RUTHFULLY YOURS

“The amount of pain that Pakistan has inflicted upon the United States in the last 12 years is unprecedented.” — Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former spy chief.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency continues to sponsor, equip, and train several terrorist organizations that directly target American troops in Afghanistan, as well as regional allies of the United States, such as India. The U.S. could direct the Department of State to place Pakistan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

It is long past time for the U.S. to choose what type of relationship it wants.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent denunciation of Pakistan’s “lies and deceit” is long overdue. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawajah Asif’s retort — “We do not have any alliance” with the U.S. — appears to administer the last rites to a relationship long battered by mistrust. Are there, however, sufficient U.S. interests served by maintaining military cooperation with Pakistan, despite the contentious relationship?

Pakistan’s two-faced role in joining the U.S.-led war on terror, while at the same time giving sanctuary and assistance to terrorist groups, was apparent even before the 9/11 attack on America and continues to this day. President Trump’s decision to withhold military aid may cause Pakistani intelligence agencies to be even less cooperative than they were in the past in assisting U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan. Moreover, Pakistan’s commercial, economic, and investment interests appear now more closely aligned with China.

It is also in America’s interest to end its own double game of attempting to be allied with both India and Pakistan, countries that are mortal enemies; it would be wise to choose India over Pakistan. As the world’s most populous democracy, India shares U.S. liberal democratic values. Its power in Asia is exceeded only by that of China, America’s principal competitor in the Pacific.

The recent liberation by Pakistani troops of an American family — kidnapped five years ago in Afghanistan by Pakistan-based terrorists — should not be seen as a decision to cooperate more fully with the U.S.-led war on Islamic terrorism. U.S. Navy SEALs were ready to liberate the hostages in the event that Pakistan refused to do so. Reports suggest that U.S. intelligence passed to Pakistan the exact location of the hostages, making it difficult for the Pakistanis not to act. Consequently, Pakistan, as an alleged ally of the U.S., had little choice but to assist.

Like many conservative Iran watchers, I was disappointed with President Trump’s decision last week to extend the controversial July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran (the JCPOA) by waiving sanctions and giving Congress and European states a final chance to “fix” this agreement in 120 days. This decision was especially disappointing given the recent Iranian protests and that the president issued a similar ultimatum in October 2016.

However, there appear to be some undisclosed reasons for this decision that give me hope the president will kill this terrible agreement in the near future.

A Deeply Flawed and Dangerous Agreement

Critics of the JCPOA were hoping that President Trump would reimpose U.S. sanctions — which would essentially kill the Iran deal — because they believe he was exactly right when he said during the 2016 presidential campaign that the JCPOA is the worst deal ever negotiated.

To get this “legacy” nuclear agreement with Iran for President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other Obama-administration officials made any concession necessary to Tehran. This included allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium with over 5,000 centrifuges and to develop advanced centrifuges; to construct a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor in Iran; to wipe clean a long list of unanswered questions about nuclear-weapons-related activity; and to agree to a deal with extremely weak verification provisions. There are credible reports of Iranian cheating on the agreement, including several accounts from German intelligence agencies.

It gets worse. The JCPOA lifted terrorism-related sanctions from Iranians and Iranian entities. Iran’s missile program — which is a nuclear-weapons-delivery system — was excluded from the deal because of a last-minute demand by Iran. Under a side deal, the United States secretly paid Iran $400 million in ransom to swap five innocent Americans imprisoned by Iran for the release by the U.S. of seven Iranian criminals and the removal of 14 other Iranians from an INTERPOL wanted list. According to a bombshell December 18, 2017, Politico story, “The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah off the Hook,” the Obama administration also blocked an investigation of drug trafficking by Hezbollah — Iran’s terrorist proxy — to secure the nuclear deal.

North Korea’s apparently rapid progress last year in both its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs raises entirely legitimate concerns about U.S. intelligence capabilities. The New York Times recently reported that, as the Obama administration ended, intelligence-community analysts estimated that Pyongyang was over four years away from mastering the complex science and technology necessary to deliver thermonuclear weapons on targets within the continental United States.

Then, seemingly overnight, North Korea was igniting thermonuclear weapons and testing missiles that could hit the lower 48. The Times calls this an intelligence failure, certainly a serious matter. But the real reason was actually much worse.

Evidence in the Times report indicates that President Obama’s team dangerously politicized intelligence gathering and analysis, as senior officials strove to support their preconceived notions of the North’s true progress.

Throughout his presidency, Obama pursued a North Korea policy called “strategic patience,” which was in fact a synonym for doing nothing. As long as intelligence agencies assessed that Pyongyang’s threat was remote, conveniently fitting Obama’s predilection to do nothing, he could contend there was no basis for more robust measures against the North’s nuclear program.

Obama-era intelligence also conveniently painted a very similar picture about Iran, as Obama desperately sought a nuclear agreement later characterized as an achievement comparable to Obamacare in his first term. As with North Korea, if Iran’s program were not increasingly threatening, there was no danger, supposedly, from lengthy negotiations and an imperfect final agreement.

In both cases, however, the truth was much more malign, as North Korea is now demonstrating graphically. During the presidential transition, Obama blithely advised President-elect Trump that Pyongyang would be his most serious foreign challenge. How convenient that reality “changed” for the worst just after Obama departed the White House. Indeed, this “coincidence” is simply further evidence of how deeply his administration had politicized intelligence collection and analysis.

A Kuwaiti newspaper reported last week that Washington gave Israel the green light to assassinate terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force which has been designated a terrorist organization.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens pointed out a disturbing detail in the story that has long been rumored but has gone largely unreported in the American press:
Bret Stephens
✔ @BretStephensNYT
The story here, Kuwaiti-sourced, is that Obama team tipped Tehran to an Israeli attempt to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general who has the blood of hundreds of American troops in his hand. What says @brhodes? https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.832387 …

According to the report, Israel was “on the verge” of assassinating Soleimani three years ago near Damascus, but the Obama administration warned Iranian leadership of the plan, effectively quashing the operation. The incident reportedly “sparked a sharp disagreement between the Israeli and American security and intelligence apparatuses regarding the issue.”

Stephens tagged former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes in his tweet, but it was ignored until Obama’s former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor saw it on Wednesday: CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump will make some important decisions this month that could not only end the controversial 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran but also convey America’s support for Iranian protesters and hasten the overthrow of Iran’s ruling mullahs. By January 12, Mr. Trump must decide whether to renew a waiver of sanctions lifted by the Iran deal—i.e., the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The law requires him to make such a determination every 120 days. By January 15, the president must decide whether he will continue to “decertify” to Congress Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

When President Trump decertified the JCPOA to Congress in October, it looked like he was on track to withdraw from the deal if Congress did not use a 60-day window to pass legislation to toughen or “fix” it. However, even though Congress failed to act, Trump is now being pressured to extend the agreement, as its supporters claim that any action he might take to kill it would play into the hands of Iran’s ruling mullahs.

This approach is wrong. It would sustain a fraudulent agreement that has endangered global security and bolstered a brutal theocratic regime.

None of President Obama’s promises about the JCPOA — that it would keep Iran one year away from a nuclear weapon, improve U.S.–Iran relations, and bring Iran into the community of nations — have been borne out. Instead, the deal has emboldened Iran’s ruling mullahs to continue the nation’s international isolation, as Tehran spends billions of dollars on expensive belligerent activities, money that was made available to it through sanctions relief and that it could have spent to shore up the civilian economy.

There are many reports that the agreement did not appreciably slow Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran continues to make progress toward making nuclear-weapons fuel, as it is allowed under the deal to enrich uranium with over 5,000 centrifuges and to develop advanced centrifuges. The head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization said in August 2017 that Iran would be able to resume production of 20 percent enriched uranium, which can be quickly converted to weapons-grade uranium — within five days if the JCPOA is revoked.

There are credible reports, including several from German intelligence agencies, that Iran is cheating on the agreement. Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), and Tom Perdue (R., Ga.) raised concerns about Iranian noncompliance and cheating in a July 2017 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. I also note that Tzvi Kahn, an analyst for Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, penned a brilliant op-ed for The Hill last October, debunking claims by JCPOA defenders that the IAEA has fully certified Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

The Iranian people were supposed to benefit from the Iran deal’s sanctions relief, but this didn’t happen. Instead, Iran’s ruling mullahs wasted billions of dollars in sanctions relief on the military and meddling in regional disputes. Iran’s 2016–17 military budget reportedly increased by 90 percent. In April 2017, Rouhani claimed that it had grown by 145 percent.