Tag Archives: John Kerry

Not A Good Deal

At a press conference this afternoon, President Obama lauded the preliminary agreement reached with Iran to reduce the risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon, saying “this is a good deal.” He claimed it will keep Iran at least a year away from constructing a nuclear weapon and will be subject to intrusive and unprecedented inspections and verification. This preliminary agreement is the outline for a comprehensive agreement due by June 30.

The details of the framework agreement as spelled out in a White House fact sheet and President Obama’s speech raise many questions about a final deal. It is troubling that no final agreed-upon text has been released and that Iranian and EU officials were vague in their statements about the framework.

Earlier today on National Review, Patrick Brennan wrote about tweets by Abas Aslani, the head of an Iranian government news agency, that show how the Iranian view of the agreement differs from the Obama administration’s view. Aslani tweeted, for instance, that Iran will continue to develop advanced centrifuges during the duration of the deal and “all economic sanctions by EU, US will be lifted immediately including financial, banking, insurance, oil.”

Here are my initial thoughts about the preliminary agreement, based on our knowledge of it at this hour.

 

Uranium Enrichment
According to the White House fact sheet, Iran will go from 9,000 operational centrifuges to 6,104. Of these, 5,060 will enrich uranium for ten years. All centrifuges will be Iran’s first-generation IR-1 design. The remaining 10,000 operational and non-operational centrifuges will be put in storage and monitored by the IAEA. These machines will be used to replace operating centrifuges.

  • For 15 years, Iran has agreed not to enrich over 3.67% U-235 and not to build additional enrichment facilities.
  • Iran also has agreed to “reduce” its current enriched-uranium stockpile of about 10,000 kilograms (enough to fuel eight or more nuclear weapons if enriched to weapons-grade) to 300 kilograms. President Obama said in his speech today that Iran’s enriched uranium would be “neutralized.”
  • The U.S. fact sheet says Iran will not use advanced centrifuge models for ten years and will develop them according to a schedule worked out under the agreement. However, an Iranian spokesman tweeted that Iran will continue its R&D on advanced centrifuges during the agreement and will do “the beginning and completing process” of IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 to IR-8 centrifuges during the ten-year span of the agreement.
  • Iran will move most of its centrifuges out of its underground Fordow enrichment facility and will not enrich uranium there for at least 15 years. Two-thirds of Fordow’s centrifuges will be put in storage, and the facility will be used for peaceful purposes.

Comment
This agreement will allow Iran to continue uranium enrichment, an activity that the United States has refused to agree to in nuclear-technology cooperation agreements with its friends and allies because it is so easy to use a peaceful enrichment program to make weapons fuel. There is no practical reason for Iran to conduct uranium enrichment with 6,000 centrifuges. It would take about 200,000 centrifuges for Iran to enrich enough uranium to fuel its Bushehr power reactor. 5,000 centrifuges are far too many for other peaceful purposes such as producing medical isotopes or fuel plates for the Tehran research reactor. Moreover, it would be far more economical for Iran to purchase reactor fuel rods, fuel plates, and medical isotopes from other countries.

The Obama administration hopes to address the risks of Iranian uranium enrichment by having intrusive IAEA inspections and by requiring Iran to “reduce” or “neutralize” its enriched-uranium stockpile. From the president’s statement and the White House fact sheet, it appears that Iran is refusing to send its enriched uranium to Russia as the U.S. had proposed. Also, the U.S. fact sheet says only that Iran’s current enriched-uranium stockpile will be reduced; it does not say what will happen to uranium enriched during the agreement.

We also don’t know what the words “reduced” or “neutralized” mean. The Obama administration previously claimed that the risk of Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile had been reduced because some of it had been converted to uranium powder. Experts later discounted this claim because this process can be reversed in about two weeks.

If Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile remains in the country and is only reduced to powder, Iran will retain the capability to make eight or more nuclear weapons in about three months. Former IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen recently published a chart on Iran’s nuclear “breakout” time that shows how Iran could make enough enriched uranium for one weapon in twelve weeks from reactor-grade uranium using 6,000 centrifuges, and how it could do so in 16 weeks using only 1,000 centrifuges. Click here to view.

The decision to let Iran keep its previously secret, heavily fortified Fordow enrichment facility is a major American cave. President Obama said in 2012 about this facility: “We know they don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful [nuclear] program.”

Bottom line
The preliminary agreement legitimizes — and even allows the advancement of — Iran’s uranium-enrichment program. It does not appear to delay the breakout time for an Iranian nuclear weapon. Incredibly, no enrichment equipment or facilities will be disassembled or destroyed. Given Iran’s long history of cheating on nuclear agreements and covert nuclear activities, allowing it to do any uranium enrichment is very dangerous. This is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that Iran’s enrichment program has only one purpose: to make nuclear bombs. This is reason enough for the U.S. Congress to reject this agreement and impose new sanctions until Iran complies with U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring it to halt all uranium enrichment.

 

Inspections and Verification
President Obama said today: “Iran will face strict limitations on its program, and Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history. So this deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.” According to Obama, “If Iran cheats, the world will know it.”

  • The president also said, “Iran has agreed to give the IAEA access to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program, from uranium mills that provide the raw materials to the centrifuge production and storage facilities that support the program.” According to the White House fact sheet, the IAEA will have access to these facilities for 20 to 25 years.
  • According to the fact sheet, Iran has agreed to implement the IAEA additional protocol, which requires it to provide the IAEA with information on declared and undeclared nuclear sites. Iran also “will be required” to give the IAEA access to possible covert sites related to uranium enrichment.
  • The president said “Iran’s past efforts to weaponize its program will be addressed.” The fact sheet says “Iran will implement an agreed set of measures to address the IAEA’s concerns regarding the possible military dimensions of its program.”

Comment
Although the verification measures detailed by the president go beyond what Iran is currently subject to, Tehran has never fully cooperated with IAEA inspectors. Moreover, this verification plan does not permit snap inspections and unfettered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities, including military bases where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear-weapons work. The agreement also is vague on requiring Iran to answer questions about past weapons-related work. Iran agreed to a twelve-step program with IAEA in late 2013 to address these questions but has addressed only one of them.

It is hard to trust the Obama administration and Iran on verification and compliance. Iran violated the terms of the interim agreement that set up the nuclear talks, but the Obama administration repeatedly has claimed it was in compliance. President Obama again made this false claim in his speech today.

Bottom line
Verification of a final agreement must require Iran to answer all outstanding questions about weapons-related work and allow unfettered access by the IAEA to all facilities where nuclear activities are believed to have taken place. The preliminary agreement appears to give Iran a pass on previous nuclear-weapons work and set up a verification plan that will not detect all weapons-related activities.

 

Arak Heavy-Water Reactor
According to the White House fact sheet, Iran will remove the core of this reactor and install a new core so this reactor will not produce weapons-grade plutonium. This reactor will remain a heavy-water reactor and will be operated for peaceful purposes.

Iran has agreed not to reprocess the spent fuel of this reactor to produce plutonium indefinitely, will sell its excess heavy water not needed for the redesigned reactor, and will not build more heavy-water reactors for 15 years.

Comment
Heavy-water reactors are a very serious proliferation risk because they are a source of plutonium. If this reactor remains a heavy-water reactor, it will be a plutonium source. Iran constructed this reactor in defiance of IAEA resolutions. Allowing Tehran to operate it undermines the credibility of the Western states who pushed these resolutions and increases Iran’s expertise in operating and building plutonium-producing reactors.

 

Sanctions
According to the fact sheet, U.S. and EU sanctions will be lifted after the IAEA verifies that Iran has complied with “all of its key nuclear-related steps.”

  • These sanctions will “snap back” if Iran fails to comply with its commitments.
  • Previous U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iran will mostly be lifted if Iran complies with key nuclear-related steps, including resolving possible nuclear-weapons-related activities.
  • As stated above, the Iranian government appears to believe all sanctions will be lifted immediately.
  • U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human-rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place.

Comment
Iranian cheating on nuclear agreements has usually been slow and subtle. It is unlikely to engage in any unambiguous cheating that will force the Obama administration to restore sanctions if they are lifted. Moreover, once sanctions are lifted — especially EU and U.N. sanctions — it will be very difficult to reimpose them. The framework seems to set fairly easy benchmarks that would allow most sanctions against Iran to be lifted quickly. This would be a boon for the Iranian economy and would generate significantly more funds that Iran could use to bolster its ever-increasing efforts to interfere with its neighbors and spread its influence in the Middle East.

 

An American Capitulation
This framework appears certain to lead to a deal that will significantly advance Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, though agreement is supposed to reduce the threat from Iran’s nuclear program. By allowing Iran to improve its expertise in uranium enrichment and plutonium production and by legitimizing its nuclear program, a deal based on this framework will increase the risk from an Iranian nuclear weapon. Such an agreement will probably further destabilize the Middle East and could lead to a regional nuclear-arms race.

President Obama’s claim that the only alternative to this agreement is war with Iran is false. Continuing the status quo would be a much better outcome than an agreement that paves the way to an Iranian nuclear bomb.

The president claimed that the United States will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy if Congress kills this deal. I believe the opposite is the case. Our Middle East friends and allies are likely to reject this preliminary agreement as a sell-out to the Iranian mullahs that puts their security at risk at a time when Iranian influence is growing in the region.

For the sake of American security and the security of America’s Middle East friends and allies, Congress must do what it can to kill any nuclear agreement with Iran based on the deeply flawed framework unveiled today.

Biden Joins White House Interference in Nigerian Democracy

[…] And this (Obama’s) administration goes to great lengths to ensure that we don’t give even the appearance of interfering or attempting to influence the outcomes of a democratically held election in another country. And for that reason the President will not be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits the U.S. in March.

“As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections, so as to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country,” White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement. “Accordingly, the President will not be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu because of the proximity to the Israeli election, which is just two weeks after his planned address to the U.S. Congress.”

Josh Earnest’s press briefing on January 23rd 2015 outlined the parameters which the United States should take towards all democratically held elections, including the election taking place on March 28th in Nigeria. So John Kerry’s late January visit to Nigeria on its face should be chalked up to ensuring peaceful democratically held elections?

According to the Washington Free Beacon, David Axelrod’s AKPD lobbying firm has been found to be conducting work on General Muhammadu Buhari’s behalf. AKPD’s ties to the Obama Administration can give insightful reasoning into why John Kerry flew to Nigeria amid Boko Haram’s advancement into the northeastern town of Maiduguri at the time. The United States wants to show concern about post-election violence, but David Axelrod’s paycheck and some of Nigeria’s social policies seem to be shifting loyalties in United States political parties toward Buhari.

On Wednesday, the Vice President of the United States Joe Biden spoke with both incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari over the phone to discuss how the United States would like to see the outcome of the elections handled.

The Vice President applauded both gentlemen for their singing of the Abuja Accord in mid-January to condemn and avoid violence throughout the election. Unfortunately, the postponement of the democratic elections due to Boko Haram’s violence has given rise to desperate political attacks between both parties.

The work of the Nigerian Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct free, fair, and credible elections for sustainable democracy in Nigeria was affirmed by the Vice President as a step in the right direction. The INEC announced that as of the end of February, it has distributed 79% of the total Permanent Voter Cards for collection by voters in the country.

The Vice President also noted his concern over the recent violence in election related events and ensured to both candidates that violence does not belong in democratic elections. Recently, a policeman was killed and several supporters of the All Progressive Congress (APC) were injured at a rally at an Anglican Church in the state of Okirikia.

The mission of United States diplomacy at the moment in Nigeria should be to deepen democracy. Nigeria’s people acknowledge their own burden in the country with respect to Boko Haram, social injustice, and the challenges of a fair election. In particular, Secretary of State John Kerry is critical of the Nigerian government in rescheduling it’s election date even when the United States refuses to give military aid to Nigeria to try and have their elections take place February 14th.  Overall, Washington has stayed neutral in the fighting against Boko Haram yet insulted and halted Nigeria in its effort to hold a democratic election.

Delayed Election Creates Key Moment to Strike Boko Haram

There are several forces at play that make the new timeline for Nigerian elections a one time chance for a decisive strike against Boko Haram.  In addition to Boko Haram, Nigerian elections have a potential for violence themselves.  With or without a domestic Islamist insurgency a delay of elections is interpreted by the Muslim north and the All Progressive Congress party of presidential candidate Muhammadou Buhari as an extra-constitutional attempt to prolong power.  That was one rational against the postponement of elections until the decision was made to do so on Saturday, a week before the scheduled election.

Apart from a rational, the calculus for Nigerian incumbent president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan might well have been to keep the election date, avoid the appearance of prolonging his term in office, and allow the disenfranchisement caused by Boko Haram to work in his favor.  Such a scenario would allow for Candidate Buhari’s camp to reject the election results and resort to violence.  Buhari was believed to be behind the 2011 violence in the north when a Muslim rejection of a southern Christian’s election led to over 300 deaths and thousands displaced.   With Boko Haram in the mix, the collective down-sides over shadowed appearances of good protocol by keeping the original date.  The U.S. and the international community had urged as much.

The presidential and parliamentary elections will now take place on March 28.  Elections for governors and state legislators will take place on February 28.  Until now it has been ostensible that President Jonathan had little interest in confronting Boko Haram and the international attention has put him in an awkward spotlight.  If President Goodluck’s administration fails to seize this window to take the reigns of the Nigerian military and significantly disable Boko Haram, it will confirm that he does not see himself as the president of all of Nigeria but only the south.  The strength of former military dictator Buhari’s campaign is that his supporters believe he can achieve security and defeat Boko Haram where President Jonathan has failed.  The political moment between now and February 28 regional elections is likely the last calm moment for Jonathan to galvanize against Boko Haram before Buhari’s political leverage reaches a critical mass.  If Jonathan makes it through the election without taking the upper hand against Boko Haram, he will face greater challenges with an even weaker mandate.

At such a crossroad it’s important to have a good measure of who General Buhari is.  The fundamental political difference between Buhari’s group and those who would become Boko Haram back in 2000 was a factional split over who could best purify the Muslim north of political corruption and enforce the best interpretation of Shariah law.  In the year 2000, Buhari’s political colleagues were debating whether they could accept a moderate enforcement of Shariah law in the North,

“I can die for the cause of Islam.  If necessary, we are prepared to fight another civil war. We cannot be blackmailed into killing Sharia” – Muhammadou Buhari, 2000 Freedom House

Of course Buhari will play the role of a moderate now.  Not enough eyelids were raised by Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit so close to the election last month.  It was then fair to speculate that Kerry was offering assurances of cooperation in exchange for assurances of a peaceful election.  Despite the administration’s recent lectures on state visits near election time that concerned Bibi Netanyahu and Angela Merkel, the State Department played tone-def to the legitimacy and perceived U.S. approval given to Buhari in his meeting with Kerry.  The public acknowledgement of the meeting in diplomatic currency was indeed a clear act of favoritism.  Thanks to the reporting of Adam Kredo, we now know that it was something more nefarious.  David Axelrod is General Buhari’s lobbyist and in this administration you can buy the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation.  According to the Washington Free Beacon report, Axelrod’s firm, AKPD, was employed by Buhari’s APC party as recently as December 2014.  The timing of Kerry’s visit the next month within in that context, puts a shorter lifespan on the Jonathan presidency.  President Jonathan must now fight without firm footing against Boko Haram, his political opponents, U.S. diplomats, and their lobbyists. He has about a month to make something happen.

Eichmann in Washington: Genocide Architect Welcomed by State Department, Congress, and the National Prayer Breakfast

Hannah Arendt is known for her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.  She fled Germany in the nineteen thirties during the rise of Hitler.  Her book and its title came from her reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, who was a key organizer of the Holocaust.  She coined the phrase, ‘banality of evil’ because of the moral detachment of a man just doing his job.

Our State Department, Congress, and the organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast are accepting Sudanese Prime Minister Ali Karti as a man who is just doing his job.  He is being given the legitimacy of a Statesman by each of these symbolic bodies of the U.S. government and civil society.

Ali Karti was promoted to the position of Prime Minister in 2010 after leading the Sudanese Popular Defense Force.  The Popular Defense Force is best known for genocide in South Sudan.  They also armed Janjaweed militias, which carried out much of the genocide in Darfur along with the PDF.  The PDF is a military extension of the National Islamic Front.  The NIF is the Sudanese political party founded by Hassan al-Turabi.  He is the Muslim Brotherhood leader who harbored Osama Bin Laden.  The Janjaweed were originally a creation of Muamar Qadaffi to Arabize Chad and Sudan.  Their intent is to cleanse Africa of black non-Muslims.

The PDF first carried out genocide in South Sudan. They were slave raiders that took women and children, killed men, and burned villages in South Sudan.  Tens of thousands of slaves.  That was in the nineties.  Then, the PDF turned to helping the Janjaweed in Darfur in the 00’s.

Granted the comparison to Eichmann is rough.  Ali Karti is not as morally distanced from his crime, as was Adolf Eichmann.  Were he to be captured and tried in Juba, the comparison would break down less quickly.  Eichmann was not able to repair his image in the eyes of the West like Karti.  Karti is known in the Sudanese President Omar Bashir’s cabinet as an advocate for dialogue.  The Khartoum regime clearly learned from the Iran negotiations that the prospect of prolonged talks could distance themselves from pesky issues such as war crime charges from the ICC and the arming of rebels in the South Sudan conflict.

Every U.S. official and congressman who shakes Karti’s hand will be complicit in legitimizing the Khartoum regime’s rationale for their atrocities.  Ignorance as a self-defence for failing to recognize the symbolic significance of Karti’s acceptance by Washington will be no comfort to the surviving African families of Karti’s victims.

Watch the news coverage of the National Prayer Breakfast.  Will the press challenge our government for their approval of Karti?  Will well meaning religious observers be duped into the same tacit acceptance of one of this generations greatest monsters?

China Wins the Influence Game in South Sudan

The 2005 creation of South Sudan as the newest nation began as one of the great U.S. diplomatic successes during the Bush administration.  The Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the SPLM and Khartoum called for the 2011 referendum that created the new nation.  Back then the U.S. put some skin in the game and it paid off.  The other major player in South Sudan today is China.  Since the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan in 2013, U.S. meddling has done more harm than good in regards to reaching peace.

It seems now that the force for peace will be China who sent seven hundred troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in September.  Why? China owns forty percent of the oil stake in South Sudan and has invested billions.  Keep in mind the the U.S. tax payer provides for twenty seven percent of U.N. peace keeping missions.  That means we are paying for China to protect its vast oil interest in a nation we helped to create and then helped to divide when John Kerry signaled favoritism for Riek Machar, a rival of the South Sudanese president who was also a former and current proxy of the genocidal Khartoum.

U.S. meddling wasn’t the only factor in the divide in South Sudan but the State Department is often deliberate in downplaying the impact of their careless favoritism.  China helped fuel the conflict between Khartoum and the various groups in the South as a major weapons supplier for Khartoum.  Particularly of note are the advanced long range Wei Shi missiles Khartoum used in 2011 to attack innocent civilians.  The Wei Shi is not your run of the mill small arms that media consumers have become immune to, but a long range surface to surface missile system.

If the U.S. had a big picture strategic view of our interests in South Sudan it might have recognized that, with all its faults, South Sudan was united under President Salva Kiir and could have been nurtured into a strong and prosperous democratic ally.  Now it is at the mercy of the geo-political interests of Khartoum and China with U.S. diplomatic fumbling making things worse.  Khartoum will continue to supply (Chinese made) weapons to Machar while China pretends to play the peacemaker role.  Both undermine South Sudan’s self-determination but China will protect its interest without being challenged as new colonialists.

A Policy Learning Moment from the West Africa Ebola Outbreak and Sanctions on South Sudan

Despite much consideration during last week’s Congressional hearings, a travel ban will not make for an easy fix to contain Ebola in West Africa.  The decisive factor in an effective government response is resolve and it can only come from leadership at the top.  Analysis of the  pro-activity and a proper sense of urgency along the timeline of this Ebola outbreak may reveal an absence of such leadership at key nodes in some government bureaucracies.  However, inefficiencies in American bureaucracies are traditionally overcome in times of crisis when the President of the United States is determined to do so.  In cases of experienced leadership, such things tend to be addressed before or at the early onset of a crisis.

There are two fluid situations that offer new data on the ability of the U.S. government to work effectively in Africa without such resolve at the top.  In the first case, that of the West Africa Ebola outbreak, the State Department dismissed urgent warnings in favor of a non-crisis diplomatically-correct approach and they had no indication to do otherwise from higher up.

The U.S. State Department stood at the front line of the Ebola outbreak at embassies in Liberia and Sierra Leone at least as far back as March of 2014.  On August 7, Bisa Williams, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs testified before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. In addition to describing the factors of the outbreak to the four members in attendance, her diagnosis of the core challenge was a lack of national capacity in Liberia, Sierra, Leone, and Guinea to handle the crisis and a warning that the outbreak would effect those African state’s ability to contribute to stability operations in Somalia citing a cancelled deployment of Sierra Leonean peace keepers.

The emphasis back in August was on capacity building.  Williams’ testimony ended on an awkward note when Virginia representative Frank Wolf asked her when, precisely, she had first learned of Ebola infections in Liberia.  Williams was unable to answer and offered to check and follow up.

On the same panel, Tom Freidan of the CDC began his August 7 testimony by saying,

“We do not view Ebola as a significant danger to the United States because it is not transmitted easily, does not spread from people who are not ill, and because cultural norms that contribute to the spread of the disease in Africa such as burial customs are not a factor in the United States. We know how to stop Ebola with strict infection control practices which are already in widespread use in American hospitals, and by stopping it at the source in Africa.”

Neither Williams from State nor Freiden from CDC communicated urgency or a pro-active approach to mobilizing for a major pandemic. The message from the aid relief organization Samaritan’s Purse sharply contradicted that of the U.S. State Department and CDC.  When the hearing’s first panel left the room, so did most of the observers and some members of the press.  A second panel then testified which included testimony from Ken Isaacs representing Samaritan’s Purse.  Samaritan’s Purse is one of two major aid organizations that had a large presence on the ground in Liberia.  Isaacs recounted that he had been warning senior government officials back in June of the seriousness of the outbreak. He stated again in August that the outbreak was uncontained and out of control in West Africa and that the international response had been a failure.

In the second case, the U.S. announced sanctions against individual leaders in South Sudan while the Sudan regime in Khartoum continues planning large scale operations against civilian populations and the arming of factions of the conflict in the South.  On October 9th, the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Ambassador Donald Booth, gave a major policy speech on the civil conflict in South Sudan to announce the sanctions.

In the speech, Ambassador Booth listed the State Department’s version of the cause of conflict in the South and included unresolved tensions then later, with heavy emphasis, elite power struggle.  While attempting to sound neutral, it was difficult not to interpret this as veiled blame directed at the South Sudanese president Salva Kiir.

That is significant because among the many and diverse marginalized groups who united with Dr. John Garang and Salva Kiir to fight the North it is well know that Secretary Kerry had signaled a preference for South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar whose split with Kiir led to the horrific civil war in South Sudan in December of 2013.  Machar had at one time led a rival faction and had received support from Khartoum.  Later in the speech,  Ambassador Booth worked in a passive but very intentional dismissal of rumors of U.S. favoritism.  The State Department needed to go on record because many believe that the known preferences of personalities within the State Department agitated and emboldened the split between South Sudan’s president and vice president.

Ambassador Booth spoke in hopeful terms regarding the projected impact sanctions would have to deter further violence.  Appearances of being productive in the peace process in the South may be a welcome distraction from the failure to deter the genocidal leader Omar Bashir in Khartoum from launching a full scale conventional war and genocidal attrition from early on in South Sudan’s creation until now.  In 2012, the U.S. President made a video statement to the people of South Sudan articulating what would be the State Department’s new policy.  It was a policy that a plain spoken person would call moral equivalence.

That is to say that the victims of genocide in the South, after decades of violent struggle to win their freedom from a genocidal Islamist Totalitarian regime, the U.S. implied that all sides had shed blood and and both side were responsible for the conflict.  The President urged the South against war with the North but did nothing to deter or challenge Khartoum.  The genocide continued in places like Blue Nile through 2012 and 2013 but the U.S., having voted present for peace, put forth no tangible incentives or dis-incentives to Khartoum.

A Smith College professor, Eric Reeves, has well chronicled the failure of U.S. policy in Sudan and South Sudan and the unexplainable disconnects between diplomatic statements, cause, effect, and results.  He attributes the lack of resolve by the President and the State Department to intelligence sharing deals between Khartoum and the U.S. intelligence community.

Statements put out by the State Department have indicated at different times that they see Sudan as a potential partner in counter-terrorism though Sudan remains on the State Sponsor of Terror list.  Though President Obama is on the record as one who would challenge Khartoum dating back before his presidency in campaign videos, no such resolve has been transmitted to the State Department in a way that has yielded results or stopped Khartoum from killing innocents by the thousands.  The power of the U.S. to get results from Khartoum is precedented by the 2005 peace agreement that led to the referendum and creation of South Sudan to begin with.

In both cases non-U.S. government actors provide a clear-eyed assessment of actualities on the ground.  Such assessments are prerequisite to any effective outcome  by U.S. government action.  The State Department prefers their own assessment of the situation in Sudan and South Sudan but has not been able to translate their approach into results that save lives.  The same can be said of the August 7 testimony by both CDC and State.  Perhaps the recent appointment of a former White House staffer as the new Ebola Czar can be considered resolve or at least an acknowledgement of the severity of the outbreak.  In neither case have we yet seen leadership from the top with a clear directive to solve problems leading to a positive outcome.

The High Costs of Presidential Incompetence

Last January President Obama called ISIS a “JV” terrorist group.  Months later after it metastasized into a terrorist army, Mr. Obama said he did not have a plan to deal with it.

The strategy Mr. Obama finally announced last month to degrade and destroy ISIS has proved to be weak and ineffective.  ISIS has made gains on the ground in Kurdish areas over the last few weeks and is now threatening Baghdad.  This outcome was predictable: we know from history that a war can’t be won with airpower alone.  The paltry number of U.S. airstrikes against ISIS targets has no chance of proving otherwise.

Now we have the Obama administration’s mishandling of the ebola outbreak.  The president appears to view this issue as a dire threat to his presidency since contrary to his habit of ignoring crises by playing golf and attending glitzy political fundraisers, he actually cancelled fundraising trips to deal with it.  The disorganized response by U.S. government agencies that allowed ebola infections to occur in the United States and the president’s refusal to ban flights from West Africa has led to a major scandal.

While I support Mr. Obama’s decision to send U.S. troops to ebola stricken areas to fight the disease, this is not a burden the United States should be bearing alone.  Where is the UN?  Why did the United States not push for a UN resolution directing all states – including Russia and China – to send troops, doctors and other medial and support personnel to West Africa?

Meanwhile, Secretary John Kerry is putting the finishing touches on a nuclear agreement with Tehran that looks to be a complete sellout by the West and will do nothing to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.  This agreement is likely to be so bad that it may ensure a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Israeli airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

The foreign policy incompetence of the Obama administration was been evident since Mr. Obama’s first year in office after he went on an “apology tour” and reluctantly condemned the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown against demonstrators protesting the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Only now are we seeing the high costs of this incompetence for America and the world, costs that I fear will grow worse in the final months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

UPDATE: Last Friday, the White House announced President Obama had named Ron Klain, a Democratic political operative, to be the “Ebola czar.”   Klain, an attorney who served as chief of staff to Vice President Gore and Vice President Biden, has no experience working in the health care field.  Was there no Democrat who worked in the Department of Health and Human Services or the Surgeon General’s office available for this post?  Why was a Democratic doctor or health care expert not chosen for this important job?

The answer to these questions is simple: Klain will be an Ebola “Spin Czar.” His job will be “messaging.” This means Klain was not named to help combat this disease but to stop the political damage it is inflicting on the Obama presidency and to Democrats across the country.

By naming a political hack as Ebola Czar to spin this crisis away, President Obama’s craven incompetence has sunk to a new low.

No Place for Iran in ISIS Plans

Secretary of State John Kerry’s awkward denial that the United States has not proposed “coordinating with Iran” against ISIS suggests the Obama administration did indeed propose this and is engaged in damage control after its efforts were revealed by Iranian officials.

I wrote in a Sept. 3 Newsmax article that while the U.S. should attack ISIS — also known as ISIL and the Islamic State — in Syria even though this will help keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, the United States must resist the temptation to draw Iran further into the crises in Iraq and Syria. I believe this because Iran bears significant responsibility for the outbreak of sectarian tensions in Iraq since 2011 due to its strong support for the Nouri al-Maliki government and by its training of Shiite militias that have massacred Iraqi Sunnis.

An increased Iranian presence in Iraq would alienate Iraqi Sunnis and make it more difficult to bring them back into the political process.

I believe the Obama administration has been unable to resist the temptation of trying to bring Iran into the battle against ISIS. According to The New York Times, Iranian officials claim they have rejected multiple invitations by the United States to join a coalition against ISIS.

According to the Iranian state news agency — IRNA — Iran’s President Khamenei recently said, “The American ambassador in Iraq asked our ambassador [in Iraq] for a session to discuss coordinating a fight against Daesh [ISIS].”

Khamenei said the Iranian government rejected this request.

Kerry’s denial of Khamenei’s claim was tortuous and hard to believe. Kerry said today that he is not going to get into a “back and forth” with Iran over whether his diplomats suggested that the U.S. and Iran join forces against ISIS. Kerry also said, “I have no idea of what interpretation they drew from any discussion that may or may not have taken place. We are not coordinating with Iran. Period.”

The Los Angeles Times reported today that the U.S. has been discussing ISIS with Iran. According to a Sept. 14 LA Times article, “The U.S., for its part, says it is not coordinating military efforts against Islamic State with Iran, though it has repeatedly discussed the issue with Iranian officials.”

Despite holding behind the scenes discussions with Iran about Iraq, Syria and ISIS, the United States vetoed Iran’s participation in an international conference that opened today in Paris on the ISIS threat. While I agree this was the right move, the Obama administration’s decision to publicly block Iran from the Paris ISIS conference while it conducts secret talks with Tehran on the same issues this conference will be addressing suggests Obama officials are trying to conceal what they are discussing with Iran from the American people and Congress.

So when do U.S. talks with Iran about ISIS become cooperation? More importantly, why is the United States using nuclear talks with Iran — which are going very badly — to discuss Iraq and Syria? What purpose could this achieve other than getting Iran more involved in these two countries.

It is fortunate that Iran revealed the overtures by Obama officials to coordinate on the ISIS threat since Congress can now demand answers from the administration about this latest foreign policy blunder and hopefully force the president to halt any efforts by his diplomats to draw Iran further into the crises in Iraq and Syria.

Obama to the rescue – of Hamas

Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began Thursday night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.

We have known for years that tunnels were a central component of Hamas’s logistical infrastructure.

What began as the primary means of smuggling weapons, trainers and other war material from Hamas’s sponsors abroad developed rapidly into a strategic tool of offensive warfare against Israel.

As we have seen from the heavily armed Hamas commando squads that have infiltrated into Israel from tunnels since the start of the current round of warfare, the first goal of these offensive tunnels is to deploy terrorists into Israel to massacre Israelis.

But the tunnels facilitate other terror missions as well.

Israel has found tunnels with shafts rigged with bombs located directly under Israeli kindergartens.

If the bombs had gone off, the buildings above would have been destroyed, taking the children down with them.

Other exposed shafts showed Hamas’s continued intense interest in hostage taking. In 2006 the terrorists who kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit entered Israel and returned to Gaza through such a tunnel.

Today the presence of sedatives and multiple sets of handcuffs for neutralizing hostages found in tunnel after tunnel indicate that Hamas intends to abduct several Israelis at once and spirit them back to Gaza.

In an interview with Channel 2 Monday evening, Minister Naftali Bennett spoke of a mother at Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara who told him that her children wake her in the middle of the night and tell her that they hear digging beneath their beds.

As Bennett said, this state of affairs simply cannot continue. People cannot live in fear that there are terrorists burrowing beneath their homes, digging tunnels to murder or kidnap them.

These tunnels must be found and destroyed not merely because they constitute a physical danger to thousands of Israelis. They must be located and destroyed, and Hamas’s capacity to rebuild them must be eliminated because the very idea that they exist makes a normal life impossible for those immediately threatened.

Hamas’s tunnels are also the key component of their command and control infrastructure inside Gaza.

Hamas’s political and military commanders are hiding in them. The reinforced bunkers and tunnel complexes enable Hamas’s senior leadership to move with relative freedom and continue planning and ordering attacks.

The sophistication of the tunnels and the malign intentions of Hamas are not in the least surprising.

But Hamas’s rapid advances in both tunnel and missile technology are deeply worrisome. At a minimum, they indicate that if it is allowed to end the current round of fighting as a coherent, relatively well-armed terrorist army, Hamas will be able to rapidly rebuild and expand its capabilities.

As a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is not a stand-alone terror group. It is part of a much larger web of Islamic jihadist terror groups including al-Qaida and its affiliates as well as the Shi’ite Hezbollah. Like Hamas, all of these threaten several major Sunni Arab states.

Due to their recognition of the threat Hamas and its allies pose to the survivability of their regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the unprecedented step of supporting Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas.

They understand that a decisive Israeli blow against Hamas in Gaza will directly benefit them. Not only will Hamas be weakened, but its state sponsors and terrorist comrades will be weakened as well.

Presently, Hamas’s most outspoken state sponsors are Qatar and Turkey.

As Israel’s Calcalist newspaper reported earlier this week, Qatar is Hamas’s biggest and most important financier, a role it plays as well for ISIS, al Nusra, the Muslim Brotherhood and various jihadist groups in Libya.

Turkey for its part is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like Qatar, Turkey has also been a major supporter of ISIS and al Nusra, as well as Hamas. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slander against Israel has grown so hysterical in recent weeks that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to downplay Turkey’s animosity, called him out on his open anti-Semitism.

By Tuesday morning, IDF forces in Gaza had destroyed 23 tunnels. The number of additional tunnels is still unknown.

While Israel had killed 183 terrorists, it appeared that most of the terrorists killed were in the low to middle ranks of Hamas’s leadership hierarchy.

Hamas’s senior commanders, as well as its political leadership have hunkered down in hidden tunnel complexes.

In other words, Israel is making good progress.

But it hasn’t completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting.

Recognizing this, Israel’s newfound Muslim allies have not been pushing for a cease-fire.

In contrast, the Obama administration is insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.

As Israel has uncovered the scope of Hamas’s infrastructure of murder and terror, the US has acted with the UN, Turkey and Qatar to pressure Israel (and Egypt) to agree to a cease-fire and so end IDF operations against Hamas before the mission is completed.

To advance this goal, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Monday night with an aggressive plan to force on Israel a cease-fire Hamas and its state sponsors will accept.

As former ambassador to the US Michael Oren told the media, it is clear that neither Israel nor Egypt invited Kerry to come over. Their avoidance of Kerry signals clearly that the US’s two most important allies in the Middle East do not trust US President Barack Obama’s intentions.

And their distrust is entirely reasonable.

The State Department has openly applauded Turkey and Qatar for their involvement in attempts to achieve a cease-fire. Last week Israeli officials alleged that the US was responsible for Hamas’s rejection of the Egyptian cease-fire proposal. By attempting to coerce Egypt to accept Qatar and Turkey as its partners in mediation, Obama signaled to Hamas’s leaders that they should hold out for a better deal.

Due to Turkey’s membership in NATO and the glamour of the Qatari royal family, many Westerners find it hard to believe that they are major sponsors of terrorism. But it is true. Turkey and Qatar are playing a double game.

While sending his ambassador to Brussels for NATO meetings, Erdogan has been transforming Turkey from an open, pro-Western society allied with Israel into a closed, anti-Semitic and anti-American society that sponsors Hamas, ISIL, al Nusra and other terrorists groups.

As for Qatar, the tiny natural gas superpower presents itself to Americans as their greatest ally in the Muslim world. The emirate gives hundreds of millions of dollars to US universities to open campuses in Doha and pretends it is a progressive, open society, replete with debating societies.

Qatar hosts three major US military bases on its territory. And it is becoming one of the most important clients for US military contractors. Earlier this year Qatar signed an $11.4 billion dollar arms agreement with the US.

At the same time, according to the Calacalist report, Qatar is the major bankroller of ISIS and al Nusra in Syria and Iraq. It gives $50 million a month to jihadists in Libya. It gives Hamas $100m. in annual aid. And in the past two years Doha has provided Hamas with an additional $620m. dollars, including $250m. it transferred to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s personal bank account, and $350m. in military aid to Hamas, transferred after the Egyptian military forced the Muslim Brotherhood government from power last July.

Add to that the $100m. per year that Qatar pours into Al Jazeera’s satellite network – which has dedicated itself to undermining pro-Western Arab regimes while popularizing the likes of al-Qaida and Hamas, and Qatar is the largest financier of international jihad in the world.

Rather than notice that Qatar and Turkey are playing a double game, and treat them with suspicion, the Obama administration has embraced them.

Chances that Kerry will secure a cease-fire in the near future are small. In all likelihood, the government will be able to buy the time necessary to complete the mission in whole or large part. But the fact that the US has chosen at this juncture in the operation – with Israel enjoying unprecedented support from the most important Sunni states in the region – to side with Hamas and its state sponsors in their demand for an immediate cease-fire speaks volumes about the transformation of US foreign policy under Obama’s leadership.

Needed: Balanced Statements by Obama Officials on Israel-Gaza Conflict

Senior U.S. officials need to choose their words much more carefully on the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
 
President Obama yesterday called for an immediate cease-fire in the Israeli-Gaza conflict because “we don’t want to see any more civilians getting killed.”
 
Secretary of State Kerry was caught on a hot mic during a break in a Fox News Sunday appearance making comments that mocked Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties during the Gaza operation by sarcastically telling an aide, “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.”
 
Such biased and naïve comments play into the hands of Hamas leaders who have staged this war to isolate Israel internationally by sacrificing Palestinian women and children.
 
The Obama administration cautiously supported Israel’s invasion of Gaza and should have known this operation was certain to result in large numbers of civilian casualties because of Hamas’ practice of using women and children as human shields.  Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz calls this Hamas’ “dead baby strategy” which entails Hamas fighters deliberately firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas in Gaza, using hospitals, disability centers, mosques and schools as launching sites.  According to Dershowitz, this forces Israel to choose whether to allow these rockets to endanger Israeli civilians or to attack the launch sites, thereby risking civilian casualties among Hamas’ human shields.
 
This Hamas practice amounts to a war crime.  Obama and Kerry should be speaking out to condemn it as such.
 
Obama and Kerry also should be stressing that the Israeli invasion of Gaza would not have occurred if Hamas joined Israel in agreeing to an Egyptian cease-fire plan last week. 
 
Israeli forces have found far more Hamas tunnels to infiltrate Israel and store weapons than expected.  In a related development, Israeli forces reportedly destroyed a warehouse in Sudan over the weekend storing a large number of long-range Iranian missiles that were en route to Hamas fighters in Gaza. 
 
This is why Israeli leaders made the difficult decision to invade Gaza and why they intend to stay until Israeli forces have substantially reduced the threat from Hamas rockets and tunnels.  President Obama and Secretary Kerry should be talking about this and cease making statements that place most of the blame for this conflict on Israel and attempt to pressure Israeli leaders to halt the Gaza operation before its objectives are met.