Obama’s SOTU Remarks and Iran’s Negotiations Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom
Note: Andrew Bostom’s forthcoming monograph, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel, will be published next month.
During last evening’s (January 28, 2014) State of the Union speech, President Obama not only claimed “American diplomacy” had somehow “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program,” he peevishly threatened,[L]et me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it.
His comments represented the apotheosis of a surreal tragicomedy of U.S. diplomatic failure that has unfolded over the past two months.
Less than three weeks after the November 24, 2013 announcement of an interim agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other world powers, during an interview which aired December 11, 2013, Iranian Middle East analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini, provided a candid assessment of the negotiations.El-Hosseini, a former political advisor to both Iran’s alleged reformist ex-President Khatami, and the Khatami regime’s erstwhile Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ata’ollah Mohajerani (also deemed a “moderate”), underscored the ancient Islamic doctrinal bases for the contemporary Iranian theocracy’s geo-politics. Invoking the armistice “Treaty of Hudaybiyya” agreement between Muhammad and the 7th century pagan Quraysh tribe of Mecca, which Islam’s prophet-warrior unilaterally abrogated as soon Muhammad’s jihadist forces achieved the military superiority needed to vanquish his Meccan foes, el-Hosseini declared:
This is the Treaty of Hudaybiyya in Geneva, and it will be followed by a “conquest of Mecca.”
Consistent with Muhammad’s tactical formulation when waging jihad, “War is deceit” (from the canonical hadith “traditions” of the Muslim prophet), the Islamic doctrine of takiya, or kitman (“concealment”; “disguise”),and the modern parallel of Soviet Communist deceit and conspiracy (especially during arms control negotiations), el-Hosseini also noted,
Incidentally, for your information, when you conduct political negotiations with Iran, you lose even when you think you have won. The [Iranians] have raised the level of uranium enrichment far beyond the level they really needed, so that when the level would be lowered, they would emerge victorious.
El-Hosseini further insisted the Geneva deal augured America’s eventual jihad conquest during Iran’s ongoing “fierce war with Americans on all levels.” While this claim appears dubious, at present, El-Hosseini contended, appositely, that the agreement marked near-term U.S. capitulation to Iran’s oft-repeated threat to destroy Israel by jihad—including via nuclear weapons.
Obama had to make a great retreat. He was forced to accept a handshake from President Rohani [Rouhani], whom he considered a kind of Gorbachev or Sadat, so that the day would not come when he would be forced to kiss the hands of [Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah]Hassan Nasrallah and [Supreme Leader of Iran] Imam Khamenei, so that they would hold their fire in the great war that was prepared to annihilate Israel.
Thursday, December 9, 2013, Ali Akbar Salehi, current head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), and touted as a “pragmatist,” proclaimed triumphantly, “Our centrifuges are working full capacity.” Within a week later, Marzieh Afkham, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, projecting Tehran’s official narrative in reference to the Geneva accord, commented that there was in fact, “no treaty and no pact, only a statement of intent.” Echoing this line, the Iranian daily Kayhan, published by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, maintained in a Sunday, 12/15/13 editorial that the accord’s six month time frame meant nothing, and it could “even take 20 years to negotiate” a final agreement. 73 Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan concluded bluntly,
If our centrifuges do not continue to turn, no other wheel shall turn for our dignity, independence, power and security.
These statements were representative of a host of other similar pronouncements made by Iranian diplomats, politicians, clerics, and other officials, since the Geneva accord was announced (1/24/13), through the end of December, 2013, and well into January, 2014. Such rhetorical Iranian interpretation of the recent agreement was accompanied by actions demonstrating Iran was tenaciously pursuing the full gamut of its nuclear aspirations, undaunted. Other salient examples of this consistent Iranian trend—both rhetoric and actions—are presented below, chronologically:
- President Rouhani told the Financial Times, in an interview published 11/29/13, that dismantling Iran’s nuclear facilities was a “red line” Iran would not cross, and that the nation would set its own concentration limits for uranium enrichment.
- Mansour Haqiqatpour, Vice-Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told the Fars News Agency on 12/9/13, that “Iran’s enrichment right,” was “recognized,” and “the Americans can’t take this right away from us.” His declaration reiterated a prior statement made by Seyed Abbas Araqchi, a senior Iranian negotiator in the “P5 + 1” talks, who insisted Iran’s right to enrich uranium was a (another) “red line” sanctioned by the Geneva deal itself.
- On December 12, 2013, AEOI chief Salehi re-affirmed his 12/9/03 statement about the pace of uranium enrichment continuing at “full capacity,” dismissing as “baseless and wrong” contentions that aspects of Iran’s nuclear activities had been slowed. Iran “will never cross its red lines or give up its…inalienable right” to enrich uranium, Saleh added. Saleh also insisted “there will be no more inspection” of Arak’s heavy-water plutonium reactor facilities.
- December 16th and 17th, 2013, Iran’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Zarif, protested the move by the U.S. Congress to legislate a regimen of bolstered economic sanctions, while maintaining, defiantly,
It shows a lack of understanding of how to proceed in order to resolve the nuclear issue. Some people are wedded to the idea that pressure will produce results. They are wrong. Pressure has produced 18,000 centrifuges in Iran. So if they want to continue that road – it is open to them, but it doesn’t produce any results.
- On December 27, 2013—capitalizing on an obvious loophole defect in the Geneva interim agreement—Salehi announced that Iran would be producing new, more sophisticated centrifuges, capable of enriching uranium faster.
- By December 29, 2013, senior Iranian Parliamentarians announced they had obtained 200 co-sponsors from among their colleagues for a bill requiring Iran’s government to enrich uranium to 60%, complete the nuclear infrastructures at the Fordo and Natanz installations, and launch the Arak heavy water plutonium reactor. Saturday January 4, 2014, the Fars News Agency reported a claim by Seyed Mehdi Moussavinejad, a member of the parliament’s Energy Commission, that this “double-urgency bill, signed by 218 legislators,” was presented to the “Presiding Board,” and submitted to the parliament’s speaker, Ali Larijani. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and senior negotiator in the P5 +1 talks Araqchi further maintained that if the Iranian parliament approves the draft bill, it will be binding for the government.
- Friday January 3, 2014, parliamentarian and cleric Muhammad Nabavian stated brazenly (as per Iranian press reports, independently reviewed and translated by The Washington Free Beacon) that Iran would be able to build a nuclear bomb in “two weeks” if it obtains “access to 270 kilograms of 20 percent [enriched uranium], 10 tons of 5 percent, and 20 thousand centrifuges.” Nabavian added, “We are not looking for a nuclear bomb, but having a nuclear bomb is necessary to put down Israel.”
- By Tuesday, January 14, 2014, President Rouhani was brazen enough to gloat about the “P5 + 1” Geneva accord, via his twitter account (tweet reproduced below as text, and a screen shot). He crowed that the U.S. et al (at Geneva) had acquiesced to the “Iranian nation’s” own perceived nuclear goals:
Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation’s interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will.
- One day earlier (January 13, 2014), Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif was photographed in a Beirut, Lebanon suburb laying a wreath on the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah jihadist leader who planned the 1983 “martyrdom” bombings of the U.S. embassy, and Marine barracks, which, in sum, killed over 350 persons. Mughniyeh also orchestrated the 1992 and 1994 Buenos Aires bombings which targeted the Israeli embassy, and Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), respectively, murdering 114 people between the two attacks. According to a 2006 indictment by the Investigations Unit of the Office of the Attorney General of Argentina, the ultimate decision to bomb the AMIA center was not only made by Khamenei, and then-president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, but the “determining factor” which motivated the attack, was,
the Argentine government’s unilateral decision to terminate the nuclear materials and technology supply agreements that had been concluded some years previously between Argentina and Iran…[A]t this period the Iranian government felt that it was crucial for Iran to develop its nuclear capacities.
- Saturday, January 18, 2014, the Fars News Agency reported the comments of a senior Iranian Parliamentarian, Mohammad Hassan Asafari, who serves on the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission. Describing Foreign Minister Zarif’s recent trip to Lebanon, which included a meeting with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, Asafari claimed,
During this meeting, the (Iranian) foreign minister reiterated that support will continue for the resistance movement Hezbollah, which seeks to establish peace in Lebanon and fight hegemony.
- A day earlier, Friday January 17, 2014, Israeli Middle East security analyst Avi Issacharoff reported that despite the ongoing internecine Shiite-Sunni carnage in Syria, (Shiite) Hezbollah was still committing “more than a third” of its forces on the Lebanese border with Israel. These forces were engaged in “massive excavations” in Shiite towns and villages along the southern border, including shelters, storage facilities for an estimated 100,000 rockets, and the possible construction of tunnels for attacks into Israel. Citing a recent Nasrallah speech during which he declared that Hezbollah “has an old, new, and renewed score to settle,” Issacharoff suggested the jihadist organization was preparing for a new round of “limited,” but damaging assaults, short of all out warfare.
- By January 20, 2014, even as Iran claimed to have begun halting its production of 20% enriched uranium “in the Fordow and Natanz sites,” the New York Times reported another glaring deficiency acknowledged by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as per the 11/24/13 “P5 + 1” joint plan of action for monitoring Iranian compliance:
Iran did not agree to all of the intrusive inspection regime that the International Atomic Energy Agency had said was needed to ensure that the Iranian program is peaceful.
- Interviewed on Wednesday, January 22, 2013, Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif implored CNN Chief National Security correspondent Jim Sciutto to read the actual text of the (P5 + 1) agreement, to dispel false claims by the Obama Administration it compels Iran to “dismantle” (any of) its nuclear infrastructure:
The White House tries to portray it as basically a dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. That is the word they use time and again. If you find a single, a single word, that even closely resembles dismantling or could be defined as dismantling in the entire text, then I would take back my comment.
Auguring Mr. Obama’s SOTU remarks, Bernadette Meehan, President Obama’s National Security Council spokeswoman, issued a statement on Friday January 10, 2014 hectoring Congressional advocates of continued economic sanctions against Iran (i.e., S. 1881: “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013”) which target (albeit with dubious “success”) Iran’s relentless development of nuclear weapons-related materials and technology. Meehan had the temerity to accused these Senators of being “warmongers,” deliberately sabotaging the Obama administration’s demonstrably feckless—and dangerous—“diplomacy”:
If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so. Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to proceed.
Sunday January 12, 2014, Meehan’s diatribe was cited approvingly in a Fars News Agency report, which also quoted senior Iranian Parliamentarian Esmayeel Jalili’s defiant pronouncement made that same day:
If the US congress doesn’t abide by the policies of the [Obama] administration and approves new sanctions, the parliament will be ready to declare Iran’s exit from the nuclear negotiations with the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany)
The Fars News Agency report also included comments made in December, 2013 about S. 1881 by the Iranian Parliament Speaker’s top advisor for international affairs, Hossein Sheikholeslam. These “relevant remarks,” in the Fars News Agency’s characterization, were redolent with Iran’s pervasive, conspiratorial Jew-hatred.
Capitalism, and not democracy, has the last say in the US and the US congressmen should also pursue the goals and words of the US capitalists which are mostly Zionists. The Zionist lobbies are highly powerful in the US Congress, hence we always witness the US Congress moves against Iran. And there are many cases in which the American nation’s interests are sacrificed for the sake of the Zionist regime’s goals.
National Security Council spokeswoman Meehan’s deliberate misrepresentation of S. 1881, her vicious attack on its Senate sponsors, the endorsement of these views by “senior” Iranian Parliamentarians, and finally the U.S. President’s own SOTU address, epitomize the Obama Administration’s dangerous Iran policy morass. The destructive repercussions of this mindset, and the behaviors it engenders, were illuminated by the third of Robert Conquest’s three laws of politics (see pp. 267-268):
The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Note: Andrew Bostom’s forthcoming monograph, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel, will be published next month.
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