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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366492/real-cost-geneva-ilan-berman

Start preparing for Pax Iranica. That is the unspoken message behind the interim nuclear agreement hammered out between the P5+1 powers and Iran in Geneva last month. For, despite the insistence in Washington and European capitals that it is only temporary, the new deal has nonetheless prompted what amounts to a seismic shift in Middle Eastern politics.

Already, the Iranian regime itself has received a much-needed economic reprieve. On the heels of the accord, the Obama administration released billions of dollars in blocked Iranian oil assets as a goodwill gesture. That, however, is just the beginning. According to Iranian officials, the Iranian government will gain access to as much as $15 billion of oil revenues over the next half-year under the terms of the Geneva deal. As a result, Iran is poised to receive at least $20 billion-worth of economic relief — equivalent to nearly half of the country’s hard-currency reserves (currently estimated at some $50 billion) and far greater than originally envisioned by the White House.

These developments have not gone unnoticed. More and more corporations and sovereign states alike are now making plans based on the assumption that eroding sanctions will again make Iran a lucrative commercial market — and a global energy player.

As a result, Iranian officials are waxing optimistic. According to Hadi Ghavami, head of the Iranian parliament’s Plans, Budget, and Auditing Commission, the country’s economy, currently shrinking by 5.8 percent annually, is expected to grow 2.2 percent in the coming year.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/iran-is-now-obamas-bff?f=puball

News about events in Syria took a nosedive the moment the Russians stepped in to take on the job of destroying Bashar Assad’s arsenal of poison gas. It’s not as if Syrians aren’t still dying.

One of the few reliable journalistic enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, put Syria on its front page on December 3. “U.S., Allies Reach Out to Syria’s Islamist Rebels.” One is tempted to wonder out loud whether the U.S. still has any allies given the way Obama has betrayed those who stuck with us through the Cold War and since, along with the Gulf State nations for whom the U.S. has provided an umbrella of military protection.

“The U.S. and its allies held direct talks with key Islamist militias in Syrian, Western officials say, aiming to undercut al Qaeda while acknowledging that religious fighters long shunned by Washington have gained on the battlefield,” reported the Journal.

Translation: The U.S. has no influence left in the Middle East and President Obama, desperately seeking “a legacy”, has decided to give Iran whatever it wants even though it has essentially been at war with us since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Whatever has passed for his foreign policy these past five years has proved to be a failure. Even Americans have concluded that the nation is no longer the influential force it has been since the end of World War Two.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/weakness-begets-challenges

The world stage is trembling with emerging challenges, challenges so deep and potentially fracturing that the globe may never be the same again. This is 1789, 1848, 1917 and 1941 wrapped in one momentous year. Wherever one turns, chaos reigns and, in large part, this dislocation is due to a United States’ reluctant to play its post-World War II role as the “great equalizer.” From the Middle East to the Far East, from London to the Levant, U.S. withdrawal physically and emotionally is having a profound influence on diplomatic calculations.

There are obvious examples. Geneva negotiations over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program offers the retention of fissile material, in return for the relaxation of sanctions. This is precisely what the Iranians have contended for more than a decade. It virtually assures an Iran with nuclear weapons and incorporates the Iranian economy into the global economic network. It also invites regional nuclear proliferation as a counterweight to Iranian ambition and brings Israel close to the brink of war.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/dec/16/most-boring-people-2013plus-howler-year/#.Uq8pVgDaRQM.facebook Even for a culture that worships celebrity there comes a point when enough is enough, such as the following, in no particular order: 1. Tom Hanks: A good guy. Okay actor, especially when portraying everyman. But the Hollywood pomposity is too much. It is always troubling and wearying when people are too perfect and then insist […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/the_land_is_not_the_issue.html Kerry is in the Mideast trying to impose a solution. Pro-Zionists sites are producing maps and trying to dissuade the powers that be from dividing the land, as if that were a real possibility. But the issue is not the land, but the Arabs on it. Call them Arab-Israelis, Palestinians, Fakistinians, whatever. The Arabs are the […]

J. E. Dyer is a retired US Naval intelligence officer who served around the world, afloat and ashore, from 1983 to 2004. Her last operations in the Navy were Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in 2003, and she retired at the rank of Commander. Read more by her” http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/j-e-dyer/rock-hard-place-syria/2013/09/03/0/?print….”Rock Hard Place-Syria”
http://libertyunyielding.com/2013/12/16/peace-in-our-time-belarus-missiles-and-the-revenge-of-the-reset/

For whatever reason, peace is not busting out at all over. After months of coyness and denials from Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, Russia has deployed the first of what will reportedly be a full squadron of fighter jets to a base in Belarus, where they will remain deployed for defensive alerts against – well, NATO. Hard as that is for members of NATO to believe, given the parlous state of our unity, purpose, and military readiness.

The former Soviet Union used bases in what was then a “federated socialist republic” in Belarus during the Cold War. But the Russians will be using a different base this time. Their Su-27 Flanker jets will operate out of Baranovichi, where the Belarusian Air Force has had its main base for the last two decades.

Baranovichi has special historical significance, having been disputed for centuries between Russia and Poland. The Poles held it, off and on, up through the beginning of World War II; by the end of the war, after the death struggle between Soviet Russia and Germany, Baranovichi was in Russian hands, and the Poles who were still there in 1944 and 1945 were forcibly deported to the Far East and Central Asia. About half of Baranovichi’s population had been Jewish, in the century preceding World War II; during the period of German occupation, virtually all of the city’s 12,000 Jews were sent to the death camps. Some 250 are known to have survived.

As the Pax Americana fades, history is back with a vengeance. Everywhere Russia goes – or China, or any modern mover and shaker – there will be history trodden on, scattered like broken glass. Russia remembers, and means to make points with her geographic choices, her timing, and the choreographed nature of her activities. Poland has good reason to be concerned.

Singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is not only a blatant example of double standards; it is an act of complicity with the enduring prejudice against Jews.http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.563920 The American Studies Association has just issued its first ever call for an academic boycott. No, it wasn’t against China, which imprisons dissenting academics. It wasn’t against […]

http://carolineglick.com/kerry-forces-israels-moment-of-decision/

There was a ghoulish creepiness to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Israel last week. Here we were, beset by the greatest winter storm in a hundred years. All roads to Jerusalem were sealed off. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites and residents of surrounding areas were locked down in their houses, without power, heat, telephone service or water.

And all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Kerry appeared. As Hamas-ruled Gazans begged the supposedly hated IDF to come and save them from the floods, and as Israel took over rescue operations for stranded Palestinians living under the rule of the PLO ’s gangster kleptocracy in Judea and Samaria, here was Kerry, telling us that we’d better accept the deal he plans to present us next month, or face the wrath of the US and Europe, and suffer another Palestinian terror war.

What is going on? Why can’t Kerry leave Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of the country alone, even for a week, in the middle of a blizzard of biblical proportions? According to leaks from the now five month old negotiations, after 20 rounds of talks, the Palestinians have not budged from the positions they have held to for the past 50 years. They do not accept Israel’s right to exist. They do not recognize the existence of the Jewish people. They do not believe that the Jews have the right to freedom or self-determination. They insist on taking control of our 3,000 year old capital. They demand that we surrender our ability to defend ourselves from foreign aggression and Palestinian attacks and infiltration from the east.

There is nothing new here, of course, This was the case 13 years ago at the Camp David summit. This was the case during the Annapolis summit in 2007 and 2008. This was the case when PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas rejected then prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer of peace in 2008.

Facing the Palestinians’ continued defiance of the very notion of peaceful coexistence with Israel, Kerry is planning to present his own peace deal next month and try to force Israel to accept it. Although the text of Kerry’s deal has not yet been revealed, we know exactly what it will involve just by listening to what he has already told us.