RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was easy to miss it during a hectic week, but on Thursday, the United States announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Good riddance.

In 2011, the U.S. substantially cut funding to UNESCO after the organization granted the Palestinian Authority full membership. But while Barack Obama asked Congress to restore funding, the Trump administration has taken the appropriate next step.

UNESCO’s embrace of the Palestinians in 2011 was par for the course for an organization that is a dependable opponent of Israel. In 2012, UNESCO declared the Church of the Nativity to be a World Heritage Site in Danger, ignoring the objections of the U.S., Israel, and the three churches that preside over it. That was a victory for the Palestinians, who claim Bethlehem as their own and say that Israel endangers the site. The next year, the organization’s executive board issued six condemnations of Israel (and honored Che Guevara, the Communist mercenary). It announced in 2016 that the Temple Mount had no connection to Judaism, referring to it only as the “Al-Aqsa Mosque”: The Wailing Wall became the “Buraq Plaza,” and Israel the “occupying power” in Jerusalem. UNESCO’s stated mission is to promote peace and security, but in practice it is just another international institution giving shelter to the world’s ugliest ideas.

It was never appropriate for the U.S. to support UNESCO so long as it remained a nakedly political lobby. That’s something Ronald Reagan understood. In 1984, Reagan withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO back when the group, led by Amadou M. M’Bow, was not just political — anti-Israel as well as pro-Soviet — but corrupt. American diplomat Vernon Walters was fond of pointing out that the Paris-based organization spent 80 percent of its budget in the ritzy 16th arrondissement. Reagan’s decision to leave prompted UNESCO to enact reforms, and in 2002, the Bush administration decided to rejoin. But any reforms have proven temporary, and UNESCO’s return to its old ways is justification enough for Trump’s decision.

Withdrawing makes fiscal and moral sense. Since the U.S. cut off funding to the organization, we have been accruing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to the group. Critics of Trump’s decision have tended to ignore UNESCO’s contemptible politics and emphasize its other initiatives, which include literacy programs and environmental conservation. But if those programs are jeopardized by a lack of U.S. support, UNESCO has none but itself to blame.

Perhaps this move, like Reagan’s in 1984, will lead to reforms. A State Department official sounded a hopeful note, telling the Washington Post that pulling out “sends a strong message that we need to see fundamental reform.” But opposing Israel and standing against human rights seems to be in the organization’s genes. On Thursday, the UNESCO director-general called the U.S. withdrawal a loss for the “fight against violent extremism.” This from a group that gives harbor to anti-Israel extremists and honors Che Guevara. UNESCO, not the United States, is on the wrong side of that fight.

President Trump has not yet pulled America out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But he just took a vital step toward doing so, in a landmark speech on Friday that in plain language dismantled the dangerous fictions on which the deal was built.

Chief among these fictions is the notion that a nuclear program in the hands of Iran’s predatory, terror-sponsoring Islamist regime could ever be “exclusively peaceful.” This was a phrase repeated endlessly by President Obama’s diplomatic team during the negotiating of the Iran nuclear deal, and it is enshrined in the final text, as if saying could make it so.
Iran has already given the lie to this fantasy, most prominently by continuing to test ballistic missiles. These are delivery vehicles that are only likely to be of use if Iran employs its “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program as cover to acquire nuclear warheads.

Citing the case of Iran’s longtime partner in missile proliferation, North Korea, Trump warned that it is folly to downplay Iran’s ambitions: “As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous that threat becomes.”

Ensuring that Washington will now pay attention, Trump announced in his speech that he will not recertify that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. Under the Corker-Cardin law, passed in 2015 and officially dubbed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, this decertification kicks the problem to Congress, where lawmakers will have 60 days to come up with solutions.

It should help focus their minds that Trump stipulated: “In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.” He noted that, as president, it is his prerogative to cancel America’s participation in this deal “at any time.”

Pulling America out of the deal would be the best course by far, and that is where any honest debate ought to end up. This signature foreign-policy agreement of President Obama, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, is a bargain so flawed that there is realistically no way to fix it. Haggled out with Iran by six world powers — Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the U.S. under Obama (in this instance leading from in front) — the JCPOA is thick with complexities that obscure the basic tradeoffs with which Obama enticed Iran to agree to this deal.

But there’s a simple bottom line. President Obama promised that on his watch Iran would not get nuclear weapons. Obama achieved this by cutting a deal that effectively paid off Iran upfront to delay a nuclear breakout until after he left office. He did this at the cost of greatly fortifying Iran’s predatory, Islamist regime, without ending its nuclear program. That is what Trump has inherited. As he accurately summed it up: “We got weak inspections in exchange for no more than a purely short-term and temporary delay in Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.”

The terms of this deal virtually ensure an Iranian nuclear breakout, on a scale and with a reach that will be even more dangerous when it comes. Without requiring any change in the nature of Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime, the deal dignified Tehran on the world stage, greatly eased global sanctions, allowed Iran access to more than $100 billion in frozen oil revenues, and topped that off with the related settlement from the U.S. of $1.7 billion, shipped secretly to Iran in cash.

Donald Trump is decertifying the Iran deal, and gave a tough-minded speech announcing his decision.

We have opposed the Iran deal from the beginning. Building on the North Korean model of negotiations, Tehran engaged in a years-long dialogue with the West over the question of whether it would have a nuclear program, all the while developing its nuclear program. The upshot of the agreement was that we accepted Iran’s becoming a threshold nuclear power and showered it with sanctions relief — including, literally, a plane-full of cash — for the privilege.

Since the deal left the rest of Iran’s objectionable and threatening behavior untouched, the regime was free to invest proceeds from its economic windfall into its ballistic-missile program and its agenda of military expansion across the region. The Obama administration hoped that the agreement would moderate Iran’s behavior, but, predictably, it has emboldened it. Giving more resources to a terror state has never reduced terror. Couple these failings with a weak inspection regime and key sunset clauses, and the deal is nearly as historically bad as President Trump says in his characteristically over-the-top style.

We would prefer that the U.S. pull out of the deal, reimpose the sanctions that had begun to bite the regime prior to the agreement, and force Europeans eager to do business with Iran to choose between us and them. The goal would be to bring the regime to its knees and, short of that, force it to rip up its nuclear program.

The Trump administration isn’t willing to go this far, at least not yet. President Trump will refuse to certify every 90 days that the deal is in the vital security interests of the U.S. — an obvious fiction — and seek to get Congress to pass a series of “triggers” further sanctioning Iran if it doesn’t meet various new standards under the deal. This is a halfway approach that reflects the White House’s divisions (Trump wants to get all the way out of the deal, but most of his national-security principals don’t), the enormous diplomatic task pulling out would represent (Iran would join North Korea as an urgent, dominating foreign-policy issue), and perhaps internal doubts about what the administration is capable of pulling off (sometimes it has merely been struggling for coherence on foreign policy).

If Congress did indeed pass additional Iran sanctions it might be a way, in effect, to toughen the Iran deal unilaterally. The Europeans would probably be willing to go along in the interests of saving the overall agreement, and Iran probably prefers to be inside the deal rather than out, for the reasons noted above. But it will take 60 votes for the Senate pass anything, and President Trump may soon confront the decision whether he really wants to stay in or not.

Trump’s speech, appropriately, addressed much more than the nuclear deal. In frank terms, he made the case against the terroristic theocracy in Tehran and described its threat to the U.S. and the region. He sketched in outline a strategy to pressure the regime on all fronts, especially focusing on the nefarious role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. All of this was to the good, although much will depend on execution; the administration doesn’t yet have a strategy to check Iran’s growing clout in Syria, and we must remember that the regime has the ability to hit back against us, both in Syria and in Iraq.

But Trump’s speech was a welcome dose of realism after eight years of willful naïveté about our enemy in Tehran. If nothing else, we have a president who doesn’t see the regime through a film of delusion — finally.

Donald Trump announced Friday that he won’t “certify” his predecessor’s nuclear deal with Iran, but he won’t walk away from it either. This is something of a political fudge to satisfy a campaign promise, but it is also part of a larger and welcome strategic shift from Barack Obama’s illusions about arms control and the Islamic Republic.

Mr. Trump chose not to withdraw from the nuclear deal despite his ferocious criticism during the campaign and again on Friday. The deal itself is a piece of paper that Mr. Obama signed at the United Nations but never submitted to Congress as a treaty. The certification is an obligation of American law, the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015, that requires a President to report every 90 days whether Iran is complying with the deal. Mr. Trump said Iran isn’t “living up to the spirit of the deal” and he listed “multiple violations.”

The President can thus say he’s honoring his campaign opposition to the pact, without taking responsibility for blowing it up. This partial punt is a bow to the Europeans and some of his own advisers who fear the consequences if the U.S. withdraws. The worry is that Iran could use that as an excuse to walk away itself, and sprint to build a bomb, while the U.S. would be unable to reimpose the global sanctions that drove Iran to negotiate.

This is unlikely because the deal is so advantageous for Iran. The ruling mullahs need the foreign investment the deal allows, and there are enough holes to let Iran do research and break out once the deal begins phasing out in 2025. Iran will huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s decertification, but it wants the deal intact.

Yet we can understand why Mr. Trump wants to avoid an immediate break with European leaders who like the deal. This gives the U.S. time to persuade Europe of ways to strengthen the accord. French President Emmanuel Macron has talked publicly about dealing with Iran’s ballistic missile threat, and a joint statement by British, German and French leaders Friday left room to address Iranian aggression.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is asking Congress to rewrite the Nuclear Review Act to set new “red lines” on Iranian behavior. The Administration has been working for months with GOP Senators Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) on legislation they’ll unveil as early as next week. This will include markers such as limits on ballistic missiles and centrifuges and ending the deal’s sunset provisions. If Iran crosses those lines, the pre-deal sanctions would snap back on.

There’s no guarantee this can get 60 Senate votes. But making Iran’s behavior the trigger for snap-back sanctions is what Mr. Obama also said he favored while he was selling the deal in 2015. The difference is that once he signed the deal his Administration had no incentive to enforce it lest he concede a mistake. The Senate legislation would make snap-back sanctions a more realistic discipline. Senators may also want to act to deter Mr. Trump from totally withdrawing sometime in the future—as he threatened Friday if Congress fails.

The biggest problems are the willful blindness of the media in identifying the faith driven perpetrators, and the academics and think tankers who air-brush the locus, the history and agenda of jihad…..rsk
Editor’s Note: The following piece is adapted from a report originally published by the American Enterprise Institute. It appears here with permission.

America is losing the war on terror, yet many Americans think the United States is winning. The fact that there has been no attack on American soil on the scale of 9/11 has created a false sense of security. Dismissals of Orlando and San Bernardino as “lone wolf” attacks further the inaccurate narrative that al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) are somehow “on the run.” According to senior American officials, for at least seven years, those groups have been “on the run” — a “fact” that in itself demonstrates the falsity of U.S. pretensions to success. Tactical successes on battlefields in Iraq, Syria, and Libya add further to the illusion of success. But if 16 years of war should have taught us anything, it is that we cannot kill our way out of this problem.

To start winning, Americans must redefine the enemy. A global movement — not individual groups, not an ideology, and certainly not poverty — is waging war against us. This movement is the collection of humans joined by the Salafi–jihadi ideology, group memberships, and common experiences into a cohesive force that transcends the individual or the group. Al-Qaeda is but one manifestation of this decades-old ideology and movement. The global Salafi–jihadi movement was and remains more than just al-Qaeda — or ISIS. It consists of individuals worldwide, some of whom have organized, who seek to destroy current Muslim societies and resurrect in their place a true Islamic society through the use of armed force. America and the West have no chance of success in this conflict unless they understand that this movement is their true and proper adversary.

The need is urgent. Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the global Salafi–jihadi movement together are stronger today than they have ever been. Salafi–jihadi groups are active in at least six failed states (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Mali) and four weak states (Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Nigeria). They provide governance by proxy or control territory in at least half of these states. Both ISIS and al-Qaeda pursue deadly attack capabilities to target the West, as the most recent terrorist attack in Manchester once again demonstrated. Europe and the American homeland face an unprecedented level of facilitated and inspired terrorist attacks. This situation is not success, stalemate, or slow winning, and still less does it reflect an enemy “on the run.” It is failure.

American counterterrorism strategy has not fundamentally changed since the U.S. attacks against Afghanistan after 9/11. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump have focused on militarily defeating groups through a combination of targeted strikes and operations to deprive them of particular terrain they control. Bush and Obama made limited efforts to counter Salafi–jihadi recruiting efforts, but with no effect. All these efforts have focused on attacking narrowly defined groups and the individuals associated with them. Apart from the limited experiments at serious counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, all three presidents have sought to kill their way out of the problem. None has recognized or addressed the global Salafi–jihadi movement as the real threat, and none, therefore, has taken any meaningful steps to confront it.

The use of U.S. military force against select groups generates effects, to be sure. But the effects are temporary, and hard-fought wins evaporate rapidly because the Salafi–jihadi ideology provides strategic doctrine for organizations globally that persists beyond the destruction of any collection of individuals. Shared experiences on the battlefield, in training, in captivity, and elsewhere build human networks that transcend organizational relationships. These experiences are also laboratories in which Salafi–jihadis improve their means and methods. The deep resilience of the movement resulting from this overarching doctrine, shared experiences, and global nature is why the U.S. continues to lose this war.

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump is expected to announce on Friday that he won’t certify Iran is complying with the 2015 multinational nuclear agreement and will take Tehran to task more broadly for practices ranging from missile tests to support of violent groups, U.S. officials said.

The refusal to certify Iran’s compliance doesn’t mean the U.S. will pull out of the deal, the officials added, and Mr. Trump isn’t expected to ask Congress to re-impose economic sanctions that had been lifted as part of the agreement. But it could send the White House down a road of trying to change a deal that U.S. allies still support.

Mr. Trump, a longtime opponent of the accord negotiated under his predecessor’s administration, is expected to announce his decision in a speech in which he will also lay out plans to crack down on Iran’s missile program and its support for Hezbollah and other militant groups in the Middle East, the officials said.

Mr. Trump is also likely to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military branch, as a terrorist organization, a step that has been the subject of internal administration debates, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Iran vowed a “crushing” response if the U.S. takes that step.

The venue for Mr. Trump’s remarks was the subject of debate as well. Officials said they had discussed the possibility of the speech taking place in front of the unoccupied Iranian Embassy in Washington, although that plan was set aside.

Mr. Trump’s speech will mark the end of a months-long Iran policy review by the administration and begin an uncertain process under which Congress has 60 days to consider on an expedited basis reinstating sanctions that had been lifted under the terms of the nuclear accord.

The president will speak in advance of a Sunday deadline to inform Congress about whether or not Iran is complying with the nuclear deal, under the terms of a U.S. law passed in 2015 meant to provide congressional oversight. CONTINUE AT SITE

UNITED NATIONS—The U.S. will withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations culture and heritage organization, officials said Thursday, a move that could further strain relations between the Trump administration and the U.N.

The State Department said the U.S. decision to leave Unesco “was not taken lightly” and reflects American concerns over the need for overhauls in the organization, as well as its “continuing anti-Israel bias.” The withdrawal will take effect at the end of next year.

The U.S. exit is the latest development in a long and tense relationship between Washington and the Paris-based body, which promotes international cooperation in areas of education, science, culture and communication.

Washington withdrew from Unesco in 1980 because it said the organization had become politicized. It rejoined in 2003, but since 2011 has withheld funds to Unesco amounting to nearly $550 million because of its decision to confer membership on the Palestinian territories.

In a statement on his official Twitter account Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country too was preparing to exit Unesco, “in parallel with the United States.”

Unesco has denied that it is biased against Israel.

Since arriving at the U.N. earlier this year, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has voiced criticism over what she has called a bias against Israel, both in the Security Council and at various U.N. agencies. She has signaled the U.S. also is reviewing its commitment to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, citing concerns stemming from issues related to Israel, Iran and Venezuela and has warned that the U.S. would withdraw from the Council without changes.

In July, Unesco designated the Old City of Hebron and Tomb of the Patriarchs as Palestinian heritage sites despite diplomatic efforts by Israel and political pressure from the U.S. to derail the designation.

Overdue
The U.S. has withheld nearly $550 million in funds to Unesco since 2011 because of its decision to confer membership on the Palestinian territories.

Ms. Haley said in a statement Thursday that those designations had negatively affected the U.S. re-evaluation of its commitment to Unesco. “The United States will continue to evaluate all agencies within the United Nations system through the same lens,” Ms. Haley said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said: “Today is a new day at the U.N., where there is price to pay for discrimination against Israel.”

The State Department said it wasn’t planning to completely disengage from Unesco and would maintain its connection with the organization as a nonmember, observer state. The statement said this would allow the U.S. to share its views and experiences on a range of issues from education to protection of World Heritage sites.

U.N. officials including Secretary-General António Guterres said they regretted the Trump administration’s withdrawal and said the U.S. had been a crucial and historic partner in helping Unesco improve education for the poor and protect culture and historical sites across the globe. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Trump Administration isn’t known for public-relations savvy, and Thursday’s surprise that the U.S. is withdrawing from the United Nations’s main cultural agency is a case in point. The decision was still the right one.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. will leave the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, on Dec. 31 and become a non-member observer. She cited “concerns with mounting arrears,” “the need for fundamental reform” and “continuing anti-Israel bias.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “courageous and ethical” on Twitter and said his country will also quit.

For decades Unesco has been a political agency masquerading as a cultural institution. The Soviets ran its education programs and its anti-American bent continues. Unesco’s current chief, Irina Bokova, is a Bulgarian with a Communist past who ran for U.N. Secretary-General with the backing of Vladimir Putin.

In 2011 Ms. Bokova let the Palestinian Authority join Unesco as a member state, triggering a U.S. law that prevents U.S. funding for any U.N. body that accepts a Palestinian state. Unesco claims the U.S. now owes about $550 million in missed payments.

In July Unesco declared Israel’s Tomb of the Patriarchs and other areas as Palestinian heritage sites, an act of political incitement. As U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley explained Thursday, the agency has engaged “in a long line of foolish actions, which includes keeping Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on a UNESCO human rights committee even after his murderous crackdown on peaceful protestors.”

Ms. Haley also wants to reform U.N. peacekeeping and has warned the U.S. may withdraw from the Human Rights Council absent reform. The Unesco withdrawal is a good first step.

Experience has shown that soft rhetoric and so-called “smart diplomacy” have served only to enable North Korea and Iran to produce more nuclear weapons and better ballistic missiles.

Not only has the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) been prevented from monitoring Iranian compliance, but it is not pushing the issue for fear that “Washington would use an Iranian refusal as an excuse to abandon the JCPOA.”

During his first press conference after taking office in January 1981, US President Ronald Reagan called détente a “one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims.” Echoing this remark while addressing reporters later the same day, Secretary of State Alexander Haig said that the Soviets were the source of much support for international terrorism, especially in Latin and Central America.

The following day, both Reagan and Haig were criticized for their remarks, with members of the media describing the president’s words as “reminiscent of the chilliest days of the Cold War,” and appalled that the administration’s top diplomat was accusing the Russians of backing terrorist activities.

Nearly four decades later, in spite of the successful defeat of the Soviet empire, the White House is still frowned upon when it adopts a tough stance towards America’s enemies. Today’s outrage is directed at President Donald Trump’s warnings about — and to — North Korea and Iran. The Washington Post called his recent “fire and fury” threats to Pyongyang a “rhetorical grenade,” for example, echoing top Democrats’ attacks on his remarks for being “reckless” and “irresponsible.”

Critics of Trump’s attitude towards Tehran go equally far, describing his opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the nuclear deal with Iran — as “rushing headlong into war.”

Trump’s detractors, however, are just as wrong as those who berated Reagan in 1981. Experience has shown that soft rhetoric and so-called “smart diplomacy” have served only to enable North Korea and Iran to produce more nuclear weapons and better ballistic missiles.

Although the JCPOA stipulates that Iran is not permitted to produce more than a certain quantity of enriched uranium or to enrich uranium beyond a certain level, not only has the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) been prevented from monitoring Iranian compliance, but it is not pushing the issue for fear that “Washington would use an Iranian refusal as an excuse to abandon the JCPOA.”

Furthermore, among its many other flaws, the JCPOA does not address Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities or financing of global terrorism.

Nevertheless, it is the administration’s rhetoric that is under attack. Isn’t it high time for the media and foreign-policy establishment to wake up to the reality that seeing regimes as they are, rather than as we wish them to be, is the only way to confront our enemies effectively, and with the least number of casualties?