Tag Archives: Iran

The Dangerous Fantasy behind Obama’s Iran Deal

On January 16, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Iran had satisfied the conditions necessary to achieve a lifting of most international sanctions under its nuclear deal with the Obama administration. In exchange for reducing its number of operational uranium-enrichment centrifuges, sending most of its enriched uranium out of the country, and removing the core of a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor, Iran received approximately $150 billion in sanctions relief, and the United States returned $400 million in Iranian funds it seized in 1979, plus $1.3 billion in interest. The same day, Iran released five Americans it had held prisoner in exchange for the release of seven Iranian criminals held by the United States.

The White House and its supporters did victory laps, arguing that Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and its willingness to swap prisoners had proven the wisdom of the president’s Iran policy. But there are many reasons to believe that these developments, far from strengthening American national security, are actually dangerous wins for Iran.

Before all else, it should be noted that American officials had to relax certain requirements of the deal so Iran could receive sanctions relief in the first place. Language barring the testing of ballistic missiles was removed from the agreement’s text and buried in the annex to a UN Security Council resolution. The U.S. also dropped a stipulation that Iran resolve questions about its past nuclear activities, choosing to address those questions in a secret side deal between the IAEA and Iran. As a result, even though Iran conducted two ballistic-missile tests last fall and did not fully cooperatewith an IAEA investigation into its nuclear history, the IAEA was able to certify that Tehran met the Implementation Day requirements to have sanctions lifted because these issues had been dropped from the agreement.

The steps Iran did take to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for the suspension of sanctions are limited and easily reversible. Since Iran will continue enriching uranium and developing advanced centrifuges, they’ll continue to get closer to a nuclear weapon while the deal remains in effect. And although Tehran sent most of its enriched uranium out of the country, in return it received an equivalent amount of uranium ore from Kazakhstan, which can be converted into enriched uranium in a few months.

What’s more, the nuclear deal had weak verification provisions to begin with, and the Iranian parliament made them even weaker last October when it ratified an amended version of the deal that calls for Israel’s nuclear-weapons program to be dismantled, requires that sanctions be canceled rather than suspended, and forbids the IAEA from inspecting military installations or interviewing Iranian military officers and scientists. The United States, its European allies, and the IAEA have ignored the Iranian Parliament’s action, and it had no bearing on the lifting of sanctions, but there’s good reason to believe that Iran’s conception of the deal’s terms is quite different from that of its Western partners.

And indeed, though the Obama administration has ignored it, Iran’s belligerence abroad has continued unabated since the nuclear agreement was announced last July. In the last six months, Tehran has stepped up support for the genocidal Assad regime, fired rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier, and captured and humiliated U.S. sailors. It seems more than likely that the $100 billion-plus the regime received in sanctions relief will go toward its continued efforts to destabilize the Middle East, sponsor terrorism, and inch closer to a nuclear warhead.

There also are growing questions about the prisoner exchange. The five U.S. citizens released by Iran, several of them brutally mistreated while behind bars, were arrested because they are Americans, and thus made good bargaining chips in Iran’s efforts to influence U.S. policy. Iran is still holding at least two other American citizens hostage, and an Iranian official has claimed that the $1.7 billion payment the country received, supposedly a return of its frozen funds plus interest, was actually ransom for the five Americans’ release. (House Republicans plan to investigate this claim.) By contrast, the seven Iranians released by the United States, most of them dual citizens, were convicted of sending technology with military applications to Iran in violation of U.S. trade sanctions. 14 other Iranians accused of similar crimes were removed from an INTERPOL wanted list at the same time.

So how can the White House justify such a lopsided deal?

Legendary national-security expert Richard Perle said it best in a recent interview with Secure Freedom Radio:

Their concept is that the terms of the agreement and the likely consequences if the Iranians choose to do what they are able to do under the agreement don’t matter because this agreement is somehow going to magically transform an Iranian regime that regards the United States as the great Satan and engages us through the subvention of terrorism in many places throughout the world. . . . And so for people who hold this view — and I believe the president is among them — the details of the agreement and the consequences of the agreement are of no significance. They are making an enormous and I think an improvident bet. This bet is that this agreement, which satisfies what the Iranians are looking for, will somehow lead the Iranians to become our friends. In this they are certainly mistaken.

That’s the utter absurdity of the Iran deal in a nutshell: Its details don’t matter, because it is meant only to transform Iran into an American ally, against all reason. Because Obama knows he could never sell such a utopian plan to the American people and the U.S. Congress, his administration used the mostly incoherent agreement as a pretext.

But giving Iran everything it wanted in a nuclear agreement won’t lead it to rejoin the community of civilized nations and become a friend of the U.S. All indications from Tehran say the opposite: the regime’s character remains unchanged, and if anything it has become a more influential and destabilizing actor in the Middle East since it signed the nuclear deal. As a result, America’s friends and allies in the region are increasingly worried about a growing threat to their security and U.S. credibility has been further diminished.

Here’s hoping Obama’s successor can repair the damage.

Latest Hillary Clinton Email Dump Reveals Suggested Push For Palestinian Protests

Hillary Clinton’s personal email server continues to yield a treasure trove of information. Most recently, a series of emails suggest Clinton had considered a plan to incite Palestinian protests against Israel.

The email, surfacing thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch, is an 18 December 2011 message from former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering in which he suggests that then-Secretary of State Clinton should consider a plan to re-energize the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks by inciting Palestinians to ‘non-violent’ demonstrations and protests against Israel.

Pickering, who serves on the Board of Advisors to the notorious National Iranian American Council (NIAC – widely viewed as a lobbying front for the Iranian regime), described a clandestine campaign by the U.S. to whip up anti-Israel sentiment intended to cudgel our Israeli allies into re-engaging in negotiations with the Palestinians. Of course, he emphasized that Clinton should keep confidential the whole nefarious idea as, clearly, they did not want Israel to learn of it:

“Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated, encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone,” he wrote, suggesting that the government enlist liberal non-profit groups in Israel. “I believe third parties and a number NGOs [non-government organizations] on both sides would help.”

Instead of dismissing out of hand the very idea of such a shameful plot—not to mention immediately distancing herself from the one who proposed it—Secretary Clinton instead requested an aide to make a print-out of the email for her.

Nor was this Pickering’s first foray into plotting with America’s enemies—and Israel’s. Just weeks after President Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo speech had green-lighted the Islamic Uprising to come, Clinton’s aide, Cheryl Mills, forwarded to her a Washington Post article dated July 16, 2009 that reported on a secret meeting that Pickering had held in Zurich, Switzerland with two senior HAMAS officials. While U.S. officials predictably tried to distance the Obama administration from the talks, the terrorist organization itself (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) characterized them in what were likely more accurate terms, as a potential opening with the Obama White House.

In fact, it had been clear since days of the Obama team’s 2008 presidential campaign that he intended to turn established U.S. policy vis-à-vis Islamic jihadist groups like HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood upside down by embracing instead of countering them. One of the Obama campaign’s informal advisors, Robert Malley, a long-time advocate for the HAMAS terror group then with the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (where Pickering is Board Co-Chairman), was compelled to resign from the campaign after reports revealed that he had held meetings with HAMAS. Malley next accompanied Pickering to the June 2009 gathering in Zurich with HAMAS foreign minister, Mahmud Zahar and Osama Hamdan, the Brotherhood affiliate’s top official in Lebanon. It was all an effort to “understand what HAMAS’s views are,” according to Malley (who apparently has not yet had the chance to read the HAMAS Covenant, where the group’s annihilationist intent toward Israel is quite clearly stated).

Malley had to wait several long years before the Obama White House rehabilitated him in April 2015, where he served until recently as the National Security Council (NSC) Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Given how well U.S. policy in that region has gone of late, Malley was promoted on 30 November 2015 to serve as Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria, where his skills at reaching out to the jihadist enemy can really be put to the test.

As Michael Bay’s new blockbuster film, 13 Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, premiers around the country this week, it is a good time to consider the wholesale chaos that a policy of alienating (and sometimes deposing) our allies and embracing our enemies has wrought. The story of six American heroes who selflessly charged to the sound of the guns to save dozens of lives contrasts rather starkly with the record of the Obama team, which included Hillary Clinton, Thomas Pickering, and Robert Malley, who continue to charge instead headlong into the embrace of our jihadist enemies.

U.S. Boat Seizure: Another Example of Iranian Naval Belligerence

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016, two U.S. Navy Riverine patrol boats carrying 10 sailors were captured and held captive by Iranian forces. The sailors were sailing from Kuwait to Bahrain.

The 10 sailors were held on Farsi Island, just off the Coast of Iran, which is also a home of an Islamic Revolution Guard Corp (IRGC). Early Wednesday morning, January 13, 2016, the sailors were released from Iranian custody.

According to the New York Times, unnamed State Department and Pentagon officials cited a mechanical malfunction as the primary reason for the boats going off course. Soon after, Administration officials claimed, the military had lost contact with the boat.

As more information came out Wednesday, Iranian Fars News Agency reported that the boats navigational systems led the U.S. sailors into Iranian waters. While the Iranians were the only ones to investigate the ships so far, it is likely the U.S. will also conduct its own investigation into the matter.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary John Kerry, and the New York Times label this incident as a simple misunderstanding between two nations trying to better relations, but Iranian sources paint a slightly different picture. Fars posted an article early Wednesday morning quoting the IRGC spokesman, Gen. Ramezan Sharif, stating, “If investigations show that there hasn’t been any purposeful action, they will be treated differently, but if the information taken through interrogations reveal that their trespassing has been done for intelligence work and irrelevant jobs, officials will definitely take the necessary actions.” This would suggest the Iranian response was far more aggressive than Vice President Biden and Secretary Kerry claim, as evidence would show.

The release of the U.S. sailors has been touted as an illustration of the warming relations between the U.S. and Iran, yet Iran has a history of targeting vessels open waters. In 2004 and 2007 Iranian IRGC forces captured British vessels and sailors in a similar situation. In both cases the Iranian forces claimed the ships were in Iranian territory, although facts point to the ships being in open waters.

In April of 2015, Iranians seized the Marshall Islands flagged cargo ship Maersk Tigris along the Strait of Hormuz. News reports called the seizure violent, and U.S. ships responded to the distress calls. After several days the ship was released, but it once again showed Iran’s hostilities in open water.

Iranian belligerence did not end at the Strait of Hormuz. Several weeks later the IRGC fired shots at a Singapore-flagged vessel after ordering the ship to enter Iranian waters. These examples illustrate how aggressive the Iranians are. The current Administration may hope that the new nuclear deal will create a more cooperative Iran, but it is unlikely any major changes will occur in the near future.

The Obama Administration has been reluctant to challenge the Iranians on their questionable behavior despite outcries from the Senate. Since the Nuclear Deal was announced in September, Iran has tested two long-range missiles, which directly breaks the nuclear agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1929. The two missile launches, October 10, 2015 and November 21, 2015, illustrate that Iran is moving forward with its ballistic missile technology. The Obama administration’s standard on these “improved relations” must be reevaluated. Aggressively detaining American sailors and testing long-range ballistic missiles would seem less of a partnership than a show of strength.

Sec. Kerry, Vice President Biden, and even U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter should stop looking for reasons to praise U.S.-Iranian relations, and start seeing that the recent nuclear deal has created a more aggressive and empowered Iran.

The Obama Administration Races to Finalize a Bad Nuclear Deal

Despite the victory lap President Obama took in last night’s State of the Union address on his nuclear diplomacy with Iran, Democrats and Republicans are worried about Iran’s increasingly belligerent behavior and the Obama administration’s refusal to do anything about it.

This concern was worsened yesterday by Iran’s reported “temporary” seizure of two small U.S. Navy ships and their crews yesterday, an issue that the president did not address in his speech. Iran released the ships and their crews early today after the U.S. government apologized for their accidental straying into Iranian waters.

The president said the nuclear deal with Iran (the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) is a great success, and that Iran has complied with its agreement to roll back its nuclear program by sending enriched uranium out of the country and disassembling centrifuges.

Mr. Obama’s remarks tracked with similar statements by Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani that Iran has met the requirements for “Implementation Day,” an important benchmark of the nuclear agreement when most sanctions against Iran worth up to $150 billion will be lifted. According to Kerry and Rouhani, the U.S. could lift sanctions in a few days.

For Iran to reach Implementation Day, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must verify that Iran has taken a series of steps to roll back its nuclear program. These include disassembling and storing all but about 6,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges, diluting or sending out of the country all but 300 kg of enriched uranium in exchange for an equivalent amount of uranium ore, and removing the core of the Arak heavy-water reactor. This reactor is to be redesigned with Chinese assistance so that it will produce less plutonium than its original design.

There are some uncertainties that Iran has reached the Implementation Day requirements. First, the IAEA has not yet verified Iran’s actions.

Second, there are discrepancies in figures cited on how much enriched uranium Iran has sent out of the country. Kerry said over 25,000 pounds. An Iranian official said 8.5 metric tons, which equals 18,740 pounds. Further complicating this, the IAEA said in a November report that Iran had 12,639 kg of enriched uranium, equivalent to 27,864 pounds.

Third, an Iranian official yesterday denied reports that Iranian technicians had dismantled the core of the Arak heavy-water reactor and filled it with concrete. The official said he expected this to be done soon.

Even if Iran meets all of the Implementation Day requirements, there are many in Congress — including some Democrats — who are worried about lifting sanctions when Iran has not complied with all the commitments it made during the nuclear talks, amid growing indications of belligerent Iranian behavior.

Iran’s test of two ballistic missiles last fall sparked new bipartisan concern on the Hill about the nuclear deal. While President Obama and Secretary Kerry claimed last July that under the nuclear deal, Iran had agreed to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions barring missile tests for up to eight years, it turned out this was not true. There is nothing in the nuclear deal’s text barring Iranian missile tests. The only language concerning missile tests is in an annex to a Security Council resolution that endorsed the deal. Iranian officials have said they will not comply with this language.

The Iranian missile tests especially alarmed Congress after the Obama administration notified the Hill on December 29 that it was sanctioning Tehran over these tests, then backtracked two days later because Iran threatened to retaliate by ramping up its missile program if the sanctions were implemented. Making things worse, the sanctions announcement came days after Iran fired rockets in the Strait of Hormuz that came within 1,500 yards of a U.S. aircraft carrier.

The ballistic-missile tests rattled Congress so much that some Democratic supporters of the Iran deal called on President Obama to impose sanctions. Last week, seven House Democrats — Nita Lowey (N.Y.), Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (Fla.), Eliot Engel (N.Y.), Albio Sires (N.J.), Gerald Connolly (Va.), Susan Davis (Calif.), and Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) urged President Barack Obama in a letter to sanction Iran for the missile tests. Lowey, Engel, and Sires voted against approving the Iran deal in September. The others probably signed this letter because many of their constituents opposed their votes supporting the nuclear deal and are angry about Iran’s behavior over the last few months.

House Republicans are moving to respond to Iran’s missile launches with a bill scheduled to be voted on today (Wednesday), the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, authored by Republican congressman Steve Russell of Oklahoma, that will bar the president from lifting sanctions against Iranian persons and entities unless the administration can certify that the person or entity is not a terror financier or human-rights abuser or involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday, a group of six Senate Democrats took the floor of the Senate to defend the Iran nuclear deal. Three of them, Senators Cory Booker (N.J.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), called for sanctions in response to the missile tests. All six senators voted to support the Iran deal last September and seemed concerned about growing criticism of the agreement due to Iran’s recent behavior.

The White House said the president will veto the House bill because it would prevent implementation of the Iran nuclear deal, since it changes the terms of the nuclear agreement by linking the nuclear deal with unrelated issues. But even if Congress passed narrow sanctions that addressed only Iran’s missile tests, President Obama will veto them because Iran has threatened to back out of the nuclear deal if any new sanctions are imposed on it. This adds up to an agreement that restricts America’s policy more than Iran’s.

It’s ironic that the Obama administration is threatening to veto Congressman Russell’s bill for supposedly altering the terms of the nuclear deal when the Iranian parliament already did this when it ratified an amended version of the deal last October containing new language on dismantling Israel’s nuclear-weapons program, requiring that sanctions under the agreement be canceled and not suspended, forbidding IAEA inspections of military installations, and barring IAEA interviews of Iranian military officers and scientists.

Verification of the nuclear deal’s terms under the agreed text would have been difficult enough because of a convoluted process allowing Iran to appeal IAEA requests to inspect suspect nuclear sites. The changes to the nuclear deal made by the Iranian parliament will make reliable verification impossible. Although these changes would seem to violate what the Iranian government agreed to when it acceded to the nuclear deal last July and prevent Iran from reaching Implementation Day, the United States, its European allies, and the IAEA have been silent on the Iranian parliament’s action.

The United States and its allies also turned a blind eye to another blatant violation of Iran’s commitments in the nuclear talks: Tehran’s failure to fully cooperate with an IAEA investigation of its past nuclear-weapons activities. This investigation was crucial to verifying the nuclear deal, since it was supposed to provide information on what types of nuclear-weapons research Iran was engaged in and where this research was being conducted. However, as I explained in a December 2 National Review article, an IAEA report issued in December found that Iran refused to fully cooperate with this investigation and provided some answers to inspectors that the IAEA determined were false.

The IAEA report also concluded that some Iranian nuclear-weapons work continued until 2009 and said there were no “credible indications” of nuclear-weapons-related activities in Iran after 2009. I have spoken with a knowledgeable congressman who found this language so troubling that he asked the IAEA for clarification as to whether it has unconfirmed indications that Iranian nuclear weapons work continued after 2009.

While Iran’s failure to cooperate in the IAEA investigation of its past nuclear-weapons work would appear to be a serious violation of the nuclear deal, this turned out not to be the case. The reason is because, like the ballistic-missile issue, this issue is not addressed in the text of the nuclear deal — it was dealt with in secret side deals between Iran and the IAEA. (Click here, here, and here to read National Review articles I wrote on the secret side deals last summer.)

Despite Iran’s failure to fully cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation of its past nuclear-weapons work and an IAEA report that clearly did not resolve this issue, the United States joined with other IAEA members last month to unanimously vote to close the IAEA file on it.

The developments leading up to the Iran nuclear deal’s Implementation Day bode poorly for this pact’s limited ability to slow or stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and Iranian behavior.

The refusal by the United States and its allies to hold Iran accountable for launching ballistic missiles, failing to cooperate with the investigation, and amending the nuclear deal is a clear sign that they plan to ignore any Iranian noncompliance to protect the agreement. This means the nuclear agreement is essentially meaningless and puts Iran in the driver’s seat. Iran also knows that the president and his Democratic supporters in Congress will never allow new sanctions to be imposed.

This fecklessness has already been interpreted by Tehran as American weakness. This is why Iran has expanded its support to Syrian president Assad since July. This is why Iran continues to hold four innocent Americans prisoner and arrested another one plus a U.S. green-card holder last fall. This is why Iran has tested ballistic missiles and appears to be harassing U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

The profound damage the nuclear deal is causing to international security by emboldening Iran, increasing its profile in the Middle East as a regional hegemon, and severely undermining American influence and credibility is now becoming clear.

This is a truly disastrous legacy Mr. Obama is leaving for the next president that will likely take many years to fix.

Hezbollah Confirms Receipt of Russian Arms

Two Hezbollah field commanders have recently revealed that Russia has been aiding their organization with weapons. The two commanders stated that the Russian government has facilitated the organization with long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons. One of the commanders went as far to claim, “We are strategic allies in the Middle East right now—the Russians are our allies and give us weapons.” 

Hezbollah serves as a de facto tool of Iranian foreign policy. The organization was created soon after the Iranian revolution, and has since been seen as a Iranian proxy organization. Since its inception, Hezbollah has opposed Israeli influence within the region, and has engaged in multiple skirmishes and wars against the Jewish state.  

Neither the government of Russia nor Iran has been shy of admitting their alliance with the terrorist organization. Russia entered the conflict in Syria in order to back the Syrian regime. Vladimir Putin’s government would like to see President Assad reestablish control of his nation. In order to help Assad reestablish control, Russia has involved the its air force in the conflict and, as previously stated, has increased arms to Syria, Iran, and, as of recently, Hezbollah.  

 In doing so Russia is securing its own strategic interest. Russia is less concerned with Syrian and Iranian interests as much as keeping itself as a powerful actor in the Middle East. Russia seeks to counter U.S. interest in the region by propping up  anti-American states and actors and strengthening Iran and making sure it can fund its proxy states.  Russia’s most important warm water ports, Tartus, is located in Syria, which Russia cannot afford to lose. All of these Russian interests have driven Putin to aid Hezbollah and find a way to defeat the Syrian rebel groups whom they view as the proxy of the U.S. and other nations, i.e. Turkey and Saudi Arabia.   

 Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in armed conflict for years, and any increased arming of Hezbollah could have grave consequences for Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Following the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon war, Hezbollah has been reluctant to engage the Israelis directly from Lebanese territory. For Israel’s part, they have shown, through the killing of senior leader Samir Kuntar and Jihad Mughniyeh, they are equally unwilling to tolerate Hezbollah threats from Syrian territory.     

Despite taking heavy casualties in Syria, Hezbollah will remain active in the fighting as long as Iran seeks support against the Syrian rebels. However, once the conflict has subsided, Hezbollah’s focus will again shift to Israel.   

Did the White House Use the NSA to Spy on Congress about the Iran Deal?

According to a bombshell Wall Street Journal article by Adam Entous and Danny Yadron, published online late Monday, the National Security Agency provided the White House with intercepted Israeli communications containing details of private discussions between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. lawmakers and American Jewish groups on the Iran nuclear deal. If true, this could be the biggest scandal of the Obama presidency.

The Journal article explains that President Obama decided to stop NSA collection against certain foreign leaders after the backlash against Edward Snowden’s disclosure that the NSA had eavesdropped on German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone and monitored communications of the heads of state of other close U.S. allies.

According to the Journal story, President Obama did not halt NSA spying against Netanyahu. This is not a surprise, given the president’s chilly relations with the Israeli leader and Israel’s aggressive spying against the United States. It’s also not a surprise that the Obama administration sought intelligence on Netanyahu’s efforts to undermine the nuclear deal. But it is stunning to learn that NSA sent the White House intelligence on private discussions with U.S. congressmen on a major policy dispute between the White House and Congress.

According to the Journal article, to avoid a paper trail that would show that they wanted the NSA to report on Netanyahu’s interactions with Congress, Obama officials decided to let the agency decide how much of this intelligence to provide and what to withhold. The article cited an unnamed U.S. official who explained, “We didn’t say, ‘Do it.’ We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’”

This suggests major misconduct by the NSA and the White House of a sort not seen since Watergate. First, intercepts of congressmen’s communications regarding a dispute between Congress and the White House should have been destroyed and never left the NSA building. The Journal article said a 2011 NSA directive requires direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress to be destroyed, but gives the NSA director the authority to waive this requirement if he determines the communications contain “significant foreign intelligence.”

Netanyahu’s discussions with members of Congress on a policy dispute between Congress and the president do not qualify as foreign intelligence. Destroying this kind of information should not have been a close call for NSA. Congress should immediately ask NSA director Michael Rogers and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to verify the Journalstory and explain why intercepts of private discussions of members of Congress were provided to the White House. If this did happen, both officials should resign.

Second, the White House bears significant responsibility for this scandal. By encouraging and accepting this intelligence, the White House used the NSA as an illegitimate means to undermine its legislative opponents. This represented a major abuse of presidential power, since it employed the enormous capabilities of an American intelligence service against the U.S. Congress. It also probably violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation-of-powers principles and the Fourth Amendment, since surveillance may have been conducted against U.S. citizens without a warrant.

The claim that Obama officials did not directly instruct the NSA to collect this information but simply accepted what the NSA sent them is preposterous. If the Journal article is accurate, Obama officials knew they were receiving intelligence on the private conversations of U.S. congressmen on a major policy dispute. These officials knew they were not supposed to have this intelligence but did not cut it off, because they wanted to use it to defeat efforts by Netanyahu and Congress to derail the Iran nuclear deal. This story is another indication of how desperate the Obama administration was to get a nuclear deal with Iran.

It is truly bizarre that Obama officials would be parties to such a gross misuse of U.S. intelligence after the controversy caused by NSA collection of phone records under the metadata program and so-called warrantless wiretaps by the Bush administration. These initiatives might have pushed the envelope of the law and intelligence charters, but they were carried out to defend the nation against terrorism and targeted terrorist suspects. By contrast, the Journal article discusses domestic intelligence activities that clearly are prohibited: targeting U.S. citizens over a policy dispute, and targeting the legislative branch of government.

Congress should be outraged over this story, especially in light of how narrow the votes were in September to disapprove the Iran deal. The Obama administration won these votes because it did a better job than the congressmen and American Jewish groups who opposed the Iran deal of persuading Democratic members to support it. The Journal story suggests that NSA collection against American opponents of the deal may have helped the Obama administration win this battle for Democratic support.

Congressional anger over the Journal story might force intelligence officials to resign. However, I believe there is no chance anyone in the Obama White House will be held accountable, since the Obama Justice Department will refuse to investigate and Obama officials probably will feign ignorance. Still, I hope the congressional intelligence committees will conduct full investigations.

The story will damage relations between the Obama White House and Congress, but since these relations are already so poor, it is hard to see how much farther they can sink. TheJournal story could inflict serious damage on the reputation of the U.S. intelligence community, which has been struggling to defend itself against unfair and misleading attacks by privacy advocates, liberals, and libertarians, sparked by the Snowden leaks.

I am one of many conservatives who have fought over the last few years to defend U.S. intelligence agencies against these attacks, which have weakened U.S. intelligence programs and undermined the morale of intelligence personnel. But the Journal article describes a bona fide abuse of intelligence for which I can offer no defense.

If it is true that the NSA provided intercepts of the private discussions of congressmen with Netanyahu on the Iran deal, this will be a huge gift to the U.S. intelligence community’s critics, who will say this story confirms their claims about how American intelligence agencies routinely violate the law and the privacy rights of Americans. It also could cause the U.S. intelligence community to lose congressional support, and Congress to pass more legislation restricting important counterterrorist intelligence programs.

National-security-minded Americans should call on Congress to fully investigate this matter and hold the Obama administration and intelligence officials accountable to the greatest extent possible. But the best response to this outrage will be to make it a top issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. This fiasco represents a serious lack of leadership and ethics by the Obama administration that will never be fixed by the ethically challenged Hillary Clinton. It may be the best reason yet why we need a new president who will implement comprehensive government reform and hold himself and his administration to a much higher ethical standard.

James Schlesinger and Alan Dershowitz Were Right About ‘Stupid’ Iran Intelligence

Eight years ago, the late James Schlesinger, who served as CIA Director, Secretary of Energy, and Secretary of Defense, denounced in a Wall Street Journal editorial one of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s most controversial intelligence assessments on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as “stupid intelligence.”

In addition to calling this assessment stupid intelligence, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz referred to it in a December 6, 2007 Huffington Post op-ed as “one of the most dangerous, misguided and counterproductive intelligence assessments in history.”

A December 2 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was formally released on December 15, proved Schlesinger and Dershowitz were right.

The Iran intelligence assessment was a national intelligence estimate (NIE) which is supposed to be the U.S. Intelligence Community’s most authoritative analysis of a national security issue. Issued in November 2007, this NIE found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The IAEA’s new report found that Iran continued its nuclear weapons research at least until 2009.

A December 5, 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial cited an intelligence source who said the NIE’s main authors included three former State Department officials with previous reputations as “hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials:” Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA.

Many experts rejected the 2007 Iran NIE as biased and politicized because it found Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program even though it continued to enrich uranium, continued work on a heavy-water reactor, and refused to explain over a dozen instances of likely nuclear weapons-related activities. I had similar criticisms of this NIE after reading the full classified version while I was a member of the House Intelligence Committee staff in 2007.

Despite its shortcomings, the NIE fit neatly into a liberal narrative at the time that the Bush administration lied about intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs to justify the war with Iraq. It therefore was quickly portrayed by President Bush’s critics and the news media as an instance of intelligence analysts “speaking truth to power” against the Bush administration’s exaggerated claims about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As a result, Mr. Bush’s Iran policy was severely undermined for the rest of his presidency — exactly the outcome the hyper partisan authors of this politicized NIE hoped for.

Schlesinger condemned the Iran NIE because he said it reached its controversial conclusion due to a policy by intelligence agencies not to get beyond “hard evidence” in analysis and to shy away from drawing conclusions and “connecting the dots.” This “gun shy” style of intelligence analysis began in the mid-2000s after U.S. intelligence agencies were burned for erroneous analysis of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

This meant U.S. intelligence agencies stopped taking risks in intelligence analysis and avoided imaginative, outside-the box thinking.

This was Dershowitz’s view who also slammed the NIE as a “peace in our time intelligence fiasco.”

I explained in a December 2 National Review article that this month’s IAEA report on Iran’s past nuclear weapons-related work found that Iran engaged in “coordinated” nuclear weapons activities until 2003 and that some nuclear-weapons work continued until 2009.

The IAEA report said there were no “credible indications” of nuclear-weapons-related activities in Iran after 2009 which was not the same as positive evidence that they stopped. The IAEA report also said some of the answers provided to the agency by Iran during its investigation were not credible and were contradicted by other information.

Even though the IAEA’s report did not resolve all of the outstanding questions about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the IAEA Board of Governors unanimously voted on December 15 to close the book on this issue. The Obama administration was not about to let this issue detail its legacy nuclear agreement with Tehran.

I believe the IAEA has no credible indications of Iranian nuclear weapons work after 2009 because the Obama administration stopped sharing intelligence with the IAEA on this issue soon after Mr. Obama became president. Congress needs to look into this and ask the IAEA about unconfirmed information it may have indicating that Iranian nuclear weapons research continued after 2009.

The congressional intelligence oversight committees currently are investigating allegations that analysis of ISIS by Defense Department intelligence analysts was politicized to reflect favorably on Obama administration. While this is an important investigation, Congress and the Republican presidential candidates need to recognize that politicization of intelligence analysis often occurs from within intelligence agencies to influence policy or to curry favor with government officials.

Schlesinger and Dershowitz identified this serious problem with U.S. intelligence analysis in 2007 which continues today. Over the past seven years, we’ve seen a sharp increase in politicized, consensus-based, and unimaginative intelligence analysis written to promote Obama foreign-policy objectives. The next president must understand that objective, “outside the box” intelligence analysis is crucial to protecting our nation from new and evolving national-security threats, and she or he must exercise the leadership to ensure that America’s intelligence community starts producing it.

Iran’s foreign policy instrument set to reap benefits of the nuclear deal

With sanctions relief looming for Iran following adoption day (October 18, 2015) of the JCPOA, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its covert operations arm, the Quds Force, with a history in staging massive terrorist attacks and sowing destabilization throughout the Middle East serves as a reminder of the dangers that access to more funds will have upon the region and world at large.

From its funding and command of proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to terrorist atrocities in the 80’s and 90’s, to more recently the establishment of militias and exacerbating sectarianism in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, Tehran’s clerical regime has tasked the IRGC with preserving and expanding the Shia Islamic revolution across the Middle East.

With these facts in mind, the House Foreign Affairs Committee convened a hearing today entitled “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps: Fueling Conflict in the Middle East.”  In his opening remarks, Chairman Ed Royce (R- CA) stated that the financial windfall from sanctions relief will empower the IRGC to expand its operations and spread even more chaos across the Middle East.

While the world’s attention is fixed on the Islamic State, the IRGC already has a solid infrastructure in place throughout the world and the operational capability to launch attacks at will.

Since the majority of Iran’s economy is under the direct control of the IRGC in the form of its ownership of companies in sectors such as construction, telecommunications, shipping, and banking either outright or through front and shell companies, the opening of Iran after sanctions are lifted will lead to what some analysts say will be at least $ 150 billion in sanctions relief.

Ali Alfoneh of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies stated that the IRGC assets in the Tehran stock exchange are worth at least $ 17 billion, and that in 2009 it bought through an affiliated company the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI)  for $ 8 billion, yet its published budget is approximately $ 6 billion.

In essence, despite being under sanctions for years and entering the JCPOA negotiations under the pretense of obtaining relief for its battered economy, no expense was spared for the IRGC and the Quds Force, said Scott Modell of The Rapidan Group.  The fact that the IRGC was able to sustain its public and covert programs while under sanctions means that its capabilities will naturally increase once they are lifted.

In his testimony, Modell explained how both the IRGC and Quds Force are engaged in sectarian repopulation in Iraq via its sponsorship of Shia militias, establishing foreign fighter pipelines in order to bring Afghan and Pakistani Shia to fight in Syria, backing the Houthis in Yemen, and its propaganda and infiltration campaigns aimed at destabilizing American Sunni allies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

While both the United States and Iran share a common enemy in The Islamic State and President Obama publicly stated that he hoped the nuclear deal would lead to an opening with Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quick to dismiss that notion, and since the deal was signed in July, the IRGC has continued its operations unimpeded, with Syria drawing particular emphasis.

Alfoneh testified that the main driver of the IRGC’s behavior in Syria is the preservation of the Assad regime at all costs.  In his view “Washington wants to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East; the IRGC benefits most seeing these conflicts continue.” By deploying non-Arab Shia to Syria along with IRGC ground troops, the sectarian polarization will only increase, negatively affecting US and allied efforts to oust Assad, while some Shia militias are already vowing to fight US Special Forces soon to be deployed against the Islamic State

Former State Department official Daniel Benjamin stated that its involvement in the Syrian civil war is costing the IRGC dearly in terms of both manpower and financially, with even high-ranking IRGC officers killed in action.  His view is that the main driver of our Sunni allies’ behavior is preventing Iranian encroachment in their domains.

For example, aside from a few token sorties flown against the Islamic State, Saudi Arabia and the UAE saw fit to intervene and focus on a costly sectarian war in Yemen, which is now at a stalemate as the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have proven more than capable of holding territory.

In addition, King Salman did not attend a scheduled Camp David summit with President Obama, widely interpreted as expressing displeasure over the continuing negotiations with Iran.  A few months after, the King met a Hamas delegation in order to smooth out differences.

Solutions proposed by the witnesses range from maintaining and publishing a watch list of Iranian entities controlled by the IRGC, and placing a sanctions regime on them.  Designating the entire IRGC and not just some of its units as a Foreign Terrorist Organization would also send Khamenei a message.

The Treasury Department should also keep up its efforts to track and enforce sanctions on Iranian banking and financial institutions that facilitate terror operations.  Finally, a revamping of the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program is critical.  Increasing its mission beyond the 75 individuals listed would be a start.  Until these solutions are implemented, the IRGC will remain a primary threat to the United States and its allies.

Russian ground troops may be deployed in Syria

In what may have been an inadvertent slip-up, Russian state TV broadcast footage yesterday of a military briefing in which a map of Syrian military operations appear to show a Russian artillery regiment actively engaged in ground operations against the rebels.

Although President Vladimir Putin and the Russian defense ministry have steadfastly denied that Russian ground troops are deployed in Syria, this development, if true, may signal that the Russian commitment to Bashar al-Assad is deeper than previously thought; especially considering reports that Russia may be open to a replacement as part of the political negotiations currently taking place in Vienna.

It is worth mentioning that when Putin announced the deployment of Russian aircraft and support personnel to assist Assad at the beginning of October, he was quoted as saying “Russia will not participate in any troop operations in the territory of Syria or in any other states. Well, at least we don’t plan on it right now…”

But now in late November with winter looming, the situation is different.  Although Russian air strikes have provided cover for Syrian ground troops to re-take territory from the rebels and from IS, reports from the ground continue to depict a stalemate.  The map shown on state TV was marked with Russian military designations for its artillery units, which were seen as being within striking distance of rebels based in the town of Sadad in central Syria.

With Syria confirming the presence of what a source called “Russian military advisors” in Sadad, this may be the prelude to a Russian troop deployment, the size of which may depend on assessments by the advisors on the ground, as well as the depth of American and allied involvement.

If Putin determines that the Syrian army is not making progress against the rebels, a large-scale troop deployment may be forthcoming. It is expected that he should be mindful to not get entangled in a quagmire like Afghanistan in the 1980’s.  While the parallels with the Soviet invasion and subsequent war are not quite the same, the potential for riches remain in Syria, where pipeline politics play a crucial role in the civil war.

Not coincidentally, Putin has arrived in Tehran to participate in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. This provides the perfect opportunity to consult and align strategies with Ayatollah Khamenei, the other major stake holder on Assad’s side.    As a token of appreciation for Iran’s continued support in Syria, Putin announced that the contract to supply advanced S-300 anti-air missiles to Iran would be fulfilled.