RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the six months since last November’s U.S. presidential election, there has been a near ‎avalanche of innuendo-filled stories, based primarily on leaks from ‎‎”government or intelligence officials,” suggesting (while providing no actual ‎evidence) there may have been nefarious activity involving Trump campaign ‎officials or supporters and the Russian government and people connected to it, to influence the election.

One popular MSNBC cable TV host has given more ‎than half her airtime to weaving tales of how the two sides may have colluded, ‎proving mainly that a loyal left-wing audience can put up with repetition of material ‎utterly absent of substance for a long time, as long as it bashes the right ‎individual and political party. The conspiracy theory is that Donald Trump was bought by ‎the Russians, who got him elected and now he is doing their bidding. The fact that ‎the Trump administration has not behaved toward Russia or its proxies in a ‎fashion consistent with this conspiracy theory has done ‎little to quiet the true believers of the collusion litany. Neither is there any evidence ‎of Russians blocking Clinton voters from showing up in Wisconsin, Michigan, ‎Pennsylvania, or Florida, or providing troops to keep Hillary Clinton from making ‎campaign appearances in some of these states. ‎

In the last few weeks, there has been a counterpunch of sorts from Trump ‎supporters, alleging that former President Barack Obama’s officials in the Justice Department and intelligence ‎services launched a surveillance operation during the campaign to potentially ‎derail the Trump campaign, and after the election, to keep the Russian story alive ‎through leaks to eager journalists, to delegitimize his presidential victory and his ‎ability to govern. ‎

At this point, based on what is known as opposed to what is ‎believed or hoped for by partisans, it is highly likely that both themes are probably exaggerated, ‎and maybe even totally false, though the leaks from Obama loyalists still in ‎government seem to provide some support for the charge that there has been an ‎organized campaign to damage his successor.‎

In the meantime, a blockbuster story in Politico provides much new information on how far the Obama ‎team was willing to go to get a nuclear deal with Iran done, and then to please the ‎mullahs in any number of ways after the agreement was reached, to demonstrate ‎U.S. allegiance to their needs and demands. In any case, no journalist sympathetic ‎to the Obama narrative on the Iran deal would dare call it collusion. ‎

The Politico article revealed for the first time the extent of the trade the Obama ‎administration was willing to make with Iran to obtain the release of five American ‎prisoners. The U.S. announced the release of seven Iranians, ‎described by the administration as civilians, none involved with terrorism. In fact, ‎several were regarded by Obama’s Justice Department as clear national security ‎threats, involved in weapons procurement. The administration also dropped ‎charges and arrest warrants against 14 other Iranians, all of them fugitives, ‎several of them also involved in weapons procurement for Iran’s nuclear program, ‎‎. ‎

‎”Through action in some cases and inaction in others, ‎the White House derailed its own much-touted National ‎Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was ‎making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s ‎proliferation networks,” the report said. “In addition, the Politico ‎investigation found that Justice and State department ‎officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors ‎and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly ‎countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice ‎and State, at times in consultation with the White ‎House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects ‎already in custody overseas, according to current and ‎former officials and others involved in the counter‎proliferation effort.”‎

When critics of the Iran deal argued that despite the agreement, Iran was ‎continuing to develop and procure long-range missiles and spread havoc through ‎its expansionist aggression in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and support of ‎terrorism, Obama officials always chimed in that the deal only dealt with ‎eliminating the nuclear threat, and not any other issues. Of course, the deal ‎eliminated nothing. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was reduced, but not ‎eliminated (similar to Syria’s supply of poison gases after Obama wimped out on ‎enforcing his own red line), and Iran’s centrifuges, many of them now an enhanced ‎variety, continued to operate. In any case, every time a report surfaced about Iran ‎violating some term of the deal, the president’s team, led by then-Secretary of ‎State John Kerry, was quick to provide a legal brief on their behalf.‎

China’s President Xi Jinping called U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday morning urging American restraint in reaction to North Korea. Tensions between the United States and North Korea have risen to new levels ever since Pyongyang’s April 16 failed missile test. Top U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Pyongyang against more provocations—a warning Pyongyang does not seem likely to heed. “We’ll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” a high-ranking North Korean official recently told the BBC. After that, Trump’s number two, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, said that “The president and I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea,” adding a reminder that Trump had earlier said. “if China is unable to deal with North Korea, the United States and our allies will.” Meanwhile, China’s trade with North Korea in the first quarter of 2017 has actually increased, by a whopping 37.4 percent from the same period last year. Will Beijing start enforcing sanctions? How can the U.S. persuade China to push Pyongyang to denuclearize—a stated goal of both great powers? —The Editors
Comments
Michael Swaine

The Chinese clearly believe that events regarding North Korea are escalating to a dangerous level. And they have sent some signals that they are today even less happy with Pyongyang than before and notably concerned about Trump’s bottom line and willingness to use force. As a result of these two factors, and Xi’s recent positive conversations with Trump, the Chinese are arguably already willing to support more onerous sanctions, to a point. It is highly unlikely that they are going to shut off all economic intercourse with North Korea (and certainly not indefinitely) in the hopes of forcing denuclearization talks. It could just as easily lead to conflict. They do not want to take such a high risk. This ever-cautious stance was also indicated by Xi’s phone call to Trump on Sunday evening Washington time in which he reportedly yet again urged the president to exercise restraint and seek to engage the North Koreans.

Trump could of course try to escalate pressure or incentives on Beijing by threatening some type of kinetic strike (e.g., against any North Korean missile launches), or offering various trade incentives, or even a reduction in arms sales to Taiwan (thus violating the Six Assurances), but these are unlikely to prove possible politically or to prove successful. And a full-blown attack on North Korean missile and nuclear sites would only generate war and result in a catastrophic failure of U.S. policy beyond anything yet seen.

The real question is: What is Trump’s game plan if something less than a full-court press on sanctions (either with or without China) fails in the near term, neither stopping missile or nuclear testing nor bringing Pyongyang back to the table for denuclearization talks? What then?

The Chinese are not the key to solving this problem. But the U.S. does need their active cooperation in any way forward, to stand any reasonable chance of “success.” They could play a positive role in pressuring and/or encouraging Pyongyang to avoid actually deploying a nuclear-armed missile of any range, which should be the near- to medium-term goal, followed by a freeze. Temporary Chinese suspensions of oil and other trade could be used to achieve such goals. The Chinese might agree to that, on a limited basis.

Long term, what is needed is a dialogue with Beijing, Seoul, and Japan about the future of the peninsula and a revived Structural Framework-type arrangement, presenting Pyongyang with a very stark choice between isolation and irrelevancy or security and development.
Bruce Klingner

There is a stark dichotomy between how Trump administration officials privately describe the recently completed North Korea policy review and the impression one gets from the blustery, swaggering public threats of preemptive attack. The policy that has been blessed by the interagency process includes emphasis on restrengthening the U.S. military to reverse degradations in capability resulting from defense budget cuts and an augmentation of ballistic missile defense.

What is likely to be the most striking difference from the Obama Administration will be a willingness to actually use existing legal authorities to more vigorously impose sanctions on North Korea and Chinese violators. While Obama talked a good game on sanctions, he only timidly and incrementally enforced U.S. laws. U.S. bureaucrats privately comment that they have long had lists of sanctionable entities but were prevented by senior Obama officials from targeting them.

Trump’s declarations before and after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jingping reflect the adage about March weather, “coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb.” In the run-up to the summit, President Trump vowed to press China to “solve” North Korea, vowing to use Chinese trade with the U.S. as leverage to force greater Chinese action against North Korea.

Yet, after the summit, Trump quickly flip-flopped, abandoning his strong rhetoric and instead proclaiming President Xi Jinping was “going to try very hard” on North Korea and that “I think he wants to help us with North Korea.” Trump acknowledged that his softer position on China was due to its perceived help on North Korea, asking, “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem?” Trump continued to heap praise on China, declaring that “Nobody’s ever seen such a positive response on our behalf from China.”

It is disturbing that the president so quickly abandoned his strong rhetoric and pledges to increase pressure on Beijing to fully implement required U.N. sanctions and no longer turn a blind eye to prohibited activities taking place on its soil. The Trump administration’s intent to enforce U.S. laws, including imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese violators, is now on hold pending Beijing fulfilling pledges made privately during the summit.

Trump would benefit from reviewing China’s previous pledges to “do more” on North Korea. After each of North Korea’s previous nuclear and missile tests, some U.S. experts have assessed that Beijing had hardened its position toward North Korea, ended its unconditional support to Pyongyang, and predicted that some forthcoming provocation (now long since passed) would trigger even more decisive action by China.

In January 2016, the Obama administration released seven Iranian-born prisoners in what President Barack Obama called a “one-time” “humanitarian gesture” intended to sweeten the nuclear deal hammered out between Washington, D.C., and Tehran. The prisoners — who Josh Earnest insisted were guilty only of “sanctions violations or violations of the trade embargo” — were exchanged for five Americans, unjustly held by Iran since as early as 2011. In fact, some of the Iranian prisoners were national-security threats, and it wasn’t a straight prisoner swap: The Wall Street Journal revealed that on the day of the exchange the U.S. flew $400 million in cash on an unmarked cargo plane to Iran.

When it came to its negotiations with Iran, duplicity was the hallmark of the previous administration’s public statements. (Sanctimonious preening was a close second.) But supporters assured skeptics that the administration was acting in the country’s best national-security interests. Now comes a new bombshell investigation that shows the lengths to which the previous administration went to secure Iranian cooperation, even when it meant putting American security at risk.

According to an investigation by Politico, in addition to the prisoner release, the Justice Department quietly “dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives.” Several of them were wanted for alleged roles in helping to funnel materiel to Iran-backed terror outfits, such as Hezbollah, or for participating in the global network to procure components for Iran’s nuclear program. One was believed to have helped supply Shiite militias in Iraq with a particularly deadly type of IED — one that killed “hundreds” of American troops. Furthermore:

Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort. And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S.

As Politico says, “through action in some cases and inaction in others, the White House derailed its own much-touted National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s proliferation networks.”

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified that Iran was compliant with its commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known more formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). However, this is only because of all the concessions that the Obama administration had made, which lowered the bar for Iran’s technical compliance to an absurdly low level. Indeed, Barack Obama’s concessions to the Iran regime, which he offered in order to secure Iran’s agreement on the terms of the disastrous JCPOA, seem to have no bounds. The result is that Iran is marching ahead with perfecting key elements of a full nuclear weapons program, while already receiving many of the benefits of sanctions relief afforded by the JCPOA. And now evidence has surfaced that the Obama administration not only paid a ransom for the release of American citizens imprisoned unlawfully by the Iranian regime as the JCPOA was being implemented. According to an April 24th investigatory report by Politico, the Obama administration also agreed, as part of a prison swap, to release seven Iranian-born prisoners from U.S. custody, at least some of whom could well go back to helping the Iranian regime procure components for its nuclear weapons program.

Moreover, the Politico report found that the administration dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 fugitives. Obama Justice and State Department officials, at times after consultations with the White House, reportedly slowed down the extradition process for some fugitives who were in custody abroad. And the administration failed to vigorously go after Iranian procurement networks in the United States, while thwarting career law enforcement officials’ efforts to lure their targets to international destinations where they could be readily arrested.

In short, senior Obama administration officials delivered a major blow to the painstaking work of counter-proliferation task forces that had been trying for years to uncover and break up Iran’s intricate procurement networks supporting its nuclear arms program.

“A lot of people were furious; they had cases in the pipeline for months, in some cases years, and then, all of a sudden, they were gone — all because they were trying to sell the nuke deal,” a former Department of Commerce counter-proliferation agent was quoted by Politico as saying.

And from Obama on down, the small group of officials involved in brokering the trade-offs leading to the nuclear deal misled the American people in the process.

For example, the Obama administration downplayed its release of the Iranian-born prisoners, whom were referred to benignly as “civilians” and “businessmen.” President Obama himself described the prisoner swap with the Iranian regime as “a reciprocal humanitarian gesture.” His Press Secretary Josh Earnest represented that the released prisoners had been caught up in technical sanctions or trade embargo violations – what Earnest referred to as “nonviolent crimes.” In fact, according to the Politico report, “some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration.”

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump told aides to toughen a State Department letter last week that declared Iran in compliance with a landmark nuclear deal, senior U.S. officials involved in a policy review said.

Top White House officials said the initial letter the State Department submitted was too soft because it ignored Tehran’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East and support for regional terrorist groups, these officials said.

Mr. Trump personally weighed in on the redrafting of the letter, which was sent to Congress on April 18, the officials said. The final version highlighted Iran’s threatening regional behavior and called into question the U.S.’s long-term support for the multinational accord.

Mr. Trump also told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to follow up the next day with a strident public message that the new administration was planning a shift on policy toward Iran, putting the nuclear deal in play, these officials said.

“An unchecked Iran has the potential to travel the same path as North Korea and take the world along with it,” Mr. Tillerson said at the State Department on April 19.

The episode highlighted the divisions between Mr. Trump’s hard-line position on Iran and the approach taken by some career State Department diplomats and many European allies. State Department officials didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Tillerson’s role in the exchange.

The nuclear agreement, which was implemented in January 2016, constrained Iran’s nuclear capabilities in return for the lifting of most international sanctions, including some unilateral penalties imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump called on the United Nations Security Council Monday to adopt new and stronger sanctions on North Korea. Diplomats are skeptical that such measures would change Pyongyang’s behavior because it is already economically isolated, doesn’t mind inflicting pain on its people, and will never negotiate away its nuclear weapons. A new sanctions push is nonetheless worth a try—not least as a test of Chinese willingness to confront the threat it has helped to nurture.

It’s a myth that Pyongyang already faces tough sanctions, since by several measures North Korea is well down the list of sanctions targets. There’s plenty of room to tighten financial and trade restrictions on the Kim Jong Un regime. The main obstacle has been China’s efforts to water down sanctions and veto tougher measures.

Beijing also has failed to enforce sanctions that it has agreed to. In recent years a U.N. Panel of Experts has documented how Chinese companies and banks violate U.N. sanctions against North Korea. Last year it determined that Bank of China ’s Singapore branch allowed 605 payments on behalf of North Korean entities. Beijing blocked the release of that report, though its contents leaked to the press.

Beijing has long viewed the collapse of the Kim regime as a worse threat to China’s interests than are the North’s nuclear missiles. And previous U.S. administrations chose to tiptoe around China’s resistance in the hope of making incremental diplomatic progress.

Mr. Trump has taken a different approach as the North continues to increase its nuclear stockpile and its missile-delivery systems, threatening unilateral action against North Korea while seeking China’s help. The Trump Administration is signaling in particular that it won’t tolerate a North that can target U.S. cities for destruction with long-range missiles that can carry a nuclear warhead. The U.S. has done this with multiple public statements, private talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and an invitation this week to the entire U.S. Senate for a briefing on the threat.

“This is a real threat to the world, whether we want to talk about it or not,” Mr. Trump said Monday at a White House meeting of Security Council envoys. “North Korea is a big world problem, and it’s a problem we have to finally solve. People have put blindfolds on for decades, and now it’s time to solve the problem.”

As we’ve recommended, the U.S. has the legal authority to increase pressure on the North by applying “secondary sanctions”—denying access to the U.S. financial system to companies and financial institutions in third countries that conduct illegal business with North Korea. Past administrations were reluctant to do so for fear of upsetting Beijing, since most of the targets of such sanctions would be Chinese. If Beijing refuses to act against the North, such sanctions would be a minimum test of Mr. Trump’s seriousness.

In other words, as al-Kalbani has confirmed — and contrary to what McMaster has been telling his staff and his commander-in-chief, President Trump — Muslim terrorists are Islamic, and the term “radical Islamic terrorism” is apt, accurate and extremely “helpful.”

During his first “all hands” staff meeting on February 23, President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, called terrorism “un-Islamic” and the term “radical Islamic terrorism” not helpful.

Prior to the meeting, retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Mansoor told Fox News that McMaster, with whom he served in Iraq during the 2007 surge of American troops, “absolutely does not view Islam as the enemy… and will present a degree of pushback against the theories being propounded in the White House that this is a clash of civilizations and needs to be treated as such.”

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s National Security Adviser. (Image source: Center for Strategic and International Studies)

Let us put McMaster’s premise — which is antithetical not only to that of his predecessor, Michael Flynn, but to Trump himself and many of his senior advisers — to the test.

Less than three years ago, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh — a grandchild of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century founder of the Saudi school of Islam called Wahhabism — said, in an August 19, 2014 statement, that Islamic State (ISIS), and al-Qaeda, are Islam’s “enemy number one.”

This would be a good sign, if not for the fact that four days earlier, Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani, a former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and a Salafi (a strict sect of Sunni Islam advocating a return to the early Islam of the Quran), tweeted: “ISIS is a true product of Salafism and we must deal with it with full transparency.”

Later that month, al-Kalbani published two pieces in the Saudi government-aligned daily Al Riyadh — on August 24 and 31 — criticizing elements “in the Salafi stream for appropriating the truth and Islam and for permitting the killing of their opponents, and… clerics and society that dared not come out against them.”

This was a bold assertion on the part of al-Kalbani: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on Wahhabism, a form of Salafism embraced by the monarchy.

In January 2016, al-Kalbani gave an interview to the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based network, MBC, in which he acknowledged with regret, “We follow the same thought [as ISIS], but apply it in a refined way.” He added that ISIS “draws its ideas from what is written in our own books, from our own principles.” (Author’s emphasis)

Defense Secretary James Mattis slammed the Taliban as having “no religious foundation” and being “not devout anything” after a Friday attack on an Afghan army base that left 150 soldiers dead.

Afghan Defense Minister Abdullah Habibi and Army Chief of Staff Qadam Shah Shahim resigned from their posts after the attack on Afghan National Army 209 Shaheen Military Corps Headquarters in Balkh province.

The Taliban claimed the attack was perpetrated by a “mujahid who had already infiltrated to the enemy ranks, managed to accomplice a heavy amount of explosive materials in a large dining room in the Corps; later on 9 further mujahideen equipped with heavy and light arms entered the installation tactically and launched attack on the enemy.”

They claimed the attack was retaliation for the killing of Taliban governors in Kunduz and Baghlan.

“The martyrdom offensive of 209th Corps conveys message to all enemy soldiers, police, intelligence apparatus and other relevant stooge organs that this spring operation will be more deadly and painful,” the Taliban message continued. “It is better for mercenaries to avoid sacrificing for American and foreign interests anymore. If they still continue protection of their masters they are then responsible for their actions.”

At a press conference in Afghanistan on Monday, Mattis said the attack on the soldiers “just as they were coming out of a mosque, you know, coming out of a house of worship — it certainly characterizes this fight for exactly what it is.”

“This barbaric enemy and what they do,” he added, “kind of makes it clear to me why it is we stand together.”

Mattis predicted it’s “going to be another tough year for the valiant Afghan security forces and the international troops who have stood and will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Afghanistan against terrorism and against those who seek to undermine the legitimate United Nations-recognized government of this nation.”

“If the Taliban wished to join the political process and work honestly for a positive future for the Afghan people, who have suffered long and hard, they need only to renounce violence and reject terrorism,” he said. “It’s a pretty low standard to join the political process.”