The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
nObama's Nuclear Contrition
Caroline Glick
~~~
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Aren't Rigged Systems Supposed to be slump-Trump's Thing? There is more than a little irony in a candidate who brags about exploiting corrupt systems complaining so bitterly about systematic corruption. But 2016 being what it is, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised.
Donald slump-Trump wanted to make clear on Sunday to reporters on Staten Island that he was not encouraging violence at the Republican National Convention when he had warned the day before of a “rough July” for his adopted party if he was denied its presidential nomination.
“I hope it doesn’t involve violence. I hope it doesn’t. I’m not suggesting that,” slump-Trump reportedly said. “I hope it doesn’t involve violence, and I don’t think it will. But I will say this, it’s a rigged system, it’s a crooked system. It’s 100 percent corrupt.”
slump-Trump’s focus on the corruption of the process is a good excuse to his supporters for why he is not doing better than he is in the delegate hunt. It is also a powerful message for those who believe that the entirety of the system, not just the nominating process, is rigged against them. And it’s tacit acknowledgement that slump-Trump understands that he faces longish odds of capturing the nomination outright.
The campaign’s focus on the process also cuts the other way, though. It has given his main rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, the chance to mock slump-Trump for whining. Certainly, a person who once said that Americans would win so much under a President slump-Trump that they would get “bored with winning” doesn’t sound good rationalizing losses.
Donald slump-Trump wanted to make clear on Sunday to reporters on Staten Island that he was not encouraging violence at the Republican National Convention when he had warned the day before of a “rough July” for his adopted party if he was denied its presidential nomination.
“I hope it doesn’t involve violence. I hope it doesn’t. I’m not suggesting that,” slump-Trump reportedly said. “I hope it doesn’t involve violence, and I don’t think it will. But I will say this, it’s a rigged system, it’s a crooked system. It’s 100 percent corrupt.”
slump-Trump’s focus on the corruption of the process is a good excuse to his supporters for why he is not doing better than he is in the delegate hunt. It is also a powerful message for those who believe that the entirety of the system, not just the nominating process, is rigged against them. And it’s tacit acknowledgement that slump-Trump understands that he faces longish odds of capturing the nomination outright.
The campaign’s focus on the process also cuts the other way, though. It has given his main rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, the chance to mock slump-Trump for whining. Certainly, a person who once said that Americans would win so much under a President slump-Trump that they would get “bored with winning” doesn’t sound good rationalizing losses.
slump-Trump’s critics have long pointed out the incongruity of slump-Trump’s organizational failures with his frequent boasts that his solutions to most of the nation’s ills involve, at least in part, “hiring the best people.” And that’s a fair criticism. If managerial prowess is a candidate’s central selling point, a process that is both knowable and relatively weak should be no problem. -Fox News
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slump-Trump offers sweeteners for Nevada delegates - WashEx’s David Drucker reports: “Donald slump-Trump’s campaign is going all out to win delegates in Nevada, offering to cover transportation and lodging costs for Nevada supporters who travel to Reno in mid-May to participate in delegate elections. slump-Trump’s Nevada activities contradict his claim that he has deliberately declined to invest resources in the election of delegates to the Republican nominating convention in Cleveland because the process is ‘corrupt.’” -Fox News
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Major fight brewing at RNC rules meeting this week - AP: “In an extraordinary display of internal discord, the chairman of the Republican Party’s rules committee accused top GOP officials Saturday of ‘a breach of our trust’ by improperly trying to impede a proposed change in bylaws that would make it harder for party leaders to nominate a fresh candidate for president. Bruce Ash, RNC committeeman from Arizona, wrote the harshly worded email to the other 55 members of the GOP rules committee that he chairs. The confidential email, obtained by The Associated Press, was written days before party officials gather in Hollywood, Florida, for preliminary discussions about what rules the GOP will use at its presidential nominating convention this July…Ash said he has ‘become troubled’ during discussions with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and other party officials that by not making the proposed change, GOP officials ‘could use their power to attempt to achieve a political result’ at the nominating convention.” -Fox News
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Senate Committee Subpoenas EPA Over
Gold King Mine Disaster
Barbara Hollingsworth
Barbara Hollingsworth
.
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{cnsnews.com} ~ Senate Indian Affairs Chairman John Barrasso (R,-Wyo.) and Vice Chairman John Tester (D.-Mont.) agreed Wednesday to subpoena Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy... or a top aide to appear at an upcoming oversight field hearing on the Gold King Mine disaster scheduled for April 22nd in Phoenix. The subpoena - the first issued by the committee since its investigation into the activities of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004 – included Assistant EPA Administrator Mathy Stanislaus. The committee said Stanislaus was “invited to testify at the field hearing, but the EPA declined to send him.”... http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/senate-committee-issues-first-subpoena-abramoff-epa-chief-over
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Supreme Court looks split on nObama's
illegal immigrant policy
Sean Higgins
.
.
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ The eight Supreme Court justices appeared evenly split during Monday's oral arguments in the case over President nObama's 2014 policy to not deport an estimated four million immigrants illegally living in the U.S. ... That is likely a bad sign for the administration because a 4-4 split in U.S. v. Texas would mean that lower court rulings halting the policy would stand. The court's conservative block repeatedly grilled U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli over the administration's position that the 26 states challenging the policy lacked standing to bring their case. The liberal justices challenged the states' representative, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, over his argument that the administration had overstepped its authority...
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Russian Jet Threatened U.S. Recon Aircraft
Bill Gertz
.
.
{freebeacon.com} ~ A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday in the latest military provocation by Moscow over the Baltic Sea, the U.S. European Command said Saturday... “On April 14, a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft flying a routine route in international airspace over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” said Navy Capt. Danny Hernandez. “This intercept comes shortly after the unsafe Russian encounters with USS Donald Cook,” he added. “There have been repeated incidents over the last year where Russian military aircraft have come close enough to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns, and we are very concerned with any such behavior.”... http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-jet-threatened-u-s-recon-aircraft/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=7d187e4d5d-WFB_Morning_Beacon_04_18_164_17_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-7d187e4d5d-45611665
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Israel Refuses to Relinquish Golan Heights
in Face of ISIS Threat
Adam Kredo
.
.
{freebeacon.com} ~ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Sunday that the Golan Heights territory in northern Israel would “forever remain in Israeli hands,”... prompting an immediate endorsement from Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz, according to comments offered to the Free Beacon. Netanyahu on Sunday held an honorary meeting of his cabinet in the Golan Heights, contested territory that Israel annexed from Syria in 1981. During a speech at the site on Sunday, he said that Israel would never relinquish its right to the territory in the face of an encroaching threat from Islamic State terrorists and other forces as Syria continues to struggle with a sectarian war that has attracted jihadis... http://freebeacon.com/politics/israel-refuses-relinquish-golan-heights-face-isis-threat/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=7d187e4d5d-WFB_Morning_Beacon_04_18_164_17_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-7d187e4d5d-45611665
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Review of “Vaxxed” deleted From Huffington Post
Sharyl Attkisson
.
.
{sharylattkisson.com} ~ “Vaxxed” is a new documentary that recounts a story the news media will not tell and Congress will not hold hearings on. A current CDC senior scientist, Dr. William Thompson, has confessed to taking part in a long term effort to mask the link between vaccines and autism... He has described in some detail allegations of how he and his CDC senior colleagues quite literally pulled out a trash can and threw away data that proved damaging to the conclusion they wanted the study to form. The broad propaganda campaign to try to stop people from seeing the film is understandable from the standpoint of the vaccine industry, government and medical establishment actors who have long pushed a single narrative in lockstep: Don’t question vaccine safety. It’s understandable they prefer to keep the film unseen, because Dr. Thompson makes a compelling witness against himself and his colleagues. He has no apparent motivation to lie about taking part in what many consider scientific fraud. Quite the contrary, he talks about his conscience and disbelief that “they did what they did.”...
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False Moral Equivalence as a Tool
to Demonize Israel
Manfred Gerstenfeld and Jamie Berk
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Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu
.
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Among the many tools mobilized for the demonization of Israel, one frequently used is a mode of argument known as false moral equivalence. The term "moral equivalence," originates from a 1906 address by American philosopher William James... It is the claim that there is no difference between two actions of greatly varying character. It is frequently used to emphasize similarities between two otherwise dissimilar acts. False moral equivalence undermines norms and values in a society, blurring the lines between good and evil also right and wrong. False moral equivalence comparing Israel's actions to those of the Nazis was used by several prominent social-democratic politicians, including French President François Mitterrand, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. When two dissimilar realities are linked such as Israel and Nazism, use of one side of the equivalence will eventually automatically bring to mind the other – however distorted the comparison may be. Subsequent repetition results in an acceptance, where the false moral equivalence is no longer countered or questioned...
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NYPD Blues
Myron Magnet
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{city-journal.org} ~ With crazy homeless people randomly smashing, slashing, and stabbing passersby, graffiti spreading across the city with no one bothering to clean it, racial tensions stoked by race hustlers in Gracie Mansion... welfare rolls mushrooming, a reborn pay-to-play political culture, school discipline so dead that public education fails more than ever, police demoralized by a mayor who not only doesn’t have their back but publicly slanders them, while the city council weakens the quality-of-life policing tools that brought New York back to life under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, you have to wonder if any element that created the urban dystopia of Mayors John Lindsay, Abe Beame, and David Dinkins is still missing. And sure enough, now even police corruption is back. With five top cops recently demoted, and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton telling the New York Post that investigations by his Internal Affairs Bureau and the FBI are turning up evidence that stinks as foully as that uncovered by the 1970s Knapp Commission investigation into corrupt cops, but that he can’t talk about it while the probe continues, you can only imagine what’s about to hit the fan. All we need now is a brush with municipal bankruptcy and a president who responds by telling New York to drop dead, as the Daily News’s famous 1975 headline put it, and the recurring nightmare will be complete... http://city-journal.org/html/nypd-blues-14400.html
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Weaponized Horror and the Constraints of Conscience
David P. Goldman
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Alan Kurdi, 3, drowned last year in a failed attempt to sail from
Turkey to the Greek island of Kos
Turkey to the Greek island of Kos
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{meforum.org} ~ Just after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, I warned that radical Islam would horrify the West into submission. In Europe, it has taken a giant step towards success... Europe's horror at the prospect of human suffering has made it supine. Sadly, the more the Europeans indulge in their humanitarian impulses, the more Muslims will suffer. To be kind is to be cruel. The 240ft Monica had been spotted in international waters during the night. When Italian coastguard boats drew alongside, the crews were shocked to see men and women on board begin dangling the infants over the side. The refugees – mostly Kurds and many said to be heading for Britain – calmed down only when they were assured they would not be turned away from Italy. What kind of people threaten to murder their own babies? What kind of people threaten to murder their own babies? The normal response would be to arrest them and put them in prison for endangering children. The Monica incident is multiplied ten thousand-fold at the diplomatic level. Turkey's president and de facto dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last October threatened European officials with 10,000 to 15,000 drowned migrants, according to minutes leaked to a Greek news site and widely reported by European mainstream media–with no official denial. Erdogan demanded 6 billion Euros up front and 3 billion Euros a year to stop the refugee flow, telling European officials...This is very sad.
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British Forces Wipe Out 25,000
Muslim Terrorists
Theodore Shoebat
.
.
{shoebat.com} ~ More than 25,000 members of the Islamic State terror group have been killed in the relentless war fought by Britain and its allies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal... The campaign has halved the number of jihadi fighters in IS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq in just 20 months and eliminated scores of the group’s leaders, with bombing raids and missile strikes by the RAF playing a crucial role. The revelations of how IS has been dealt a series of devastating blows emerged in an exclusive interview with Colonel Steve Warren, the US military spokesman for the US-led global coalition against Islamic State... http://shoebat.com/2016/04/17/british-forces-wipe-out-25000-muslim-terrorists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shoebat+%28Walid+Shoebat%29
{shoebat.com} ~ More than 25,000 members of the Islamic State terror group have been killed in the relentless war fought by Britain and its allies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal... The campaign has halved the number of jihadi fighters in IS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq in just 20 months and eliminated scores of the group’s leaders, with bombing raids and missile strikes by the RAF playing a crucial role. The revelations of how IS has been dealt a series of devastating blows emerged in an exclusive interview with Colonel Steve Warren, the US military spokesman for the US-led global coalition against Islamic State... http://shoebat.com/2016/04/17/british-forces-wipe-out-25000-muslim-terrorists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shoebat+%28Walid+Shoebat%29
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American Forces Kill Major ISIS Leader
.
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{shoebat.com} ~ A senior ISIS fighter was killed in a helicopter raid in Iraq on Monday, according to the Kurdish regional security council... The joint attack was carried out by US forces alongside Kurdish counter-terrorism forces to the south of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. A statement identified one of the dead as Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, also known as Abu Saif. Al-Jabouri was killed with two of his assistants, said the statement. He is said to be part of the jihadist group’s war council and as such a senior member. It seems the attack was a deliberate targeted at Al-Jabouri... http://shoebat.com/2016/04/18/american-forces-kill-major-isis-leader/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shoebat+%28Walid+Shoebat%29
..
nObama's Nuclear Contrition
Caroline Glick
.
.
{truthrevolt.org} ~ On Monday, US Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, hanoi-Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack nObama next month.
The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, nObama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, nObama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, and so end World War II with far fewer dead than a land invasion of Japan would have required, by enabling America’s enemies to target the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.
nObama views his nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as his greatest foreign policy achievement.
Unfortunately for his legacy building and for global security, for the past several weeks news stories have made clear that critics of nObama’s nuclear deal with Iran – who claimed that far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the deal would enable Iran to develop them in broad daylight, and encourage Iran to step up its support for terror and regional aggression – were entirely correct.
All of the warnings sounded by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other leaders have been borne out. All of the warnings sounded by the leaders of the Persian Gulf kingdoms were correct.
Every major commitment nObama made to Congress and to US allies in the wake of the deal have been shown in retrospect to have been false.
nObama told Congress that while the deal did require the US to drop its nuclear sanctions against Iran, the non-nuclear sanctions would remain in place. In recent weeks, media reports have made clear that the administration’s commitment to maintain non-nuclear sanctions on Iran has collapsed.
This collapse is most immediately apparent in the administration’s helpless response to Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles.
When nObama and his advisers sold the nuclear deal to Congress last summer, they promised that the binding UN Security Council resolution that Ambassador Samantha Power rushed to pass to anchor the nuclear deal maintained the previous UN ban on Iranian ballistic missile development.
This, it works out, was a lie. The resolution significantly waters down the language. Given the weak language, today the Russians convincingly argue that Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles did not violate the UN resolution.
Then and now, nObama and his advisers argued that ballistic missiles are not part of the mullahs’ nuclear project. This claim, which made little sense at the time, makes no sense whatsoever today.
Ballistic missiles of course are the Iranians’ delivery systems of choice for their nuclear warheads.
This fact was driven home last week when the Iranian media reported the opening of a high explosives factory in Tehran. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehgan participated in the opening ceremony.
According to nuclear experts, HMX or octogen high explosives are suitable for building nuclear triggers. In other words, Tehran just built, in a very public manner, a new facility for its military nuclear program. As Iran’s Tasnim news service explained, HMX is a “high explosive used almost exclusively in military applications, including as a solid rocket propellant.”
Last week at his nuclear conference, nObama said that Iran has been abiding by the letter, but not the spirit of the nuclear deal. But this is another lie. Last summer nObama insisted that the deal would prevent Iran from developing and building nuclear weapons by imposing an intrusive, unlimited inspections regime on all of Iran’s nuclear sites.
But this was a lie. As Eli Lake noted in Bloomberg News last week, in contravention of nObama’s explicit commitments to Congress, Iran is refusing to permit UN nuclear inspectors access to its military nuclear sites.
Not only were UN inspectors barred last fall from visiting the Parchin nuclear military site where the Iranians are suspected of developing nuclear warheads. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency admitted recently that far from expanding its access to Iran’s nuclear sites, the deal severely limited it. Out of fear that Iran will walk away from the deal, the US is allowing Iran to block IAEA inspectors.
So while the US gave up its right to unlimited inspection of Iran’s nuclear installations, and consequently has little way of knowing what is happening inside them, the US stands back and allows Iran to develop the means to deliver nuclear warheads which the US cannot know whether or not Iran possesses because it cannot access Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But for nObama, none of this is a reason to stop canceling the sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, as nObama sees things, Iran’s non-compliance with the letter of the deal seems to be a reason to cancel the non-nuclear sanctions as well.
Take the dollarization of the Iranian economy.
nObama administration officials pledged to Congress that in the aftermath of the deal, Iran would remain barred from using US financial institutions and so barred from trading in the dollar.
Yet, in what Omri Ceren from the Israeli Project refers to as a “one-hop, two-hops” process, the administration is allowing Iran to use foreign banks to gain access to the US dollar and dollarize is transactions.
Following his visit to Hiroshima, hanoi-Kerry traveled to the Persian Gulf where the US’s spurned Arab allies and commanders of the US navy’s Fifth Fleet demonstrated to him how Iran has been emboldened by the deal.
Since it was concluded, they noted, Iran has stepped up its support for terrorism and its regional aggression. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and other states told hanoi-Kerry that since the deal was concluded Iran’s support for terrorism and insurgencies has expanded in Yemen and Syria. Naval commanders reported on the four shipments of illicit Iranian arms the navy commandeered en route to Yemen.
Although slightly embarrassed, hanoi-Kerry was unmoved. He merely maintained nObama’s line that Iran is keeping the letter of the agreement if ignoring its spirit. He insisted that there are moderates in the regime that support the deal – although they have no power.
Then, as The New York Times reported, hanoi-Kerry said the US would “continue to lift the economic sanctions against Iran that it agreed to as part of the nuclear accord, even while imposing new ones to counter Tehran’s missile launches, an effort now underway at the UN Security Council.”
But again, Russia has blocked further sanctions against Iran. Moreover Russia is doubling down on its deal to sell advanced SU-30 fighters to the Iranian air force. With the S-30, Iran will be able to end Israel’s air superiority and threaten all of its neighbors in the Persian Gulf.
As to air forces, Iran’s Hezbollah proxy have inherited a US-trained one.
According to testimony Middle East expert Tony Badran gave before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, the Lebanese Military Forces, generously supported by the US, is now a junior partner to Hezbollah.
As Badran put it, “The partnership between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Hezbollah has grown to such an extent that it is now meaningful to speak of the LAF as an auxiliary force in Hezbollah’s war effort.”
At Hiroshima Monday, hanoi-Kerry and his fellow foreign ministers signed a declaration reaffirming their “commitment to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.”
They went on to pat themselves on the back for their nuclear deal with Iran, which they insisted showed that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – which the Iran deal effectively gutted – remains “the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation architecture.”
Several commentators have urged nObama not to visit Hiroshima. But really, what would it matter? nObama’s lies about his nuclear deal launched the world on a course where the worst regimes now know that all they need to do to get immunity for their aggression is to develop nuclear weapons while the nObama administration hectors US allies to deplete their own nuclear arsenals.
Visiting Hiroshima and symbolically apologizing for the US strikes that ended World War II would be far less devastating to the cause of international peace than the war nObama ensured by permitting the world’s most prolific sponsor of terrorism to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, nObama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, nObama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, and so end World War II with far fewer dead than a land invasion of Japan would have required, by enabling America’s enemies to target the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.
nObama views his nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as his greatest foreign policy achievement.
Unfortunately for his legacy building and for global security, for the past several weeks news stories have made clear that critics of nObama’s nuclear deal with Iran – who claimed that far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the deal would enable Iran to develop them in broad daylight, and encourage Iran to step up its support for terror and regional aggression – were entirely correct.
All of the warnings sounded by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other leaders have been borne out. All of the warnings sounded by the leaders of the Persian Gulf kingdoms were correct.
Every major commitment nObama made to Congress and to US allies in the wake of the deal have been shown in retrospect to have been false.
nObama told Congress that while the deal did require the US to drop its nuclear sanctions against Iran, the non-nuclear sanctions would remain in place. In recent weeks, media reports have made clear that the administration’s commitment to maintain non-nuclear sanctions on Iran has collapsed.
This collapse is most immediately apparent in the administration’s helpless response to Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles.
When nObama and his advisers sold the nuclear deal to Congress last summer, they promised that the binding UN Security Council resolution that Ambassador Samantha Power rushed to pass to anchor the nuclear deal maintained the previous UN ban on Iranian ballistic missile development.
This, it works out, was a lie. The resolution significantly waters down the language. Given the weak language, today the Russians convincingly argue that Iran’s recent tests of ballistic missiles did not violate the UN resolution.
Then and now, nObama and his advisers argued that ballistic missiles are not part of the mullahs’ nuclear project. This claim, which made little sense at the time, makes no sense whatsoever today.
Ballistic missiles of course are the Iranians’ delivery systems of choice for their nuclear warheads.
This fact was driven home last week when the Iranian media reported the opening of a high explosives factory in Tehran. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehgan participated in the opening ceremony.
According to nuclear experts, HMX or octogen high explosives are suitable for building nuclear triggers. In other words, Tehran just built, in a very public manner, a new facility for its military nuclear program. As Iran’s Tasnim news service explained, HMX is a “high explosive used almost exclusively in military applications, including as a solid rocket propellant.”
Last week at his nuclear conference, nObama said that Iran has been abiding by the letter, but not the spirit of the nuclear deal. But this is another lie. Last summer nObama insisted that the deal would prevent Iran from developing and building nuclear weapons by imposing an intrusive, unlimited inspections regime on all of Iran’s nuclear sites.
But this was a lie. As Eli Lake noted in Bloomberg News last week, in contravention of nObama’s explicit commitments to Congress, Iran is refusing to permit UN nuclear inspectors access to its military nuclear sites.
Not only were UN inspectors barred last fall from visiting the Parchin nuclear military site where the Iranians are suspected of developing nuclear warheads. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency admitted recently that far from expanding its access to Iran’s nuclear sites, the deal severely limited it. Out of fear that Iran will walk away from the deal, the US is allowing Iran to block IAEA inspectors.
So while the US gave up its right to unlimited inspection of Iran’s nuclear installations, and consequently has little way of knowing what is happening inside them, the US stands back and allows Iran to develop the means to deliver nuclear warheads which the US cannot know whether or not Iran possesses because it cannot access Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But for nObama, none of this is a reason to stop canceling the sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, as nObama sees things, Iran’s non-compliance with the letter of the deal seems to be a reason to cancel the non-nuclear sanctions as well.
Take the dollarization of the Iranian economy.
nObama administration officials pledged to Congress that in the aftermath of the deal, Iran would remain barred from using US financial institutions and so barred from trading in the dollar.
Yet, in what Omri Ceren from the Israeli Project refers to as a “one-hop, two-hops” process, the administration is allowing Iran to use foreign banks to gain access to the US dollar and dollarize is transactions.
Following his visit to Hiroshima, hanoi-Kerry traveled to the Persian Gulf where the US’s spurned Arab allies and commanders of the US navy’s Fifth Fleet demonstrated to him how Iran has been emboldened by the deal.
Since it was concluded, they noted, Iran has stepped up its support for terrorism and its regional aggression. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and other states told hanoi-Kerry that since the deal was concluded Iran’s support for terrorism and insurgencies has expanded in Yemen and Syria. Naval commanders reported on the four shipments of illicit Iranian arms the navy commandeered en route to Yemen.
Although slightly embarrassed, hanoi-Kerry was unmoved. He merely maintained nObama’s line that Iran is keeping the letter of the agreement if ignoring its spirit. He insisted that there are moderates in the regime that support the deal – although they have no power.
Then, as The New York Times reported, hanoi-Kerry said the US would “continue to lift the economic sanctions against Iran that it agreed to as part of the nuclear accord, even while imposing new ones to counter Tehran’s missile launches, an effort now underway at the UN Security Council.”
But again, Russia has blocked further sanctions against Iran. Moreover Russia is doubling down on its deal to sell advanced SU-30 fighters to the Iranian air force. With the S-30, Iran will be able to end Israel’s air superiority and threaten all of its neighbors in the Persian Gulf.
As to air forces, Iran’s Hezbollah proxy have inherited a US-trained one.
According to testimony Middle East expert Tony Badran gave before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, the Lebanese Military Forces, generously supported by the US, is now a junior partner to Hezbollah.
As Badran put it, “The partnership between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Hezbollah has grown to such an extent that it is now meaningful to speak of the LAF as an auxiliary force in Hezbollah’s war effort.”
At Hiroshima Monday, hanoi-Kerry and his fellow foreign ministers signed a declaration reaffirming their “commitment to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.”
They went on to pat themselves on the back for their nuclear deal with Iran, which they insisted showed that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – which the Iran deal effectively gutted – remains “the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation architecture.”
Several commentators have urged nObama not to visit Hiroshima. But really, what would it matter? nObama’s lies about his nuclear deal launched the world on a course where the worst regimes now know that all they need to do to get immunity for their aggression is to develop nuclear weapons while the nObama administration hectors US allies to deplete their own nuclear arsenals.
Visiting Hiroshima and symbolically apologizing for the US strikes that ended World War II would be far less devastating to the cause of international peace than the war nObama ensured by permitting the world’s most prolific sponsor of terrorism to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
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