The Obama “Iran-First” policy followers in Congress have been demonstrating a dangerous delusion that Iran, which supports global terrorism, supply arms that kill American soldiers in the Middle East and Afghanistan advancing their own and North Korea’s nuclear agenda, encouraging mobs chanting “death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to Saudi Arabia” are friends, not cunning maniacal enemies of the U.S. The Trump administration’s efforts to curb Iran’s activities would also be helped by finding out how much money did the Obama administration funnel to Iran and its proxies since he took office in 2009.
The latest confirmation of the Obama administration’s support of Iran’s terrorist activities was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 8, 2017 by David Asher, who for many years worked with the United States government on counter-terrorist financing-related issues. According to Asher, “[i]n narrow pursuit of the P5+1 agreement, the administration … systematically disbanded any … action … to dismantle Hezb’allah and the Iran ‘Action Network’ … [for fear these would] derail the administration’s policy agenda focused on Iran.”
Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who chairs the committee, denounced the Obama administration in April 2016 for allowing Iran “to launder dollars while the administration looked the other way.” The hearing he held last week aimed at finding new ways to curb Iran’s and Hezb’allah’s international crime syndicates that fund its terrorist activities.
One day before the Senate voted on advancing the “Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017,” former secretary of state John Kerry argued against “the danger” of new sanctions. “Our bellicosity is pushing them into a corner,” and the imposition of new sanctions after old ones were relaxed with Obama’s deal with Iran could be seen as a “provocation” by Iran, he warned. His former counterpart, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, followed suit, calling the newly proposed sanctions “repugnant.”
Obama is no longer the president, but Democrats in Congress continue his “Iran first” legacy. Last week, 92 senators voted to advance with the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017 to impose new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, enforce arms embargoes, and block assets of individuals engaged in terrorism and human rights violations in Iran. The six senators who voted against, Carper (D-Del.); Durbin (D-Ill.); Feinstein (D-Calif.); Gillibrand (D-N.Y.); Merkley (D-Ore.), and Sanders (I-Vt.), argued in favor of postponing the vote “as a goodwill gesture” to the Iranians after last week’s ISIS attack on the Parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s shrine in Tehran.
Incredibly, Sen. Carper called to “hit the pause button,” suggesting that the sanctions would be akin to “rubbing salt into a wound[.] … [L]et’s wait a few days and consider what to do.” Displaying his lack of minimal understanding of the mullahs’ terrorist regime, he argued, “If we were in their shoes, I think we would appreciate that gesture.” One wonders why Sen. Carper and his colleagues continue to call for “goodwill gestures” toward Iran, which has unfailingly proven its hostility to the U.S. The Obama “Iran first” policy followers in Congress have been demonstrating a dangerous delusion that Iran, which supports global terrorism; advances its own and North Korea’s nuclear agendas; and encourages mobs chanting “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to Saudi Arabia” is a friend, not a cunning, maniacal enemy of the U.S.
WASHINGTON — President Trump came out swinging against Qatar during a Rose Garden press conference today after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier urged easing of the blockade against the Gulf nation and the Pentagon said the rift was negatively impacting U.S. military operations.
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Maldives, Mauritius, Mauritania, and Senegal have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing the kingdom of being a haven for terror financiers, while Jordan and Djibouti have downgraded relations. In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has stepped up military cooperation with Qatar and may send more troops there.
“We do not, have not and will not support terrorist groups. The recent joint statement issued by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE regarding a ‘terror finance watchlist’ once again reinforces baseless allegations that hold no foundation in fact,” the Qatari government said in a statement today. “Our position on countering terrorism is stronger than many of the signatories of the joint statement – a fact that has been conveniently ignored by the authors.”
The U.S. stages operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from Al-Udeid airbase, the base of U.S. Air Force Central Command and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. About 10,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed at the base about 20 miles outside Doha. Only Kuwait hosts a stronger U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
“While current operations from Al Udeid Air Base have not been interrupted or curtailed, the evolving situation is hindering our ability to plan for longer-term military operations,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement today. “Qatar remains critical for coalition air operations in the fight against ISIS and around the region.”
Earlier, at the State Department, Tillerson called for “calm and thoughtful dialogue with clear expectations and accountability among the parties in order to strengthen relationships.”
“We ask that there be no further escalation by the parties in the region. We call on Qatar to be responsive to the concerns of its neighbors. Qatar has a history of supporting groups that have spanned the spectrum of political expression, from activism to violence. The emir of Qatar has made progress in halting financial support and expelling terrorist elements from his country, but he must do more and he must do it more quickly,” he said.
Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to “ease the blockade” against Qatar. “There are humanitarian consequences to this blockade. We are seeing shortages of food, families are being forcibly separated, and children pulled out of school. We believe these are unintended consequences, especially during this holy month of Ramadan, but they can be addressed immediately,” he said.
“The blockade is also impairing U.S. and other international business activities in the region and has created a hardship on the people of Qatar and the people whose livelihoods depend on commerce with Qatar. The blockade is hindering U.S. military actions in the region and the campaign against ISIS.”
At a press conference this afternoon with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Trump jumped straight to Qatar in his opening remarks.
“The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. And in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior,” Trump said, referencing his recent trip to Riyadh. “So we had a decision to make: Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.”
“I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding — they have to end that funding — and its extremist ideology in terms of funding,” he continued. “I want to call on all of the nations to stop immediately supporting terrorism, stop teaching people to kill other people, stop filling their minds with hate and intolerance. I won’t name other countries, but we are not done solving the problem.” CONTINUE AT SITE
US President Donald Trump has been attacked by his ubiquitous critics for his apparent about-face on the crisis surrounding Qatar.
In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Trump sided firmly with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the other Sunni states that cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and instituted an air and land blockade of the sheikhdom on Monday.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he hopes to mediate the dispute, more or less parroting the lines adopted by the State Department and the Pentagon which his Twitter posts disputed the day before.
To understand the apparent turnaround and why it is both understandable and probably not an about-face, it is important to understand the forces at play and the stakes involved in the Sunni Arab world’s showdown with Doha.
Arguably, Qatar’s role in undermining the stability of the Islamic world has been second only to Iran’s.
Beginning in the 1995, after the Pars gas field was discovered and quickly rendered Qatar the wealthiest state in the world, the Qatari regime set about undermining the Sunni regimes of the Arab world by among other things, waging a propaganda war against them and against their US ally and by massively funding terrorism.
The Qatari regime established Al Jazeera in 1996.
Despite its frequent denials, the regime has kept tight control on Al Jazeera’s messaging. That messaging has been unchanging since the network’s founding. The pan-Arab satellite station which reaches hundreds of millions of households in the region and worldwide, opposes the US’s allies in the Sunni Arab world. It supports the Muslim Brotherhood and every terrorist group spawned by it. It supports Iran and Hezbollah.
Al Jazeera is viciously anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.
It serves as a propaganda arm not only of al-Qaida and Hezbollah but of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and any other group that attacks the US, Israel, Europe and other Western targets.
Al Jazeera’s reporters have accompanied Hamas and Taliban forces in their wars against Israel and the US. After Israel released Hezbollah arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar from prison in exchange for the bodies of two IDF reservists, Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau hosted an on-air party in his honor.
Trump and The Article Five Shibboleth U.S. president makes another wise move on NATO. Bruce Thornton
The NeverTrump bitter-enders still can’t resist sniping at the president and his alleged éminence grise, Steve Bannon. Now it’s Trump’s “dangerous” refusal––despite advice from his national security advisors, and allegedly fomented by Bannon––to reassure fellow NATO members of his commitment to Article Five of the NATO treaty during the ceremonies in May celebrating NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels. According to Commentary’s Noah Rothman, for example, Trump’s snubbing of Article Five emboldens Russia, for it “undermines a credible American deterrence” and “invites Putin to test the parameters of Trump’s resolve, which could be disastrous.”
The inflation of Article Five into the West’s premier bulwark against aggression is one of the best examples of the magical thinking that ritualistic affirmations of toothless multinational treaties will keep the peace and deter enemies.
This belief, however, depends more on half-truths and political marketing than on facts. We often hear that NATO “avoided a major state conflict,” as one NeverTrumper wrote, in postwar Europe, and kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War. But what kept the peace in Europe was the simple fact that the European nations did not have the means or the will to wage a war. They were too demoralized and too busy rebuilding their shattered economies, financed in part by the Marshall Plan’s $190 billion (in today’s money).
As for deterring the Soviets, it was the 300,000 American troops deployed in Germany between 1950 and 1990, and the 25,000 nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal threatening Mutually Assured Destruction that checked Soviet aggression, not the “military pygmies,” as NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson put it, of the European nations. NATO and Article Five were then and now a fig-leaf for allowing the European nations to hide the fact that their security was a benefit provided by American military power and funded by the U.S. taxpayer, freeing Europeans to concentrate on rebuilding their economies, and then creating their social-welfare, dolce vita EUtopia.
Indeed, the political purpose of Article Five is obvious from its actual language, which questions the common description of it as a mutual defense pact. Article Five states that “an armed attack against one or more of [member states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” In the event of such an attack, Article Five continues, “each” member will respond “by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force” [emphases added]. “Considering” an act of aggression to be an attack is inherently subjective, as are the “actions” any country might “deem” to be “necessary.” Such elastic language could make speechifying at the U.N., or imposing economic sanctions, or voting on a Security Council resolution to be a fulfillment of a member state’s treaty obligation. And no, there is no provision for enforcing Article Five, though there is one (Article 13) for leaving NATO.
No one forced Mr. Trump to make his pledge. He chose to make it a campaign issue. The Israelis will be disappointed but are still delighted to have a President who is friendlier than his predecessor. The Palestinians will pocket this concession and hold out for more.
Way back in 1995, Congress passed a law requiring the State Department to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. On Thursday Donald Trump became the latest in a long line of Presidents to issue a waiver to put the move off.
Moving the embassy to the actual capital of the Jewish State is not the most important U.S. priority in the region. But because Mr. Trump made such a point of it in the campaign—vowing that he would make good where others had backed down—the waiver damages American credibility. As President Obama’s infamous red line in Syria illustrated, the world is more dangerous when Presidents show they don’t mean what they say.
In a statement explaining the waiver, the White House said that “the question is not if that move happens, but only when.” The statement further claims the embassy waiver was given in hopes of boosting chances for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
Here lies the bigger problem, which is less that the embassy is staying in Tel Aviv than that the Trump White House has concluded it should spend scarce political capital on a Palestinian-Israeli peace that has eluded Presidents for decades. That peace will only have a chance when the two parties are prepared to negotiate seriously, and the Palestinians now are not. They won’t be any more likely to deal because Mr. Trump backed down on the embassy.
No one forced Mr. Trump to make his pledge. He chose to make it a campaign issue. The Israelis will be disappointed but are still delighted to have a President who is friendlier than his predecessor. The Palestinians will pocket this concession and hold out for more.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A German leader in a beer tent announces a new indifference to the United Kingdom and America and a new determination to lead Europe into a glorious future, possibly delighting the expansionist strongman leading Russia. The result, a little over seventy years ago, was a calamity for civilization, before Germany was brought to repent of its ambition. In 2017, the replay was far less threatening, and the German leader in question began issuing comedowns and take-backs in about 72 hours. The only casualties were the excited opinion columns about Europe stepping forward to lead the world Trump’s America had abandoned.
But it was a mysterious statement. “The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days,” Merkel lamented. “We Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands. Of course we need to have friendly relations with the U.S. and with the U.K. and with other neighbors, including Russia. But we have to fight for our own future ourselves” Of course, she had electoral politics on mind. But something deeper is at work.
In poker, a player who has lost control of her emotions and the realistic assessment of the stakes at play is said to have gone on tilt. Donald Trump seems to put all of his opponents and some of his friends on tilt. The Democrats, the media, and foreign leaders often have good reasons to dislike Donald Trump’s leadership of the United States. Don’t we all? But what so often happens is that Trump’s opponents are goaded by the passions of their constituents, or their wounded sense of pride, or even deluded by their conviction that others must come to realize Trump’s presidency is some kind of cosmic mistake. And then they run out ahead of the evidence, or their own better judgment.
In global opinion-setting press clippings, German chancellor Angela Merkel and her new friend, French president Emmanuel Macron, outclass everyone on planet Earth. But in the real world, the thing that keeps cartographers sitting on their hands and reprinting the same European border maps year after year since the dissolution of the Soviet empire is the U.S. military, the one parked in Germany since 1945.
As one of her own party members said in an off-the-record comment to the Financial Times, “For Merkel, that was an unusually strong statement, Trump’s only been president for four months.” Perhaps a strategic partnership that has endured for the better part of a century isn’t so vulnerable to one tough speech by an American president, or so easy to change that the aspiration of a German chancellor remakes the world order.
Perhaps a strategic partnership that has endured for the better part of a century isn’t so vulnerable to one tough speech by an American president.
But that didn’t stop the gusher of enthusiasm for Merkel’s comments. The Europhilic Irish Times purred that Merkel was stating the obvious: “Faced with an erratic and unpredictable White House, with its purely transactional view of global alliances, and a United Kingdom rapidly turning inward, the EU can only achieve its goals by pulling closer together.” American opinion writers were not much more sober, declaring it the practical end of Atlantic alliance.
A Washington Post report alleging that Jared Kushner was seeking to open a secure, private line with Russia is false, a source familiar with the matter has told Fox News. It was the Russians’ idea, according to the source. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law is currently under FBI scrutiny as part of the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The December meeting between Kushner and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower focused on Syria, the source said. The meeting included another senior adviser in the Trump administration, as well.
Via Fox News:
During the meeting the Russians broached the idea of using a secure line between the Trump administration and Russia, not Kushner, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News. That follows a recent report from The Washington Post alleging that Kushner wanted to develop a secure, private line with Russia.
The idea of a permanent back channel was never discussed, according to the source. Instead, only a one-off for a call about Syria was raised in the conversation.
In addition, the source told Fox News the December meeting focused on Russia’s contention that the Obama administration’s policy on Syria was deeply flawed.
According to the WaPo report, Kushner had suggested the use of Russian diplomatic facilities as a way to evade U.S. monitoring during pre-inauguration discussions with Kislyak. The “taken aback” Russian ambassador allegedly then relayed the suggestion to his superiors in Moscow.
The Post based its story on intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials and leaked to the press. Neither the meeting nor the Americans involved were under U.S. surveillance, officials told the Post.
According to Fox News’ source, Kushner is “eager” to tell his side of the story to Congress.
As the fiftieth anniversary of Israel’s reunification of Jerusalem during the June 1967 Six-Day War approaches, a bipartisan group of legislators is stepping up the pressure on President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the Jewish state’s capital.
Christian religious leaders are also centrally involved in the push. Their position was laid out in a May 16 open letter to Trump — signed by 60 prominent Evangelical leaders — which urged that the US “honor its strongest and only true democratic ally in the Middle East by respecting its capital city — Jerusalem — and immediately moving the US Embassy there.”
A Jerusalem Day event on Capitol Hill last week brought together Democratic and Republican legislators with some of the most vocal Christian advocates of an embassy relocation, including Jerry A. Johnson — president of National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) — and Susan Michael — US director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ).
The current appeals to Trump to act on his campaign rhetoric reflect the widespread frustration that successive presidents have waived the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, despite its passage by both the House and Senate with overwhelming majorities.
“I got to Congress in 1997, and in 1998, I sponsored a bill saying that before we move our embassy in Germany to Berlin, we should move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told The Algemeiner. Sherman said that the move of the US embassy to Berlin from Bonn — eight years after the reunification of Germany in 1990 — “illustrates the fact that when a country tells us where their capital is, that’s where we put our embassy.”
Daniel Williams – executive director of the Israel Allies Foundation, which is organizing a petition demanding the embassy be moved to Jerusalem — pledged to keep the issue alive in the event that Trump follows his predecessors by waiving the 1995 Act, a twice-yearly decision that will land on his desk for the first time on Wednesday
“We’re going to stay on this if he signs the waiver,” Williams said. “We’ll continue to build our petition list, and we’ll go back to a broader section of faith leaders. I would like to see us go to Jewish faith leaders in the way that we have Evangelical leaders.”
Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Co) told The Algemeiner the positive reaction which Trump received during his visit to Israel last week was more evidence that the embassy move was overdue.
“Donald Trump made history by being the first American president to visit the Western Wall and by being the first American president to visit Israel on his inaugural foreign trip,” Lamborn said. “Those were two excellent initiatives on his part, so this is a wonderful opportunity to carry through on his campaign promise.”
Sherman said it was completely unclear to him what action Trump would take on the matter. “While he was there, he avoided this issue, and he also avoided the two-state solution,” Sherman said. “He avoided saying anything so far as I can see.”
As PJ Media’s own Michael Walsh reported earlier today, Angela Merkel has apparently had a falling out with U.S. President Donald Trump. On Sunday, she told a crowd at an election rally in Munich that Europe “must take its fate into its own hands” because it can no longer rely on the U.S. as a loyal ally.
The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.
To which she added that “we have to fight for our own destiny.”
My esteemed colleague comments in his own article about Merkel’s statements:
If it took Trump’s typical bluntness to finally get the message across that the Europeans are now responsible for the mess of their own making, good. Germany in particular has coasted under the American nuclear umbrella for decades, allowing it to a) concentrate entirely on rebuilding its domestic economy, infrastructure and social welfare state and b) thumb its nose at American warmongering imperialism. It’s one of the least attractive aspects of the German character; the gratitude that the immediate postwar generation felt for our having rescued them from Hitler and the love Germans felt for all things American have vanished. In their place has come a churlish, we-can-take-it-from-here mutter that does not become them.
All true, but there’s something that must be added to the above: Merkel can talk all she wants about Europe taking its destiny into her own hands, but everybody in Europe knows Merkel and her friends aren’t doing anything of the sort. Despite the threat Russia is supposed to pose to our safety and freedom, not one European “power” is willing to invest heavily in its military. Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Mark Rutte (of the Netherlands), and all the other Western European leaders continue to rely on the U.S. for their security.
Merkel’s words don’t change reality: Europe cannot get by on its own. We are still dependent on the U.S. for our most basic need (security) and that’s not going to change anytime soon.
Instead of insulting the current occupant of the White House, Merkel would be wise to take a page from British Prime Minister Theresa May’s playbook. Unlike Merkel, May is determined to have a healthy and productive relationship with Trump’s America, which is extremely wise because Britain is nearly as dependent on the U.S. as the rest of Europe. What’s more, May’s efforts seem to be paying off with Trump choosing her side after American intel officers leaked sensitive information about the terror attack in Manchester. That’s what a smart European leader does. Sadly, “smart” appears to be above Merkel’s pay grade.
Now we have Manchester and its 22 dead, many of them children. Somehow, we always end up back at 9/11, leaving flowers and candles again.
A political constant since 9/11 is that terrorism inevitably changes U.S. presidencies. I think the events this week—the president’s overseas trip and then Manchester—may have a similar effect on Donald Trump.
On Inauguration Day in January 2001, George W. Bush’s mind no doubt was filled with plans for his first term. Months later, his was a war presidency and would remain so.
Several things sit in my memory from the politics of that period. One is President Bush’s face as he addressed Congress on Sept. 20. He was a changed man. Also remembered is the solidarity of national purpose after the attack. The final memory is how quickly that unity dissipated into a standard partisan melee.
The Democratic point of attack became the Patriot Act’s surveillance provisions, a legal and legislative battle that ran the length of the Bush presidency. By the end of his second term, George Bush had become an object of partisan caricature and antipathy equal to anything President Trump endures now.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, four major terrorist attacks took place inside the U.S.: Fort Hood in 2009, the Boston Marathon in 2013, San Bernardino two years later and then Orlando in 2016. During these years, the locus of terror migrated from al Qaeda to Islamic State.
Volumes have been written about Barack Obama and terrorism, much of it about the president’s struggles with vocabulary terms such as war, Islam, extreme and radical. The killing of Osama bin Laden evinced a rare, passing moment of national unity.
With the opposition to the Trump presidency programmed for driverless resistance, there will be no national unity in the war on terrorism. The Democrats have become the Trump-Is-Russia Party, and that may be as good a way as any for them to spend their waking hours.
But even Hillary Clinton couldn’t duck the terrorism problem in the 2016 presidential campaign, and when Mr. Trump said he would “defeat ISIS,” his lack of nuance no doubt won him votes.
Which brings us to Manchester this week and memories of 9/11.
Note the political response to the Manchester murders. Again, total solidarity, such as this from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker : “These cowardly attacks will only strengthen our commitment to work together to defeat the perpetrators of such vile acts.”
Post-9/11, naturally one expects such commitments to erode like sand castles. But this time, by coincidence, alleged Manchester bomber Salman Abedi murdered concertgoers in the same week Donald Trump was using his first overseas trip to build a coalition to defeat Islamic State. CONTINUE AT SITE
