years.  A spoilsport Senate didn’t allow Clinton to make a member of the Iran Lobby into a US ambassador, but Nemazee remained a steady presence on the Dem fundraising circuit.

Nemazee had donated to Gillibrand and had also kicked in money to help the Franken Recount Fund scour all the cemeteries for freshly dead votes, as well as to Barbara Boxer, who also came out for the Iran nuke deal. Boxer had also received money more directly from IAPAC.    

 In the House, the Democratic recipients of IAPAC money came out for the deal. Mike Honda, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Iran Lobby backed the nuke sellout. As did Andre Carson, Gerry Connolly, Donna Edwards and Jackie Speier. The Iran Lobby was certainly getting its money’s worth.

But the Iran Lobby’s biggest wins weren’t Markey or Shaheen. The real victory had come long before when two of their biggest politicians, Joe Biden and John Kerry, had moved into prime positions in the administration. Not only IAPAC, but key Iran Lobby figures had been major donors to both men.

That list includes Housang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council, who had spoken of a campaign to “conquer Obama’s heart and mind” and had described himself as “the Iranian lobby in the United States.” It includes the Iranian Muslim Association of North America (IMAN) board members who had fundraised for Biden. And it includes the aforementioned Hassan Nemazee.

A member of Iran’s opposition had accused Biden’s campaigns of being “financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network.” Biden’s affinity for the terrorist regime in Tehran was so extreme that after 9/11 he had suggested, “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran”.

Appeasement inflation has since raised that $200 million to at least $50 billion. But there are still no strings worth mentioning attached to the big check.

Questions about donations from the Iran Lobby had haunted Kerry’s campaign. Back then Kerry had been accused of supporting an agreement favorable to Iran. The parameters of that controversial proposal however were less generous than the one that Obama and Kerry are trying to sell now.

 The hypothetical debates over the influence of the Iran Lobby have come to a very real conclusion.

Both of Obama’s secretaries of state were involved in Iran Lobby cash controversies, as was his vice president and his former secretary of defense. Obama was also the beneficiary of sizable donations from the Iran Lobby. Akbar Ghahary, the former co-founder of IAPAC, had donated and raised some $50,000 for Obama. 

It’s an unprecedented track record that has received very little notice. While the so-called “Israel Lobby” is constantly scrutinized, the fact that key foreign policy positions under Obama are controlled by political figures with troubling ties to an enemy of this country has gone mostly unreported by the mainstream media.

This culture of silence allowed the Iran Lobby to get away with taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times before the Netanyahu speech asking, “Will Congress side with our President or a Foreign Leader?”

Iran’s stooges had taken a break from lobbying for ballistic missiles to play American patriots.

Obama and his allies, Iranian and domestic, have accused opponents of his dirty Iran deal of making “common cause” with that same terror regime and of treason. The ugly truth is that he and his political accomplices were the traitors all along.

Democrats in favor of a deal that will let a terrorist regime go nuclear have taken money from lobbies for that regime. They have broken their oath by taking bribes from a regime whose leaders chant, “Death to America”. Their pretense of examining the deal is nothing more than a hollow charade.

This deal has come down from Iran Lobby influenced politicians like Kerry and is being waved through by members of Congress who have taken money from the Iran Lobby. That is treason plain and simple.

Despite what we are told about its “moderate” leaders, Iran considers itself to be in a state of war with us. Iran and its agents have repeatedly carried out attacks against American soldiers, abducted and tortured to death American officials and have even engaged in attacks on American naval vessels.

Aiding an enemy state in developing nuclear weapons is the worst form of treason imaginable. Helping put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is the gravest of crimes.

The Democrats who have approved this deal are turning their party into a party of atom bomb spies.

Those politicians who have taken money from the Iran Lobby and are signing off on a deal that will let Iran go nuclear have engaged in the worst form of treason and committed the gravest of crimes. They must know that they will be held accountable. That when Iran detonates its first bomb, their names will be on it.

The suspect in 1996 ‘Khobar Towers’ bombing after flying out of Iran!!

there should be no deal with the Iranian Mullahs

According to an intelligence source, Ahmed al-Mughassi, leader of the Hizballah al-Hejaz, sought for 20 years for the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 US service personnel and wounded 500 other, was not actually captured in Beirut as first reported, but it appears that Saudi fighter jets had intercepted his private plane over the Gulf after it took off from Iran and was forced it to land in Saudi Arabia, the source reveals.
There are no details on how the Saudis found out about the flight. 
Saudi paper Asharq Alawsat, which first reported the development, said he was arrested in Beirut and transferred to Riyadh.
The Saudi Interior Ministry had no immediate comment and U.S. official on the ground did not publicly discuss the matter.
The June 25, 1996, bombing at Khobar Towers, a military housing complex, was the deadliest terror attack targeting U.S. forces since the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines’ barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen.

NO “moderates” in Iran stop the nuke deal with them

 

they all think about just one single thing

 The following is an article written by Majid Sadeghpour, a political director of the Organization of Iranian-American Communities (OIAC-US), and published in The Hill on Monday, August 24th: i have changed its title! He sais“I think we all share a simple, basic premise, which is that the United States must not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten our national security,” so said Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), adding that he would support the nuclear deal struck between the P5+1 and Iran, “only if I’m convinced it sufficiently freezes every Iranian pathway to a nuclear weapon.” He could not have said it any better.
Although the administration insists that this agreement is not based on trust but on verification, the supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his underlings have already rejected inspections of military sites, a critical part of the inspections regime envisioned in the comprehensive long-term deal with Iran.  Tehran’s interlocutors, it appears, have made a series of unnecessary concessions in the agreement. Meanwhile, the regime has sensed that it can win even more compromises if it digs in deep enough.
As part of their sale’s pitch to unconvinced and concerned lawmakers and the public at large, President Obama and others in the administration have highlighted comments by “hardliners” in Tehran in opposition to the deal. It seems that they have bought into the myth of moderation, believing that the “moderates” will create a better future.
Indeed, the theatrics by “hardliners” in Iran’s parliament, or the anti-negotiation demonstrations by “ultra-hardliners” in Tehran’s street, coupled with the supreme leader’s rejection of military site inspections made it sound like the mullahs really did not need a deal as bad as the West. At the very least, it seemed like a “faction” of the mullahs is against the deal, while the “moderates”, including the regime’s foreign minister Javad Zarif and president Hassan Rouhani , are trying to convince the “ultra-hardliners” and Khamenei to accept some sort of agreement....more

cheap oil will hurt Iran’s comeback

 

The following  article was published by Matt Egan on Money.com on the recent oil glut and the effect of falling prices in the region, especially on Iran.
Iran may be about to emerge from decades of economic isolation -- at an absolutely terrible time for an oil-producing country.

Years of painful economic sanctions by the West have ravaged Iran’s economy, sending unemployment and inflation soaring.
 Oil prices are tanking and may stay depressed for some time.
U.S. crude oil prices touched $41.21 a barrel on Thursday. That’s the lowest price since early 2009 and down 60% from June of last year.
The price crash is hurting oil-exporting countries of all stripes.
But Iran’s economy is coming off an extremely low base, after years of sitting in the penalty box. New oil exports won’t bring in as much money as it would like, but it would still be more than where it is currently.
Still, Iran is expected to pump oil ferociously in an effort to make up for lost revenue.
'Iran has been talking a big game. They will try to look like they are coming back to oil markets with a vengeance,' said Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital and a former analyst at the CIA.

Iran needs higher oil prices
One problem for Iran is budgetary. To balance its budget, Iran needs oil prices to be at least $130 a barrel, or more, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis from 2014.
That’s far higher than the prices listed in the budgets of Russia, Saudi Arabia and smaller countries like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
One major reason Iran needs higher prices is because it has the second-highest population in the region.

Iran deal could worsen the oil glut
But adding a ton of new Iranian crude to the global oil market at a time when prices are at 6-year lows would only worsen the situation.
Already, there’s a huge supply glut, which helped cause the price meltdown in the first place. Iran will only add to the excess supply.
'We think it could be a bad couple of weeks for the oil market,' said Croft.

Cheap oil could slow investments in oil field upgrades
But cheap oil creates other serious headaches for Iran.
More than half of Iran’s oil fields are over 70 years old, according to Phillipp Chladek, an oil analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. These mature fields need serious upgrades in order to operate. That’s one reason why analysts are very skeptical of Iran’s claims that within months of sanctions relief it can ramp up production by one million barrels per day.
'They will need investment in new fields. Right now they’re strapped for cash -- just like everybody else,' said Matt Bey, an analyst at geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor.
But Iran may not be able to count on large Western companies for these much-needed updates. These companies are already dialing back spending due to the crash in oil prices. It’s possible that Big Oil may decide it’s not worth it to bet on a risky country like Iran in today’s depressed oil price environment.
'That’s going to hurt Iran the most,' said Bey.
Other analysts believe energy companies will not be able to resist the lure of Iran, which has 9% of the Middle East’s proven global oil reserves and 18% of its gas reserves. Major European oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) and Eni (E) met with Iranian officials in Tehran earlier this year to discuss business plans.

Congress Should Reject Iran Deal

The following is an article posted by Kim R. Holmes in the Trend website on August 22, 2015.

You’ve heard the argument. If Congress turns down the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran will rush to get a nuclear bomb within two to three months. Our only alternative then is war.
But what about Congress voting “no” and adjusting the terms of the agreement?
Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, recently made such a proposal. He argues that congressional disapproval would provide time to correct some of the agreement’s flaws. Most experts believe that it would take until spring 2016 at the earliest for Iran to comply with the terms of the agreement. Since none of the U.S. sanctions will be suspended by then, there would still be time for the U.S. to take remedial measures to strengthen the deal.
Among these could be reaching understandings with the European partners “on the appropriate penalties to be imposed for a broad spectrum of Iranian violations.” Other actions could include a clearer declaratory policy that military force will not be taken off the table and ramping up tougher sanctions against Tehran’s terrorist and other non-nuclear activities that destabilize the region.
Satloff’s alternative is a noble effort to save an obviously weak deal. It recognizes a major flaw in the agreement: that the terms of re-imposing “snapback” sanctions are so onerous that they will likely never be enforced. It also points to a negotiating principle that the Obama administration has tried to obscure: strong sanctions are what forced whatever concessions Iran made. Keeping or strengthening sanctions enhances America’s bargaining leverage. Even if Congress disapproves the deal, that leverage will remain.
This last point is key. We should remember that no sanctions relief kicks in from anybody—including the United Nations and the Europeans—until the IAEA certifies that Iran has complied with its initial commitments under the agreement. If Tehran responds to a congressional “no” vote by thumbing its nose at everybody, it will only be back where it started, which is not where it wants to be. In fact, it could face even stronger sanctions (or worse) from the U.S. if it should hit the accelerator on its nuclear program.
Satloff’s idea is a good start. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go far enough. The only way to get Iran to give up its nuclear program short of war is to force it to decide between retaining its nuclear weapons potential and having sanctions completely lifted. Neither Satloff’s option nor Obama’s deal forces that choice....more

News - Categorized News A Letter to Chuck Schumer: Convince Your Democrat Colleagues Iran Deal Is Bad

 
 

Dear Sen. Schumer,
Or may I call you “Chuck”? About 30 years ago, when I first met you, you were an informal kind of guy. You had recently been elected to the House from a district in Brooklyn and Queens. I was a New York Times reporter. I remember you were sharing a row house with two other House members—Leon Panetta was one—and I wrote a story about that. I always thought it could be the premise for a situation comedy. (“Friends with Entitlements”? Just kidding.)
I had no better source than you. You’d call to give me a heads-up on a bill or to explain some Hill battle so my editors would think I knew what I was talking about. It was nice of you, but it was also smart. You are smart: A perfect score on the SAT. On to Harvard College and Harvard Law. Elected to the New York Assembly at 23. Never losing a single election.
I’ve been thinking about writing you for a while regarding your vote on President Obama’s Iran deal. I knew you’d recognize that, from a policy perspective, this deal doesn’t get a passing grade. But from a political perspective, I understood that voting to disapprove would not be easy. Then, last week, you announced your decisions in an incisive 1,670-word essay. Kudos to you.
You pointed out that there won’t be “anywhere, anytime” inspections—which Obama himself had said was a necessity. American demands for inspections will be reviewed by a commission—on which Iran gets a seat. Iran’s rulers have flatly ruled out “entry into our military sites”—hardly an unlikely place for weapons research and development.
You grasp that sanctions, once lifted, cannot be “snapped back.” Then there is the curious decision to “sunset” restrictions on a regime whose supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, continues to call for “death to America!” As for Hassan Rouhani , Iran’s “moderate” president, he has said Iranians need “to express ‘death to America’ with action.” Like this deal?
Both Gen. Ray Odierno, U.S. Army chief of staff, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been clear: Iran has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. The United States, as you point out, has designated Iran as “one of only three nations in the world who are ‘state sponsors of terrorism.’ “...more

Gen. Hugh Shelton, the former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff calls to support Iran Resistance

While ًMembers of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council express grave concerns about the continued violations of human rights in the Mullahs’ ruled Iran that has been going on unabated for three decades,many  countries urge   to make preconditions, the Human Rights situation in Iran for their relations with that country.Among these committees,retired U.S. General Hugh Shelton and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff insisted on the US support for the Iranian opposition movement led by Maryam Rajvi as an alternative to Iran Evil regime.
In an interview with the Newsmax TV, Gen. Shelton who served from 1997 to 2001 as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and is author of 'Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,' stressed Washington has 'got to support' the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ) 'if we want them to be able to move forward.'
During talks with 'The Hard Line' host Ed Berliner,  Gen. Shelton praised the NCRI’s program 'that looks like our Declaration of Independence.'
'It has all the rights, all the freedoms expressed for the Iranian people that you and I as Americans would like to see,' he said. 'Giving them a chance by supporting them in a way that will allow them to empower the people inside of Iran and lead to an uprising ... scares the daylights out of the mullahs and the ayatollahs inside of Iran.'
'It’s awfully tough to speak out against a regime who has all the arms and who is constantly throwing those in jail that speak out against it,' he said. 'You only get a half truth when you talk about what’s coming out of the Iranians, at best.'
Gen. Shelton also expressed frustration that President Barack Obama is not listening to the opponents of the deal in the United States, 'one of the most bipartisan groups that you probably ever find inside of the Beltway.'
'It’s got everyone from former presidential candidate and head of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean, to [former Pennsylvania Democratic] Gov. Ed Rendell, [former Pennsylvania Republican] Gov. Tom Ridge, who is also the first homeland security director, and then it’s the attorney general director, the FBI, two CIA chiefs ... saying ’Look Mr. President, we know you don’t want to go to war with Iran. We understand that. We know you don’t really want a nuclear empowered Iran, but there is another alternative. Listen to what we’re saying.’”