Tag Archives: Lebanon

Your abortions or your lives!

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program – nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America – Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day’s rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran’s plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn’t been disinvited.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran’s genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.

Palin’s speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US. And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran – and anyone else who was listening – that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.

[More]After that opening, Palin’s speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people – not just Israelis and Americans – but by all people who value human freedom.

PALIN’S SPEECH was a message of national – rather than simply Republican – resolve against Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran’s past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran’s proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran’s role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.

From Iran’s war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin’s speech turned to the regime’s war against its own people. She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel’s destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad’s calls for Israel’s annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday’s rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America’s national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin’s participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans – across the political spectrum – to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US’s national security agenda.

The rally’s organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran’s monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats – and Democrats in general – that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally’s organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally’s co-sponsors – the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations. Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma’alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations’ tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the UN and Iran’s stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party’s presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women’s unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari’a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Mrs. Clean is a fraud

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud. And if polls are to be believed, Livni the fraud is just one fraudulent election away from becoming our next prime minister.

Her basic dishonesty is expressed both in her political maneuverings and in her behavior as a policymaker. In both areas, she upholds herself as Mrs. Clean – the servant of all of us who are sickened, demoralized and revolted by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his hordes of corrupt Kadima colleagues and staffers. But she is not our servant. Rather than serve us, like Olmert and her Kadima colleagues, she lies to us in a continuous bid to expand her power.

Case in point is her participation in Wednesday’s anti-democratic Kadima primary, which will elect the party’s new leader to replace Olmert, who of course is both a fraud and a crook.

Unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, this one is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections. The expressed goal of Livni and her three opponents – Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit – is not to ready Kadima for elections, but to select a new prime minister who will form a governing coalition that will bar the public from electing its representatives until March 2010.

KADIMA’S MOVE to trample the people’s right to choose our leaders is not the only reason that its primary is an affront to the public. The primary is not just anti-democratic, it is also a fraud.

Only 15 percent of Kadima’s members joined the party on their own initiative. According to analyses conducted over the past several months, these 15% are people who were swept up in the initial excitement when Kadima was formed by Ariel Sharon in 2005.

According to pollsters, like most Israelis, these idealistic Kadima members became disenchanted with the party over the past three years. Accordingly, they are the least likely to vote in Wednesday’s poll.

The other 85% of Kadima’s 70,000 members are people who were brought into the party by those nefarious standard-bearers of Israeli politics of recent years: the vote contractors.

Vote contractors are political bosses and paid political operatives who peddle their influence in various communities, labor unions and population sectors to persuade citizens to join specific parties as bloc voters.

In its brief political life span, Kadima’s membership rolls have been subject to multiple criminal investigations. In one case now under investigation, up to 1,000 people were signed up for the party without their knowledge. Vote contractors forged their signatures on membership forms and paid their membership fees.

Although the media – which are openly biased in Livni’s favor – have placed most of the blame for this state of affairs on Mofaz, the truth is that Livni has not shied away from backroom deals with influence peddlers selling votes. For instance, she has used Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee to sign up blocs of Livni voters in the Arab and Druse sectors. Arabs and Druse comprise 20% of Kadima’s members and it has been widely predicted that they will cast the decisive vote. Livni is expected to win some 70% of their votes.

Then there is the Russian community. Here too Livni has hired vote contractors to sign up blocs of voters on her behalf. And like the Arabs and the Druse, there is no reason to believe that the Russian olim even support Kadima. They are just as likely to vote for another party in the general election. Livni knows this. She just doesn’t care.

Owing to the basic fraudulence of Kadima’s voter rolls, the fact is that regardless of the identity of the victor, he or she will be beholden not to voters, but to a few dozen influence peddlers. That Livni upholds this anti-democratic and wholly corrupt electoral farce as a legitimate path to the premiership puts paid the notion that she is an honest politician dedicated to cleaning up politics and making politicians accountable to voters.

LIVNI’S EMBRACE of fraud is the thread that ties her political machinations to her policy maneuvers. Indeed, fraud – that is deceit – has been her chosen tactic for advancing her political fortunes since she first rose to prominence in 2004.

The most blatant recent example of Livni’s deceitfulness is her behavior on the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem. For the past year, Livni has led the negotiating team with the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority. In her position, she has been the architect of whatever agreements the government has concocted regarding the surrender of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to Fatah.

Supported by the local media, Livni and Olmert have denied the public the right to know what they are discussing on our behalf and so prevented any public debate about their actions. This is crucial for them because opinion polls show that their presumptive plan to withdraw from some 98% of Judea and Samaria and partition Jerusalem is not supported by the public.

The issue of Jerusalem is particularly sensitive. Olmert pledged to coalition partner Shas that he would not discuss the city with the Palestinians. Since Shas doesn’t wish to leave the government, Shas leader Eli Yishai pretends he doesn’t know that Olmert’s pledge was a fraud. For their part, Livni and Olmert defraud the public by claiming that Jerusalem is not on their diplomatic chopping block.

On Thursday, Olmert, Livni and Shas had their bluffs called when the US Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles told the Palestinian Al-Ayam newspaper that the government has agreed to give the Palestinians control over most of eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. Livni and her representatives were outspoken in their angry denials of Walles’s statement.

Yet as Channel 10 reported on Sunday night, just a few weeks ago, Livni told her supporters that she is negotiating the partition of the city. Livni has told sympathetic reporters of her intention to form a far-left governing coalition with the non-Zionist Meretz party that will be supported from the outside by the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But she doesn’t want the general public to realize how radical she is. So she lies.

LIVNI’S LIES about Jerusalem are of a piece with all the lies she has told and all the frauds she has advanced over the past three years. In 2004 as justice minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, Livni concocted a detailed fraud to compel her Likud colleagues Binyamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom to vote in favor of Sharon’s bid to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and expel all Jews from the areas.

Livni authored what she referred to as the "compromise agreement." Forming the basis of the government’s decision in favor of the withdrawal, it stipulated that the Jews would be expelled in four stages over a period of several months. At each stage, the government would stop to reevaluate and each new stage would have to be separately approved. This decision was legally binding.

Right after she convinced her colleagues that Sharon would respect the compromise deal and so secured their votes, Livni discarded her grand compromise. Arguably in violation of the legally binding decision she had herself crafted, Livni, together with Sharon, claimed that national security considerations overrode the stipulations of the decision and therefore Sharon was within his rights to order that the expulsions be carried out in one operation that lasted a less than a week.

And defrauding her colleagues to advance her political fortunes wasn’t the only way Livni exploited her undeserved reputation as an honest woman during her tenure as justice minister. In the months leading up to the expulsions, she presided over the country’s law enforcement bodies as they systematically trampled the basic legal rights of law abiding citizens who sought to demonstrate their opposition to the expulsions.

Thousands of protesters were illegally arrested and held in jails for weeks at a time without charges being brought against them. In many cases, groups of demonstrators were illegally charged as groups. Protesters were physically assaulted by police. Buses carrying protesters to legal demonstrations were illegally blocked on highways.

A few months after the withdrawal and expulsions were completed, Chief Public Defender Inbal Rubinstein’s office released a report documenting how laws were prejudicially enforced based on the demonstrators’ political views. Livni’s response was to threaten Rubinstein with firing. Rubinstein apologized for releasing the report and mumbled something about it not representing the views of her office.

This, of course, is not how one would expect a politician dedicated to the sanctity of the rule of law and good governance to behave. But it is how one would expect a politician motivated only by her will to power to behave.

In her belief that all ends justify the means, Livni is a loyal representative of Kadima. She has defrauded the public by lying about the fact that she is actively advancing the cause of Jerusalem’s partition. She has defrauded her political colleagues by crafting "grand compromises" she knows will never be implemented. She is defrauding the public by using a fraudulent electorate to catapult her way into the prime minister’s office. And she does all of this while deceiving us into believing that she is competent to lead.

She tells us that the cease-fire with Hizbullah she crafted which paved the way for the Iranian proxy’s takeover of Lebanon was a diplomatic success. She tells us that we have no option of victory over our enemies and the best we can do is beg others to defend us. And she tells us we should give her the reins of power because she tells us the truth.

The public is powerless today to do anything in the face of Livni’s and Kadima’s trampling of our democratic system and open contempt for our national interests. It can only be hoped that whenever elections are eventually held, we will punish them for what they have done.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Iran in Latin America

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Highlighted Story:  “An Update on Iran’s Activities in Latin America” by David Witter 









Chavez and Ahmadinejad

Six years after President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, the United States may be facing a new Axis of Evil. Iran has been courting leftist political regimes throughout Latin America, using anti-American sentiment as the foundation for improving economic, political, and possibly military ties in the Western hemisphere. The increasingly strong alliance between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and leaders of the so-called New Latin Left could develop into a serious security threat in the near future. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to be the linchpin of this alliance. US interests could be threatened by either the Islamic terrorist groups active on the continent or by the ramifications of regional economic and political exclusion. Both of these possible avenues pass through Venezuela on their way to Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. 


After enduring the most deadly attack on the continental United States since Pearl Harbor, the American government has worked tirelessly to ensure safety at home from Islamic terrorism. However, the pervasiveness of Islamic terrorist organizations in Latin America adds a new layer to this threat.   Hezbollah prior to 9/11, responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization has been the most active Islamic terrorist group in Latin America.   That Iran supplies Hezbollah with money and arms makes their presence in our backyard all the more threatening.  









Logo of the “Party of Allah” in Chavez’s Venezuela

Hezbollah has been operating in Latin America since the early 1990’s. In Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 the Israeli embassy and Jewish Community Center respectively were both bombed.   While no one has been brought to justice for these acts of terrorism, arrest warrants were issued to prominent members of Hezbollah and the Iranian government.   One warrant for these attacks was issued in 1999 for Imad Mugniyah, a Hezbollah military commander also responsible for the 1983 US Embassy bombings and the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847. Seven years later, Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman indicted Iranian President Rafsanjani and seven other Iranian officials in absentia for masterminding the attacks, reinforcing the link between Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America.


Hezbollah continued to be active a decade later in the frontier region known as the Tri-Border Area (TBA) that spans the borders of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. US Southern Command estimates that Islamist terror groups based there raise between $300-500 million a year.  One such financier was Assad Ahmad Barakat, currently serving a six and half year sentence in Paraguay for tax evasion following his arrest in La Ciudad del Este. He was considered to be a deputy to Hezbollah finance director Ali Kazam, as well as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s primary liaison in the TBA.  Barakat used two businesses as cover to generate over $50 million that was then transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon. He was also involved in a counterfeiting ring that distributed fake American dollars throughout the TBA. Some believe that Barakat was a client of Mugniyah, who is thought to have established terrorist cells in la Ciudad Del Este.



This threat can only increase as Iran continues to strengthen its partnership with Venezuela. Hezbollah is known to have a strong presence in Venezuela. The US military’s Southern Command has reported that there are several Hezbollah support and logistics cells on Isla de Margarita, a Venezuelan island home to a large Lebanese expatriate community.   These cells have already demonstrated intent to infiltrate the United States; it is suspected that the members of a Hezbollah cell arrested in North Carolina in 1992 were assisted by a support unit in Isla de Margarita. Additionally, there are concerns of a home-grown Hezbollah faction operating in Venezuela.



Main News:



  • NEWS FLASH I: Venezuelan former Defense Minister reports assassination attempt . Venezuela confirms investigation of ex-defense minister. NEWS FLASH II: Chavez spends U$33 billion on regional influence. New Hampshire accepts cheap oil from Venezuela. Chvez arrives in Moscow to buy arms. Chvez: “Russian troops would be welcome in Venezuela.” Chvez heads for Belarus to meet with his “friend” Lukashenko. Russia’s Lukoil seeks energy deals with Venezuela.

  • Ecuador looks to Iran and China in new oil refinery. Ecuador dismisses Venezuela’s mediation in clashes with Colombia.

  • NEWS FLASH III: When Mrs. Kirchner’s resignation became a real option . Mrs. Kirchner cancels export tax; farmers’ conflict “is over.” Aides quit in Argentina tax crisis.

  • FARC rejects peace talks and promises to fight on.

  • Bush Makes Renewed Push for Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Colombian army kills 20 FARC terrorists in air raid.

  • Russia May Send Military Aircraft Back to Cuba, Izvestiya Says.

  • Chilean aide admits risk of loosing to conservatives.

  • Colombia : Uribe clears the ground for a possible third mandate.

  • Judge orders suspension of Bolivia referendum; government says it will go forward. Venezuela gives Bolivia four corn and plastics plants.

  • Brazil: Petrobras workers preparing nationwide strike in August.

View the full version of the Americas Report (PDF) 


 


Nancy Menges
Editor in Chief – “Americas Report”


Nicole M. Ferrand
Editor – “Americas Report”


 


For any questions, comments, or those interested in receiving this report in the future or seeking to have their email removed from our list please contact Nicole M. Ferrand at mengesproject@cen terforsecuritypolicy.org. If you have news stories that you think might be useful for future editions of this report please send them, with a link to the original website, to the same e-mail address. If you wish to contribute with an article, please send it to the same address, with your name and place of work or study.


 


 

The war with Iran

Last week’s Iranian missile tests prompted another round of fevered speculation that war might erupt between Iran and the United States. Largely lost in the frenzy is an unhappy fact:  The Iranian mullahocracy has been at war with this country since it came to power in 1979.

The problem is that the weapons available to Tehran for prosecuting its jihad against "the Great Satan" are no longer simply truck bombs and suicide vests.  Its proxy army, Hezbollah, has taken over Lebanon and operates terror cells from Iraq to Latin America and even inside the United States.  With help from Communist China and Russia, its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wields an array of anti-ship missiles, mines and go-fast boats capable of discouraging oil traffic from transiting the Straits of Hormuz – if not actually sealing that vital waterway for protracted periods.

Not least, Iran is now armed with ballistic missiles of ever-longer range.  Those missiles have been developed with help from North Korea for the purpose of delivering the nuclear weapons the mullahs have been developing covertly for over 20 years.  Once such weapons are in hand – perhaps just a matter of months now – Tehran will be in a position to execute its threat to wipe Israel (a.k.a. "the Little Satan") off the map.

As a blue-ribbon commission told the House Armed Services Committee last Thursday, moreover, by launching its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles off a ship, the Iranian regime could soon be able to make good on another of its oft-stated pledges: To bring about "a world without America."

The commissioners warned (http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php) that, by detonating a sea-launched nuclear weapon in space over the United States, Iran could unleash an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would have a "catastrophic" effect on much of the Nation’s energy infrastructure.  In short order, the ensuing lack of electricity would cause a devastating ripple effect on our telecommunications, sanitation and water, transportation, food and health care sectors and the Internet.  Iranian missile tests suggest an emergent capability to execute such an attack.

If we are already at war with the Iranian regime and the destructive power of our enemy is about to increase exponentially, what can we do to about it?  For various reasons, it remains undesirable to use our own military force against the mullahs if it can possibly be avoided.  If that alternative is to be made unnecessary, however, five things must be done as a matter of the utmost urgency:

Three have to do with greatly intensifying the financial pressure on Tehran.  First, we need to discourage investments in companies that provide the advanced technology and capital essential to the oil exports that underpin the Iranian economy.  The campaign aimed at divesting such stocks from private and public pension fund portfolios and, instead, investing "terror-free" had a signal victory last week when the head of the French oil conglomerate Total announced that "Today, we would be taking too much political risk to invest in Iran."

By moving billions of dollars into certified terror-free funds like those offered by the United Missouri Bank, U.S. investors can effect more of this sort of corporate behavior-modification.  Senator Joseph Lieberman is expected shortly to introduce legislation that will offer federal employees a terror-free investment option in their Thrift Savings Plan.  Every American should have such a ready choice – and be encouraged to exercise it.

Second, we need to deflate the price of oil that is sustaining the Iranian regime.  We can do so by ending the monopoly oil-derived gasoline enjoys in the global transportation sector.  (This imperative is the subject of a hilarious video by David and Jerry Zucker at www.NozzleRage.com.)  By adopting an Open Fuel Standard, Congress can set a standard assuring that new cars sold both in America and the rest of the world will be capable of using alcohols that can be made practically anywhere (for example, ethanol, methanol or butanol), as well as gasoline.  Long before vast numbers of such Flexible Fuel Vehicles are on the roads, the OPEC cartel-induced speculative bubble that has contributed to the recent run-up in the price per barrel of oil will be lanced.

Third, we must counter the effort being made by the Iranians and other Islamists to use so-called Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) as a means to wage "financial jihad" against us.  Before SCF instruments proliferate further in our capital markets, in the process legitimating and helping to underwrite the repressive, anti-constitutional and subversive program the Iranian mullahs (among others) call Shariah, that program must be recognized for what it is – sedition – and prosecuted as such.  The effect would be chilling for Iranian and other SCF transactions in Western markets world-wide.

Fourth, we need to deploy as quickly as possible effective anti-missile defenses – both in Europe and at sea.  Russian objections notwithstanding, we cannot afford to delay any further in protecting ourselves and our allies against EMP and other missile-delivered threats.

Finally, we must mount an intensive, comprehensive and urgent effort to aid the Iranian people in liberating themselves from the theocrats that have afflicted their nation for nearly thirty years and made it a pariah internationally.  Supplying information technologies, assistance to students, teachers, unionists and others willing to stand up to the regime, aid to restive minorities and covert operations should all be in play.

By adopting these measures, we may yet be able to bring about regime change in Iran – the only hope for avoiding full-fledged combat against the Islamic Republic there.  But we should be under no illusion:  We will not avoid war; it has been thrust upon us by the mullahs for many years now.  We may, however, be able to avoid the far worse condition they wish to inflict by unleashing the weapons now coming into their arsenal.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times

Bad deal: all carrots, no sticks

President George W. Bush Thursday formally abandoned the last vestiges of a once-robust policy towards a North Korean regime he had rightly said he “loathed.” Worse yet, he is doing so in the face of Pyongyang’s manifest contempt exhibited through, among other things, its serial refusal even to provide promised data about the status and disposition of its nuclear arsenal, let alone to eliminate it.

Consider the following egregious shortfalls in the “declaration” supplied by Kim Jong Il’s representatives to the United States via Communist China: 

The North Korean declaration was delivered six months late. As time dragged on without any submission, Amb. Hill began making excuses and signaling that the United States would be willing to accept less than the “complete and correct” submission Kim’s regime was obligated to provide. 

Not surprisingly, the declaration that was ultimately served up conformed to this advance billing. There is no indication that the North Koreans are dismantling their nuclear arsenal. In fact, it has not even declared the size or whereabouts of its stockpile of atomic weapons. It is hard to believe that the United States has been obliged by its incompetent diplomats to make concessions desperately sought by the North — namely, ending the application to North Korea of the Trading with the Enemy Act and removing it from the State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring nations — for so little in return.

Pyongyang has not disclosed the other countries to which it has proliferated nuclear technology. Such assistance to Syria was only prevented from translating into an indigenous source of bomb-ready plutonium for that state-sponsor of terror by an Israeli air force attack last September. Israel’s strike destroyed a North Korean-supplied nuclear reactor virtually identical to the weapons-related one in North Korea that Amb. Hill is taking such credit for dismantling.

Particularly worrisome are reports last week in the German publication, Der Speigel, that a further purpose of Pyongyang’s reactor project in Syria was to help yet another state-sponsor of terror — Iran — develop its nuclear program. It is hard to imagine how Pyongyang’s seeding of such states’ nuclear ambitions can be seen as anything other than state-sponsorship of terror.

What is more, in December 2007, the Congressional Research Service cited reputable sources in asserting that North Korea had provided arms and possibly training to the State Department-designated terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is also abundant evidence of North Korean involvement in the shipment of ballistic missiles and other weaponry to despotic nations around the world. In fact, such arms are the North’s only real cash crop and are used to enhance the offensive potential of both officially designated and undesignated state-sponsors of terror.

Amb. Hill also allowed the North Koreans to get away with non-disclosure of any detailed data about North Korea’s separate program for developing nuclear weapons with enriched uranium. It was the discovery and acknowledgment by Pyongyang of that covert program early in the Bush administration that prompted this president to terminate his predecessor’s egregious act of appeasement of the North: the 1994 Agreed Framework.

In short, North Korea has done nothing that would justify lifting of U.S. sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act. To the contrary, it continues to deserve that designation. It is also utterly inaccurate to describe it as a country no longer engaging in acts of state sponsorship of terrorism in any commonsensical meaning of the term.

President Bush has evidently concluded that — despite the demeaning of the United States and discrediting of his presidency entailed in the appalling diplomatic malpractice of Special Envoy Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — the bad deal they have served up is better than none. Sadly, that is not the case.

The effect of making such U.S. concessions in the face of a manifestly incomplete and incorrect North Korean declaration will be to: encourage financial life-support to hemorrhage to that odious regime; assure that Pyongyang persists in an array of dangerous activities at home and abroad that it has promised (repeatedly) to forego; and embolden others around the world to pursue nuclear weapons, confident in the knowledge that they will be rewarded — not penalized — for doing so.

The good news is that Congress has 45 days to block the removal of North Korea from the U.S. state-sponsors-of-terrorism list. The bad news is that to do so, veto-proof majorities in both houses would have to be found for resolutions of disapproval — something seen as unlikely. We are told that too many Democrats will support this initiative as a splendid opportunity to embarrass George Bush for failing to get such a deal years ago. Too many Republicans are said to be reluctant to criticize a leader of their own party for engaging in behavior they rightly would excoriate any Democrat for perpetrating.

Nonetheless, it stands to reason — especially given North Korea’s serial and continuing breaches of past commitments — that the United States would also defer complete fulfillment of its part of the present bargain by tying any rewarding of Kim Jong Il to his fulfillment of his part. At stake is not just President Bush’s legacy, but that bequeathed in terms of the future security of all Americans.

Originally published in National Review. 

Christopher Holton, the Center’s vice president, contributed to this article.

 

Bad deal: all carrots, no sticks

President George W. Bush Thursday formally abandoned the last vestiges of a once-robust policy towards a North Korean regime he had rightly said he “loathed.” Worse yet, he is doing so in the face of Pyongyang’s manifest contempt exhibited through, among other things, its serial refusal even to provide promised data about the status and disposition of its nuclear arsenal, let alone to eliminate it.

Consider the following egregious shortfalls in the “declaration” supplied by Kim Jong Il’s representatives to the United States via Communist China: 

The North Korean declaration was delivered six months late. As time dragged on without any submission, Amb. Hill began making excuses and signaling that the United States would be willing to accept less than the “complete and correct” submission Kim’s regime was obligated to provide. 

Not surprisingly, the declaration that was ultimately served up conformed to this advance billing. There is no indication that the North Koreans are dismantling their nuclear arsenal. In fact, it has not even declared the size or whereabouts of its stockpile of atomic weapons. It is hard to believe that the United States has been obliged by its incompetent diplomats to make concessions desperately sought by the North — namely, ending the application to North Korea of the Trading with the Enemy Act and removing it from the State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring nations — for so little in return.

Pyongyang has not disclosed the other countries to which it has proliferated nuclear technology. Such assistance to Syria was only prevented from translating into an indigenous source of bomb-ready plutonium for that state-sponsor of terror by an Israeli air force attack last September. Israel’s strike destroyed a North Korean-supplied nuclear reactor virtually identical to the weapons-related one in North Korea that Amb. Hill is taking such credit for dismantling.

Particularly worrisome are reports last week in the German publication, Der Speigel, that a further purpose of Pyongyang’s reactor project in Syria was to help yet another state-sponsor of terror — Iran — develop its nuclear program. It is hard to imagine how Pyongyang’s seeding of such states’ nuclear ambitions can be seen as anything other than state-sponsorship of terror.

What is more, in December 2007, the Congressional Research Service cited reputable sources in asserting that North Korea had provided arms and possibly training to the State Department-designated terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is also abundant evidence of North Korean involvement in the shipment of ballistic missiles and other weaponry to despotic nations around the world. In fact, such arms are the North’s only real cash crop and are used to enhance the offensive potential of both officially designated and undesignated state-sponsors of terror.

Amb. Hill also allowed the North Koreans to get away with non-disclosure of any detailed data about North Korea’s separate program for developing nuclear weapons with enriched uranium. It was the discovery and acknowledgment by Pyongyang of that covert program early in the Bush administration that prompted this president to terminate his predecessor’s egregious act of appeasement of the North: the 1994 Agreed Framework.

In short, North Korea has done nothing that would justify lifting of U.S. sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act. To the contrary, it continues to deserve that designation. It is also utterly inaccurate to describe it as a country no longer engaging in acts of state sponsorship of terrorism in any commonsensical meaning of the term.

President Bush has evidently concluded that — despite the demeaning of the United States and discrediting of his presidency entailed in the appalling diplomatic malpractice of Special Envoy Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — the bad deal they have served up is better than none. Sadly, that is not the case.

The effect of making such U.S. concessions in the face of a manifestly incomplete and incorrect North Korean declaration will be to: encourage financial life-support to hemorrhage to that odious regime; assure that Pyongyang persists in an array of dangerous activities at home and abroad that it has promised (repeatedly) to forego; and embolden others around the world to pursue nuclear weapons, confident in the knowledge that they will be rewarded — not penalized — for doing so.

The good news is that Congress has 45 days to block the removal of North Korea from the U.S. state-sponsors-of-terrorism list. The bad news is that to do so, veto-proof majorities in both houses would have to be found for resolutions of disapproval — something seen as unlikely. We are told that too many Democrats will support this initiative as a splendid opportunity to embarrass George Bush for failing to get such a deal years ago. Too many Republicans are said to be reluctant to criticize a leader of their own party for engaging in behavior they rightly would excoriate any Democrat for perpetrating.

Nonetheless, it stands to reason — especially given North Korea’s serial and continuing breaches of past commitments — that the United States would also defer complete fulfillment of its part of the present bargain by tying any rewarding of Kim Jong Il to his fulfillment of his part. At stake is not just President Bush’s legacy, but that bequeathed in terms of the future security of all Americans.

Originally published in National Review. 

Christopher Holton, the Center’s vice president, contributed to this article.

 

Israel’s Staticide?

There is a Greek tragedy unfolding today in the Middle East.  In response to past mistakes and as a result of hubristic political calculation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is setting in motion forces that promise to lead inexorably to grief for his nation.  The result could be staticide, the destruction of the Jewish State, with incalculably serious repercussions for the Free World in general and the United States in particular.

In the pursuit of peace with its neighbors, Israel has made one strategic concession after another.  In 1979, it surrendered the Sinai to Egypt when Anwar Sadat promised peace and then was murdered for doing so.  In 1993, Israel adopted the Oslo accords, legitimating one of its most virulent enemies, the PLO terrorist chief Yasser Arafat, and setting the stage for Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. [More]

Eight years ago this month, Israel unilaterally withdrew from South Lebanon, creating a vacuum promptly filled by Iran’s proxy army there, Hezbollah.  Then, in 2005, Israel forcibly removed its citizens living in Gaza and turned the Strip over – temporarily – to Arafat’s right-hand man and successor, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Space constraints will not permit a full rendering of the costs associated with these serial mistakes.  The “peace” with Egypt proved to be a very cold one.  In Sadat’s stead, the government of Hozni Mubarak has promoted virulent hatred for Israel among its people and assiduously armed for renewed conflict with the Jewish State.  It has also used the Sinai to funnel ever-longer-range missiles and other advanced weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip – now under the control of another Palestinian terrorist faction, Hamas.

The latter and its friends, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, are now using Gaza as a safe-haven for planning and executing terrorism against Israel.  It is a safe bet that Israel’s most important ally, the United States, is being targeted from there, as well.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has not just taken over South Lebanon – its dominance of which was greatly strengthened when Olmert’s government proved incapable of decisively defeating the forces of this so-called “Army of God” in 2006.  In recent days, Hezbollah launched attacks in Beirut that effectively produced a coup d’etat.  The hopes for a democratic Lebanon, free of Syrian and Iranian interference, have given way to a dark future for the Lebanese people and their neighbors in Israel, alike.

Tragically, despite this sorry record of retreat followed by intensified danger, Ehud Olmert is making further and even more strategic territorial and political concessions to Israel’s enemies.  By so doing, the Israeli prime minister evidently hopes to stave off accountability for these past mistakes. He also appears to be calculating that “peace-making” will spare him prosecution on myriad corruption charges.

Unfortunately, there is now no basis for depicting such a policy as one in which Israel trades “land for peace.”  Today, Israel is giving up land for war.

In the illusion that that there is any appreciable difference between Fatah and Hamas, Olmert’s government is trying to turn over nearly all the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem to Abbas and his faction’s Palestinian police force.  A similar illusion is causing the United States to give Fatah’s troops training, intelligence collection equipment and arms.  The latter have already used their American-supplied know-how and weapons to kill Israelis.

Olmert is also allowing the Egyptians to broker a cease-fire with Hamas.  The result is predictable:  Hamas will be legitimated, effectively ending international efforts to relegate it to pariah status and probably producing a unity government whereby the two Palestinian factions join forces once again. The stage will then be set for the ultimate defeat of Fatah by Hamas in the West Bank as well, putting all of Israel within range of its weapons.

These tragic steps are now being compounded by one further, potentially staticidal act:  Olmert has just launched negotiations to surrender all of the Golan Heights to Syria.  

This concession would place Syrian – and quite possibly Iranian – forces on high ground which, in Israeli hands, has kept the peace for 35 years. If once again at the disposal of Israel’s enemies, these heights will put northern Israel at risk of, at best, harassing fire and, at worst, a new invasion in force.

Moreover, as my esteemed colleague, Caroline Glick, observed in her Jerusalem Post column last week, if Israel can no longer use the Golan to threaten Syria, Damascus and Tehran may feel free to redouble their subversion in Iraq.  Iran may even conclude the Golan can allow it to checkmate any lingering Israeli willingness to interfere with the mullahs’ pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Importantly, the Israeli people finally seem to have had enough of false peace processes.  Recent polls indicate that two-thirds of Israelis oppose their country’s surrender of the Golan; a majority believe it is motivated by Olmert’s efforts to stave off prosecution. Even the Bush Administration is said to be unhappy about his Golan initiative.

This weekend, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – universally known as “the Israel lobby” – holds its annual Policy Conference in Washington.  The organization exists to support the Israeli government.  At this juncture, however, attendees have an opportunity and an obligation to object to that government’s increasingly reckless, and predictably tragic, conduct.  After all, friends don’t let friends commit staticide.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times

 

 

 

Iranian entanglements

In recent weeks, two news reports have circulated about Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda. On Tuesday, March 18, Sen. John McCain repeatedly stated that Iran was aiding al-Qaeda in Iraq. Later, however, he retracted this statement.

Senator McCain was right the first time. In fact, al-Qaeda and Iran have a rather long history of cooperation.

A few days before Senator McCain’s unfortunate retraction, a senior military adviser to the Barack Obama campaign, retired Air Force general Merrill McPeak, was quoted in the March 15 edition of the Washington Times as saying, “Iran is a big enemy of al-Qaeda.”

General McPeak’s statement is astonishing for its ignorance, especially coming from a flag-rank retired military officer.

The shadowy relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda was first revealed in the report issued by the bipartisan, independent 9/11 Commission back in 2004.

In compiling that exhaustive report, the 9/11 Commission interviewed over 1,000 people from at least 10 countries. Among the conclusions that they reached regarding Iran and al-Qaeda:

  • In late 1991 or early 1992, in meetings held in Sudan, Iran agreed to train al-Qaeda operatives. Not long afterwards, al-Qaeda terrorists traveled to Iran and received training in explosives. Subsequent to this, al-Qaeda terrorists also traveled to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where they received training from Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
  • Once Osama Bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan and established terrorist training camps there, Iran facilitated the transit of jihadists to al-Qaeda training camps via Iran. Among other things, Iran did not stamp their passports when they passed through Iran on their way to Afghanistan. This made it impossible for countries to know when someone had attended a training camp in Afghanistan because there was no record. This policy particularly benefited Saudi members of al-Qaeda, and the Commission reported that 8 to 10 of the Saudi 9-11 hijackers had transited through Iran.
  • The Commission said that intelligence reports indicated continued contacts between al-Qaeda and Iranian officials after Bin Laden had moved back to Afghanistan and it recommended that the U.S. government further investigate the ties between al-Qaeda and Iran.

Other reports have reinforced the 9/11 Commission’s findings of al-Qaeda/Iran cooperation in Iraq:

  • In November 2006, England’s Telegraph newspaper reported Western intelligence agencies as saying that Iran was training al-Qaeda operatives in Tehran and also that Iran had “always maintained close relations with al-Qaeda” despite differences between their Shiite and Sunni philosophies.
  • In January 2007, Eli Lake reported in the New York Sun that U.S. forces had captured documents detailing Iranian activities in Iraq, including the fact that Iran’s infamous Revolutionary Guards Quds Force was working with al-Qaeda there.
  • In May 2007, as reported by Bill Roggio at The Weekly Standard’s website, coalition forces captured a courier carrying messages from al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders to senior al-Qaeda leaders who have long been in safe haven in Iran, including Osama Bin Laden’s son, Said Bin Laden.
  • Also in May 2007, England’s Guardian newspaper reported that Iran was secretly forging ties with al-Qaeda elements in Iraq in an attempt to launch a summer offensive that would prompt Congress to vote for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
  • In July 2007, the Financial Times reported that “western officials” said that Iranian territory was being used as a base by al-Qaeda for terrorist operations in Iraq.
  • In October 2007, the Dallas Morning News reported on warnings from Kurds in northern Iraq of Iranian support for an al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Islam, in their region of Iraq.
  • In February 2008, Muhamad Abdullah al-Shahwani, the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Tamir Al-Tamimi, an advisor to the Iraqi Awakening Councils (a key component in the success of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy), told the Iraqi news service, Azzaman, that Iran was targeting the Awakening Councils with al-Qaeda.

Most of the skepticism over Iranian involvement with al-Qaeda has centered around the fact that Iran is ruled by a Shia Islamic theocracy, whereas al-Qaeda is a Sunni Wahhabi Islamic group. Many are under the mistaken belief that Shiites and Sunnis are irreconcilable arch enemies and will never work with each other. This quaint notion flies in the face of reality.

There are at least three other major examples of Iranian cooperation with militant Sunni organizations besides al-Qaeda:

  • Hamas is a Sunni Palestinian jihadist terrorist organization. Both Hamas and Iran have acknowledged publicly that, at the very least, Iran funds Hamas. The most recent reports out of Israel indicate that Hamas has personnel training in Iran.
  • In January 2007, Iran and Sudan, a mostly Sunni nation, exchanged military delegations and subsequently announced a military accord for mutual training, education, and technical cooperation. At the signing ceremony, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, said that Iran’s and Sudan’s mutual enemies were “focused on a strategy of disintegrating the Islamic states by stirring up sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims” and that "the only way to foil the satanic plot is strengthening unity among Muslim nations.”

    The Sudanese delegate, Sudanese defense minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, responded that he appreciated Iran’s role in helping foster solidarity among Muslim nations and said that the Islamic Revolution under leadership of the late Imam Khomeini was the greatest event of the century in the Islamic history, because it opened the way for unity between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

  • Finally, in November of 2006, a United Nations report included information that Iran had provided the Sunni Islamic Courts in Somalia — a group that has since been linked to al-Qaeda — with “shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers, machine guns, ammunition, medicine, uniforms and other supplies.” The U.N. report also said that Iran may have sought uranium in Somalia.

This overwhelming evidence clearly shows that it is General McPeak who should issue a retraction and Senator McCain who should have stuck to his guns and stood by his original statement.

Iran and al-Qaeda are in league and have been for some time. The sooner politicians on both sides of the aisle educate themselves about this reality, the more effective our global war on terrorism can be.

This article first appeared on National Review Online. 

Sirens in the Strait

In ancient Greek mythology, the Sirens were beautiful sea-maidens, known for chanting sweet melodies to lure hapless sailors into dangerous waters, only to face their demise amongst the jagged rocks. Today’s Sirens are similarly dangerous, using the promise of peace and stability on the oceans to lure various American constituencies into the perilous contours that make up the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (also known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST).

Because the melody takes many forms, numerous analysts have dutifully responded by providing warnings, on these pages and elsewhere, about the various pitfalls and shortcomings contained in this Treaty. We have yet to see, however, a direct response to a particularly disingenuous and dangerously naive siren song: the assertion that our maritime interaction with the terrorism-sponsoring, petro-dictators of Iran could prove less explosive, if only we sign up for the “legal order for the seas and oceans” that LOST holds itself out to be.

In the ongoing debate over whether to subject American maritime interests to the whims of the “international community,” a subset of LOST proponents have taken to pointing to the January 2008 near-altercation between U.S. warships and Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz as evidence of the necessity of U.S. ratification. The notion, however, that accession to LOST either could have prevented such a confrontation or will effectively do so in the future reveals both a lack of understanding about the nature of the leadership in Tehran, as well as a remarkable lack of understanding of the Treaty’s potential to enable and encourage Iranian aggression against the United States.

The incident at issue occurred on January 6, 2008, when, according to accounts by the U.S. Navy, five armed Iranian speedboats manned by the infamous Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps aggressively approached three American warships in the Strait. The speedboats maneuvered very close to the convoy, with at least one coming within 200 yards of one of the ships. Navy recordings picked up a heavily accented voice in English, the exact source of which was not entirely clear, saying “I am coming to you…You will explode after a few minutes.” One of the speedboats proceeded to drop several small, white box-like floating objects in the path of the American convoy.

In the course of the exchange, an American sailor was recorded as saying, “This is a coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I intend no harm.” After ignoring this and other repeated warnings from the warships for roughly 30 minutes, the speedboats fled as American commanders prepared to open fire. In a briefing given shortly after the incident, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, maintained that the warships were traveling 15 miles from Iranian land territory at the time, and therefore outside the outer limits of the 12-mile Iranian territorial waters.

For its part, Tehran accused the United States of “fabricating” the video and audio footage that captured the episode. The Revolutionary Guard Corps maintained that it only asked the warships to identify themselves, as is typical Iranian practice with respect to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Iranian Defense Minister. Vice Admiral Cosgriff responded that the American vessels were clearly marked, and had been identified by Iranian authorities earlier that day.

From this incident flows the argument in some quarters that American ratification of LOST will take away Iran’s “pretext” to challenge American warships in the Strait of Hormuz as it did in January. Apparently, by approving our previous signature to a piece of paper, the U.S. will change Iranian behavior by somehow strengthening the American position that LOST’s provisions allowing “transit passage” through international straits, such as the Strait of Hormuz, are already customary international law, of which the U.S. is entitled to avail itself.

Of course Iran, while having signed LOST, has yet to ratify it, and therefore would not be bound by any of its terms even if we were to commit ourselves. Putting that aside, with respect to Washington-Tehran tensions, American ratification of LOST would at best severely constrain American rights on the oceans while allowing Iran to continue to thumb its nose at whatever “international consensus” emerged on the Strait of Hormuz or other issues. Moreover, at worst, Iran could opt to ratify LOST in response, enabling Ahmadinejad and his masters to exploit the myriad opportunities the Treaty provides for waging “lawfare” against the U.S. in ways that put our national security at grave risk.

To assert that American ratification will strengthen the U.S. position on legality of passage in the Strait by bringing other countries on board with our interpretation is to ignore Iran’s track record of non-responsiveness to any semblance of international consensus. By all accounts, Iran remains well on its way to the level of independent uranium enrichment that would allow it to have nuclear weapons, despite successive rounds of United Nations sanctions intended to force Iran to suspend such activities. Through its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran also continues to disregard the U.N.’s explicit recognition that Israel, by withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000, fully implemented U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 — adherence to which was supposed to eliminate the “pretext” for further Hezbollah (Iranian) attacks. And of course one could write a treatise on Tehran’s ongoing persecution of religious minorities, despite the oft-expressed global condemnation of such practices, including most recently the State Department’s designation of Iran as a “Country of Particular Concern” on such matters.

If, for the sake of argument, there was reason to believe Iran would take seriously any global consensus on passage through the Strait of Hormuz that would supposedly emerge from American ratification of LOST, the U.S. would still be paying far too high a price simply to codify what we already maintain is our right under customary international law. Under LOST, state parties have the ability to use any number of LOST provisions to undermine American sovereignty and security.

The text of LOST would prevent Navy vessels from engaging in the very activities necessary for a strong national defense, for example, by reserving the oceans for “peaceful purposes” and prohibiting submarines from traversing below the surface in territorial waters, and would require the U.S. to transfer knowledge of sensitive marine technology to requesting parties. Although some contend that we already adhere to some of the navigational practices found in LOST, either because we recognize them as customary international law or consider ourselves bound to such practices by previous (non-LOST) treaty commitments, this Treaty alters the framework entirely by requiring state parties to submit to mandatory dispute resolution mechanisms, the rulings of which are binding and without appeal.

While the Department of Defense has maintained that American military activities will be exempt from dispute resolution, and that in any event the U.S. will only submit to LOST arbitration panels where the DoD insists we will win handily, there is plenty of room for abuse. “Military activity”, while nominally exempt from any dispute resolution, remains undefined in the treaty, leaving opportunity for parties hostile to U.S. interests to frame our exercises or operations as “environmental” activities subject to arbitration. The recent ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that sonar training off of the West Coast was not a national security issue, but rather an environmental issue subject to the constraints of federal environmental statutes, illustrates the reality of this risk.

This danger would be magnified in a LOST arbitration panel. Under LOST, if the disputing parties cannot agree on the make-up of the panel, the fifth panelist must be chosen by either the President of the International Law of the Sea Tribunal, or the Secretary General of the United Nations, neither of whom could be relied upon to select a “swing” panelist that would not, acting out of ultimately political motives, tip the panel against the U.S.

Even without any subsequent Iranian ratification, countries that are already party to LOST– including China and Russia, with their increasingly aggressive territorial claims and military confrontations with the U.S. — could take advantage of the obligations buried in the treaty text to our detriment. Iran, were it to ratify LOST, would be no less inclined to wage such lawfare to accomplish what five Revolutionary Guard Corps speedboats could not.

The United States cannot afford to be seduced by those who overestimate Iran’s sense of global responsibility while underestimating its potential to use LOST as yet another asymmetrical weapon. American sovereignty, an unfettered Navy, and where applicable, customary international law, remain our best tools for ensuring stability in critical ocean pathways like the Strait of Hormuz.

This article first appeared in American Spectator, and can be viewed in its original form here.

The truth about Saddam and terrorism

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, according to an official report published by the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses and released through the Joint Forces Command.

That report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, came up with some startling revelations in its 59 pages:

  • Saddam’s Iraq trained terrorists for use inside and outside Iraq and in 1999 sent 10 terrorist-training graduates to London to carry out attacks throughout Europe. (Page 1)
  • Saddam’s Iraq stockpiled munitions (including explosives, missile launchers and silencer-equipped small arms) at its embassies in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Europe. (Pages 3-4)
  • In September of 2001, Saddam’s Iraq sought out and compiled a list of 43 suicide-bomb volunteers in a "Martyrdom Project." (Pages 7-8)
  • The report contains language from a captured Iraqi document which references an attempted assassination of Danielle Mitterand, wife of French President Francois Mitterand, by car bomb. (Page 11)
  • The report’s authors describe Saddam’s Iraq as a "long-standing supporter of international terrorism" including several organizations designated as international terrorist organizations by the US State Department. (Page 13)
  • Among the organizations that captured Iraqi documents indicate were supported by Saddam’s Iraq were: (Pages 13-15).

Fatah-Revolutionary Council (Abu Nidal Organization). (Author’s note: Abu Nidal was generally considered the world’s most dangerous terrorist in the late 1980s.)

Palestine Liberation Front (led by Abu al-Abbas). (Author’s note: Abbas was the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking and the murderer of American Leon Klinghoffer.)

Renewal and Jihad Organization, which the Iraqi documents describe as a "Secret Islamic Palestinian Organization" that "believes in armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

Islamic Ulama Group, a radical Islamist group in northern Pakistan.

The Afghani Islamic Party, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (Author’s note: Hekmatyar is an Afghan mujahideen warlord who is worked with Osama Bin Laden during the 1990s. US intelligence agencies have lost track of Hekmatyar, but believe that he was trying to join Al Qaeda in 2002 when he released a video message calling for armed jihad against the United States. Reports from BBC-TV and CNN claim that Hekmatyar helped Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in 2002.

Islamic Jihad Organization (Egyptian Islamic Jihad). This is perhaps the most startling revelation in the report. Egyptian Islamic Jihad was founded and led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Al Qaeda’s co-leader. The group is most infamous for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Zawahiri is known to have worked in the Al Qaeda organization since its inception, while he was still leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in fact. Al Qaeda was started around 1989 and Zawahiri is said to have been a senior member from its earliest days. He was present in Afghanistan with Bin Laden at the time and later he was in Sudan with Bin Laden until being expelled in 1996 and eventually returning to Afghanistan. In 1998, Zawahiri formally merged Egyptian Islamic Jihad with Al Qaeda and has served as co-leader of Al Qaeda ever since. Iraq’s relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad was so close that captured documents indicate that Iraq was able to request that the group hold off on operations against the regime in Egypt in 1993.

In other words, Saddam’s Iraq had a longstanding relationship with the co-leader of Al Qaeda.

  • Captured documents show that Saddam’s Iraq was training non-Iraqis in Iraqi training camps a decade before Operation Desert Storm, including fighters from the following nations: Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Eritrea, and Morroco. (Pages 15-16)
  • A captured memorandum shows that Saddam’s Iraq had an agreement with an Islamist terrorist group to conduct operations against Egypt during the first Gulf War. (Page 16)
  • A detailed, captured document from 1993 "illuminated how the outwardly secular Saddam regime found common cause with terrorist groups who drew their inspiration from radical Islam." (Page 17)
  • In January 1993, as the American military’s humanitarian mission was begun in Somalia, Saddam directed that Iraq "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil, especially Somalia." (Page 18) Interestingly, Osama Bin Laden was setting up identical operations at the same time.
  • Saddam’s secret intelligence service (IIS) hosted 13 conferences in 2002 for various terrorist groups. (Page 19)
  • Captured Iraqi documents say that the IIS issued passports to known members of terrorist groups. (Page 19)
  • Saddam’s Iraq had close ties and provided funding to Hamas, the Palestinian jihadist organization. Captured documents indicate that Hamas offered to carry out attacks for Saddam’s Iraq in return for his support. In fact, Hamas representatives informed the Iraqis that the organization had 35 armed cells around the world hidden among refugees, including in France, Sweden and Denmark. (Pages 24-25).
  • Saddam’s IIS manufactured bombs in the early 1990s for terrorist Abu Abbas to conduct attacks against American and other interests. Three instances of these bombs failing are evidently the only thing that prevented terrorist attacks against these interests: (Page 30)

"A bomb intended to destroy the American ambassador’s residence in Jakarta, Indonesia failed."

"Bombs designed to destroy the American Airlines office and Japanese embassy in the Philippines exploded prematurely and damaged only the front of the office, while killing one and wounding another of the terrorists transporting the explosives."

  • Saddam’s Iraq carried out terrorist attacks on members of humanitarian organizations operating in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq, including Doctors Without Borders, Handicap International and UN-affiliated organizations. (Pages 31-33)
  • The IIS was willing to reach out to jihadist terrorist groups, including those known to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. This includes the "Army of Muhammad" in Bahrain, which had threatened Kuwaiti authorities and had plans to attack American and Western interests. (Pages 35-36)
  • The report concludes with the following question: "Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against the United States?" The Institute for Defense Analyses then provides the answer:

Yes.

Conclusion

Those who claim that Saddam had no "direct, operational ties" to Al Qaeda are attempting to narrow the definition of "terrorist-sponsoring nation" to an impossible scope. By this definition, a nation, like Saddam’s Iraq, can provide money, arms, safe haven and cooperation to jihadist terrorist groups and not have "direct, operational ties" to terrorists.

This was never the standard by which a nation found itself on the US State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations and implies that, unless a dictator is found directly ordering a terrorist attack, that dictator cannot be considered as linked to a terrorist group.

The "direct, operational ties" standard was invented after the overthrow of Saddam and is a ridiculous standard that can never be met.

Five years after United States forces overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon has produced a blockbuster report that has been both misrepresented and ignored. That report shows that Saddam’s Iraq had extensive ties to international terrorist groups, both Islamist and secular, including organizations that were part of Al Qaeda. No ginned up definition invented for domestic political consumption can change the truth.