Fred Fleitz, Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy; Former Senior Professional Staff Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Former Chief of Staff to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security speaks at Center for Security Policy’s National Security Group Lunch on Capitol Hill regarding the IAEA and Iran’s Continuing Nuclear Deception.
[L]et me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it.
His comments represented the apotheosis of a surreal tragicomedy of U.S. diplomatic failure that has unfolded over the past two months.
Less than three weeks after the November 24, 2013 announcement of an interim agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other world powers, during an interview which aired December 11, 2013, Iranian Middle East analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini, provided a candid assessment of the negotiations. El-Hosseini, a former political advisor to both Iran’s alleged reformist ex-President Khatami, and the Khatami regime’s erstwhile Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ata’ollah Mohajerani (also deemed a “moderate”), underscored the ancient Islamic doctrinal bases for the contemporary Iranian theocracy’s geo-politics. Invoking the armistice “Treaty of Hudaybiyya” agreement between Muhammad and the 7th century pagan Quraysh tribe of Mecca, which Islam’s prophet-warrior unilaterally abrogated as soon Muhammad’s jihadist forces achieved the military superiority needed to vanquish his Meccan foes, el-Hosseini declared:
This is the Treaty of Hudaybiyya in Geneva, and it will be followed by a “conquest of Mecca.”
Consistent with Muhammad’s tactical formulation when waging jihad, “War is deceit” (from the canonical hadith “traditions” of the Muslim prophet), the Islamic doctrine of takiya, or kitman (“concealment”; “disguise”),and the modern parallel of Soviet Communist deceit and conspiracy (especially during arms control negotiations), el-Hosseini also noted,
Incidentally, for your information, when you conduct political negotiations with Iran, you lose even when you think you have won. The [Iranians] have raised the level of uranium enrichment far beyond the level they really needed, so that when the level would be lowered, they would emerge victorious.
El-Hosseini further insisted the Geneva deal augured America’s eventual jihad conquest during Iran’s ongoing “fierce war with Americans on all levels.” While this claim appears dubious, at present, El-Hosseini contended, appositely, that the agreement marked near-term U.S. capitulation to Iran’s oft-repeated threat to destroy Israel by jihad—including via nuclear weapons.
Obama had to make a great retreat. He was forced to accept a handshake from President Rohani [Rouhani], whom he considered a kind of Gorbachev or Sadat, so that the day would not come when he would be forced to kiss the hands of [Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah]Hassan Nasrallah and [Supreme Leader of Iran] Imam Khamenei, so that they would hold their fire in the great war that was prepared to annihilate Israel.
Thursday, December 9, 2013, Ali Akbar Salehi, current head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), and touted as a “pragmatist,” proclaimed triumphantly, “Our centrifuges are working full capacity.” Within a week later, Marzieh Afkham, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, projecting Tehran’s official narrative in reference to the Geneva accord, commented that there was in fact, “no treaty and no pact, only a statement of intent.” Echoing this line, the Iranian daily Kayhan, published by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, maintained in a Sunday, 12/15/13 editorial that the accord’s six month time frame meant nothing, and it could “even take 20 years to negotiate” a final agreement. 73 Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan concluded bluntly,
If our centrifuges do not continue to turn, no other wheel shall turn for our dignity, independence, power and security.
These statements were representative of a host of other similar pronouncements made by Iranian diplomats, politicians, clerics, and other officials, since the Geneva accord was announced (1/24/13), through the end of December, 2013, and well into January, 2014. Such rhetorical Iranian interpretation of the recent agreement was accompanied by actions demonstrating Iran was tenaciously pursuing the full gamut of its nuclear aspirations, undaunted. Other salient examples of this consistent Iranian trend—both rhetoric and actions—are presented below, chronologically:
It shows a lack of understanding of how to proceed in order to resolve the nuclear issue. Some people are wedded to the idea that pressure will produce results. They are wrong. Pressure has produced 18,000 centrifuges in Iran. So if they want to continue that road – it is open to them, but it doesn’t produce any results.
Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation’s interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will.
the Argentine government’s unilateral decision to terminate the nuclear materials and technology supply agreements that had been concluded some years previously between Argentina and Iran…[A]t this period the Iranian government felt that it was crucial for Iran to develop its nuclear capacities.
During this meeting, the (Iranian) foreign minister reiterated that support will continue for the resistance movement Hezbollah, which seeks to establish peace in Lebanon and fight hegemony.
Iran did not agree to all of the intrusive inspection regime that the International Atomic Energy Agency had said was needed to ensure that the Iranian program is peaceful.
The White House tries to portray it as basically a dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. That is the word they use time and again. If you find a single, a single word, that even closely resembles dismantling or could be defined as dismantling in the entire text, then I would take back my comment.
Auguring Mr. Obama’s SOTU remarks, Bernadette Meehan, President Obama’s National Security Council spokeswoman, issued a statement on Friday January 10, 2014 hectoring Congressional advocates of continued economic sanctions against Iran (i.e., S. 1881: “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013”) which target (albeit with dubious “success”) Iran’s relentless development of nuclear weapons-related materials and technology. Meehan had the temerity to accused these Senators of being “warmongers,” deliberately sabotaging the Obama administration’s demonstrably feckless—and dangerous—“diplomacy”:
If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so. Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to proceed.
Sunday January 12, 2014, Meehan’s diatribe was cited approvingly in a Fars News Agency report, which also quoted senior Iranian Parliamentarian Esmayeel Jalili’s defiant pronouncement made that same day:
If the US congress doesn’t abide by the policies of the [Obama] administration and approves new sanctions, the parliament will be ready to declare Iran’s exit from the nuclear negotiations with the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany)
The Fars News Agency report also included comments made in December, 2013 about S. 1881 by the Iranian Parliament Speaker’s top advisor for international affairs, Hossein Sheikholeslam. These “relevant remarks,” in the Fars News Agency’s characterization, were redolent with Iran’s pervasive, conspiratorial Jew-hatred.
Capitalism, and not democracy, has the last say in the US and the US congressmen should also pursue the goals and words of the US capitalists which are mostly Zionists. The Zionist lobbies are highly powerful in the US Congress, hence we always witness the US Congress moves against Iran. And there are many cases in which the American nation’s interests are sacrificed for the sake of the Zionist regime’s goals.
National Security Council spokeswoman Meehan’s deliberate misrepresentation of S. 1881, her vicious attack on its Senate sponsors, the endorsement of these views by “senior” Iranian Parliamentarians, and finally the U.S. President’s own SOTU address, epitomize the Obama Administration’s dangerous Iran policy morass. The destructive repercussions of this mindset, and the behaviors it engenders, were illuminated by the third of Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics (see pp. 267-268):
The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Note: Andrew Bostom’s forthcoming monograph, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel, will be published next month.
America is confronting a very dangerous nuclear “perfect storm.” You might be forgiven for thinking that prospect has sufficient importance to warrant mention in President Obama’s State of our Union. But, if past experience is any guide, it probably won’t make the cut in a speech with an Alinskyite focus on persuading the public and his Republican opponents that the greatest threat the country faces is “income inequality.”
Reality must intrude, however, on such cynical political machinations. Consider the following elements of this perfect storm:
This conclusion is all the more alarming given the current strategic environment. The panel concluded: “The actual or threatened acquisition of nuclear weapons by more actors – with a range of motivations, capabilities and approaches – is emerging in numbers not seen since the early days of the Cold War. Many of these actors are hostile to the U.S. and its allies, and of greater worry, they do not appear to be bound by established norms, nor are they deterred by traditional means.”
Think about that the next time – presumably in Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address – the President claims his seriously defective deal with Iran will curb its bid for the Bomb. The truth is that we have no clue about the extent of the mullahs’ covert nuclear weapons program, let alone any reason to believe it will be impacted at all by the terms of an agreement that covers only a few declared facilities and only in ways that are readily reversible.
The question occurs: Will our spies and intelligence agencies find it still more difficult to perform the mission of ferreting out what enemies are doing to ready electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and other nuclear threats for possible use against us?
The Secretary’s memo read, in part: “Personnel failures within this force threaten to jeopardize the trust the American people have placed in us to keep our nuclear weapons safe and secure.” It went on to lay out an “action plan” to try to remedy the situation, which included this directive to the senior occupants of the E-Ring: “Examine the underlying leadership and management principles governing the strategic deterrence enterprise and the health of the culture that implements those principles.”
Mr. Hagel’s initiative is certainly welcome, the more so for its coming from a man who, until recently, was a champion of “Global Zero” – the reckless and truly insidious campaign to take down the U.S. nuclear arsenal, on the bizarre theory that other nations will then follow our example.
The State of the Union would be a perfect vehicle to announce such a commitment and to rally the Congress and the American people to the task of contending with the emerging nuclear perfect storm. Will President Obama follow the lead of his Defense Secretary and do so?
Want to know how to tell when President Obama is lying? These days, it’s easy: His lips are moving.
Unfortunately, the president’s infamous lie as part of his sales pitch for Obamacare that “you can keep your doctor, period” is now clearly not the exception. It’s the rule. The pattern is especially worrisome with respect to his practice of what amounts to serial national security fraud.
Consider, for example, the latest on the Iran nuclear weapons front. Mr. Obama insists that his interim deal “freezes” the mullahs’ nuclear program for six months. He may be the only one who believes that whopper. Certainly, the Iranian regime does not, and neither should we.
Yet, the President insisted at a Brookings Institution symposium on December 7th that, “There’s nothing in this agreement or document that grants Iran a right to enrich.” In fact, as the Iranians have noted, the United States and the other “Perm 5+1” members clearly accepted in two different places in the so-called interim accord that Iran would continue the enrichment of uranium.
Whether we call this arrangement an acknowledgment of an Iranian “right” or not is beside the point. What matters is that the long lead-time item in Iran’s acquiring sufficient nuclear weapons-grade uranium has been legitimated by President Obama’s treacherous diplomacy.
The magnitude of the treachery being exhibited by a man who continues to profess that he will not let Iran get the bomb is evident in another comment made in the course of his remarks at Brookings. Mr. Obama floated for the first time the idea that the final agreement, that supposedly will be fashioned in the next six months, will allow Iran to enrich uranium in perpetuity: “It is my strong belief that we can envision a end state that gives us an assurance that, even if they have some modest enrichment capability, it is so constrained and the inspections are so intrusive that they, as a practical matter, do not have [a] breakout capability.”
Forget about the weasel-wording caveats and the President’s empty platitudes about “the military option” remaining on the table. He has thus cleared the way for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, probably on his watch. Just as his health care fraud is properly known as Obamacare, the fruit of the mullah’s nuclear weapons program he has just green-lighted should be known as Obamabomb.
It seems that the real purpose of the interim deal was less to “freeze” Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capability than it was to block the one military option that may actually remain viable: Israel’s.
There is no small irony to the fact that Mr. Obama chose as the venue for his latest lies about his commitment to the security of the Jewish State – which he described as “sacrosanct” – the Brookings event sponsored by an Israeli billionaire named Haim Saban. In response to questions posed by Mr. Saban, the President insisted, for example, that: “Our support of Israel’s security has never been stronger….And that’s not just my opinion; I think that’s something that can be verified.”
Actually, it can be readily verified that no president has done more to jeopardize Israel’s security. The bill of particulars may start, but does not end, with Obama’s clearing the way for the Iran to have the capability to act on its threats to “wipe Israel off the map.” Even before the interim deal, his administration had acted to impede, if not foreclose, Israeli options to prevent that existential danger. (For instance, it compromised, and thereby ended, a secret bilateral arrangement with Azerbaijan to provide post-strike recovery airfields for Israel’s jets.)
Insult was added to injury when the President lied to Israel’s Saban: “Prime Minister Netanyahu and I have had constant consultations on these issues throughout the last five years.” The truth is that Obama completely blindsided Netanyahu about his secret negotiations with Iran over the past year.
Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama has also bludgeoned Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians that would be perilous for the Jewish State. He declared that Israel must withdraw to earlier, indefensible boundaries correctly described as the “Auschwitz borders.” He has publicly demeaned and humiliated Prime Minister Netanyahu. And his Secretary of State, John Kerry, has encouraged European boycotts of Israel and “a third intifada” (or Palestinian terrorist war).
Most recently, Team Obama has let it be known that the United States would “impose” a solution on Israel next year if the Jewish State does not make the concessions necessary to satisfy the Palestinians. President Obama nonetheless lied to Mr. Saban: “What I’ve consistently said is that the only way this is going to be resolved is if the people of Israel and the Palestinian people make a determination that their futures and the futures of their children and grandchildren will be better off with peace than with conflict.”
The people of the United States, and the futures of their children and grandchildren, are being imperiled by a president whose disastrous national security policies are being exacerbated by his lies about them. These constitute high crimes, and should be treated as such by the Congress.