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FOREIGN POLICY

Iran Tests Trump by Majid Rafizadeh

“Regarding the issue of production of ballistic missiles for hitting moving targets, I should say that we are among a handful of countries that have gained the knowhow (in this field)”. – Iranian Brigadier General Salami, January 29, 2017.

Iran has the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East.

“Iran has received Soviet designed Scud-B missiles and it has adapted the design into two independently-built versions; the Shahab 1 and Shahab 2.” – Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2014

Helpfully, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has put Iran “on notice.”

Right after the executive order from the White House to put a hold on issuing visas to seven countries including Iran, Tehran has test-fired a ballistic missile. The U.S. intelligence community was able to detect Iran’s launch. Iran conducted the launch at a well-known location near the capital, Tehran.

Iran has confirmed firing a ballistic missile. This ballistic missile’s launch would constitute Iran’s ninth test-firing of ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between P5+1 and Iran.

Intriguingly, on the same day that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) test-fired a ballistic missile, Iran’s state media outlet Tasnim News Agency quoted IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Salami who bragged about Iran’s ballistic capabilities and achievements. General Salami boasted that Iran is among few countries that can produce ballistic missiles and strike moving targets. Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Sunday, Brigadier General Salami pointed out:

“Our enemies have stood against us with complex and special tactics and techniques…In order to confront them, we need to take the initiative and employ special methods, techniques and tactics…Regarding the issue of production of ballistic missiles for hitting moving targets, I should say that we are among a handful of countries that have gained the knowhow (in this field)”.

Iran is breaching the UN Security Council Resolution 2231. Security Council resolution 2231 (section 3 of Annex B) “calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.” In addition, the United Nations Security Council resolution 1929, states:

“Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.”

Russia, which enjoys close ties with Tehran, is siding with Iranian leaders arguing that Tehran has not violated the UN resolution because Tehran’s ballistic missile is not “capable of delivering nuclear weapons”. Moscow is playing with words.

Bring Russia to the Table and Promote America’s Security The Art of the Deal by Stephen Blank and Peter Huessy

Putin’s Russia is determined to demilitarize NATO in Eastern Europe, end Western economic sanctions, allow the permanent amputation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity including the Crimea, secure Bashar Assad’s rule over all of Syria, and in general establish Moscow in world affairs on a plane of “equal status with Washington”.

This last goal is not going to be acceptable to any US president. It would give Russia a veto on U.S. activity abroad and a free hand in its self-proclaimed sphere of influence. Moreover, it would divide NATO, demoralize the EU, and almost certainly encourage further Russian aggression.

Energy policy is the key. A smart, aggressive, and self-interested energy policy makes America stronger and the world safer.

The US and Europe should agree to hold a major NATO summit in advance of a Trump-Putin sit-down. This move would demonstrate renewed NATO strength and resolve.

The proposed American conventional modernization must embrace the entire zone from the Baltic to the Black Sea. It must be coordinated by the U.S. with its allies. It is thus hoped that by doing so, the conventional modernization will help check Russia’s nuclear threats.

Realistically, the US-Russia rivalry will remain in place — but a “strong and nationalist United States,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, can be a diplomatic, military and economic “hinge” upon which U.S. efforts to “discourage” Putin from doing things unwise can succeed.

The rivalry between the United States and Russia is entering a new era with the election of Donald Trump. While Trump has made no secret of his desire for better relations between the two nations, he has also called for a more muscular and efficient US military.

The new President seeks to modernize the US nuclear deterrent, expand effective missile defenses, and significantly increase conventional military capability, while reforming and revitalizing NATO.

These plans will no doubt rub up against Mr. Putin’s objectives. Putin’s Russia is determined to demilitarize NATO in Eastern Europe, end Western economic sanctions, allow the permanent amputation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity including the Crimea, secure Bashar Assad’s rule over all of Syria, and in general establish Moscow in world affairs on a plane of “equal status with Washington”.

Leading From Behind: The Obama Doctrine and the U.S. Retreat From International Affairs by Herbert I London (Author), Bryan Griffin (Editor)

The eight years of the Obama Administration represented a dramatic break from the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that had held since World War II: instead of the United States asserting leadership, confronting threats to global piece, and guaranteeing the security of our friends and allies, President Obama placed his faith in multilateralism, international institutions, and in the words of his own administration, “leading from behind” in global crises. The results are evident around the globe as war and chaos engulf Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; anti-democratic forces are resurgent; and Islamic terrorist organizations are emboldened in their efforts to establish a tyrannical Caliphate. In a series of columns and commentaries over the past several years, Herb London has provided an insightful and prescient critique of the Obama Administration’s feckless, even dangerous, foreign policy. This volume collects those works, and combines them into a narrative that not only provides an important history of a president’s failed policies but also shows the incredible challenges facing the United States–and the world–over the coming decade. Leading From Behind is an indispensable resource for students and observers of international affairs.

On Boycotting Radical Islamic Nations by Nonie Darwish

The interviewer seemed shocked to hear that I do not have any Arab or Muslim friends who are protesting President Trump’s ban, and that many immigrants of Islamic origin support the ban and are fed up and embarrassed by what jihadists are doing.

The lesson America needs to know is that the West is not doing Muslims a favor by constantly treating them as children who should be shielded from reality. They hungry for the truth: that their educational system and mosque preaching are full of incitement, are abhorrent, hate-filled and the foundation upon which violent jihad is built.

Muslims need to know that the world does indeed have a justifiable and legitimate concern about Islam and actions done in the name of Islam by Muslims.

Muslims need to look at themselves in the mirror and see the world from the point of view of their victims. Instead, the West is sacrificing its culture, values, laws, pride and even self-respect.

It might compassion that leads the West to take in millions of Muslim refugees but it is reckless compassion. Do Westerners question the motivation of Islamic theocracies as to why ultra-rich Arab nations are sending us their refugees but taking in none?

Some “tough love” is urgently needed if Muslims are to be motivated to change and reform.

Early this morning an Arabic radio station in the Middle East called asking my opinion about President Trump’s ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim nations. The radio host, who sounded angry over the ban, was a Christian Arab. She was surprised to hear that I supported the ban and think that it should have taken place the day after 9/11.

She then asked me if I knew any Arab American activist who was against the ban because she wanted to interview someone against the ban. She seemed shocked to hear that I do not have any Arab or Muslim friends who are protesting the ban, and that many immigrants of Islamic and Middle East origin support the ban and are fed up and embarrassed by what jihadists are doing.

She said that all she sees on CNN and other channels are riots that portray almost all Americans supporting Muslims and against Trump. I am upset over the success of the leftist propaganda all over the Middle East. It brings back memories of the life of the hate indoctrination and misinformation I lived under for most of my life.

THE LESSONS OF ROOSEVELT’S FAILURES CAROLINE GLICK

What Trump has learned that his opponents haven’t.

Is US President Donald Trump the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Does his immigration policy mimic Roosevelt’s by adopting a callous, bigoted position on would-be asylum seekers from the Muslim world? At a press conference on June 5, 1940, Roosevelt gave an unspeakably cynical justification for his administration’s refusal to permit the desperate Jews of Nazi Germany to enter the US.

In Roosevelt’s words, “Among the refugees [from Germany], there are some spies… And not all of them are voluntary spies – it is rather a horrible story but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

The current media and left-wing uproar over the executive order US President Donald Trump signed on Saturday which enacts a temporary ban on entry to the US of nationals from seven Muslim majority countries is extraordinary on many levels. But one that stands out is the fact that opponents of Trump’s move insist that Trump is reenacting the bigoted immigration policies the US maintained throughout the Holocaust.

The first thing that is important to understand about Trump’s order is that it did not come out of nowhere. It is based on the policies of his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump’s move is an attempt to correct the strategic and moral deficiencies of Obama’s policies – deficiencies that empower bigots and fascists while disenfranchising and imperiling their victims.

Trump’s order is based on the 2015 Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. As White House spokesman Sean Spicer noted in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz Sunday, the seven states targeted by Trump’s temporary ban – Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia – were not chosen by Trump.

They were identified as uniquely problematic and in need of specific, harsher vetting policies for refugee applications by former US president Barack Obama.

In Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, the recognized governments lack control over large swaths of territory.

As a consequence, they are unable to conclude immigration vetting protocols with the US. As others have noted, unlike these governments, Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian officials have concluded and implement severe and detailed visa vetting protocols with US immigration officials.

Immigrants from Somalia have carried out terrorist attacks in the US. Clearly there is a problem with vetting procedures in relation to that jihad-plagued failed state.

Finally, the regimes in Sudan and Iran are state sponsors of terrorism. As such, the regimes clearly cannot be trusted to properly report the status of visa applicants.

In other words, the one thing that the seven states have in common is that the US has no official counterpart in any of them as it seeks to vet nationals from those states seeking to enter its territory. So the US must adopt specific, unilateral vetting policies for each of them.

Now that we know the reason the Obama administration concluded that visa applicants from these seven states require specific vetting, we arrive at the question of whether Trump’s order will improve the outcome of that vetting from both a strategic and moral perspective.

The new executive order requires the relevant federal agencies and departments to review the current immigration practices in order to ensure two things.

First, that immigrants from these and other states are not enemies of the US. And second, to ensure that those that do enter the US are people who need protection.

Trump’s Iran Notice Tehran tests the new President with another ballistic missile launch.

One early test for the Trump Administration will be how it enforces the nuclear deal with Iran, and that question has become more urgent with Iran’s test last weekend of another ballistic missile.

The test of a medium-range, home-grown Khorramshahr missile is Tehran’s twelfth since it signed the nuclear deal with the U.S. and its diplomatic partners in 2015. John Kerry, then Secretary of State, insisted that the deal barred Iran from developing or testing ballistic missiles. But that turned out to be a self-deception at best, as the U.N. Security Council resolution merely “called upon” Iran not to conduct such missile tests, rather than barring them.

Iran has little reason to stop such tests because the penalties for doing them have been so light. The Obama Administration responded with weak sanctions on a few Iranian entities and individuals, even as it insisted that Iran is complying with the overall deal and deserves more sanctions relief. In December Boeing signed a $16 billion deal to sell 80 passenger planes to Iran, never mind that the regime uses its airliners to ferry troops and materiel to proxies in Syria.

President Trump has offered contradictory opinions about that sale, but he has been unequivocal in his opposition to what he calls the “disastrous” Iran deal. In a call Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, the President pledged to enforce the Iran deal “rigorously,” and on Monday the Administration requested an emergency Security Council meeting to discuss the latest test.

That meeting probably won’t yield much, thanks to the usual Russian obstruction, but it will put a spotlight on the willingness of allies such as Britain to do more to uphold an agreement the enforcement mechanisms of which they were once eager to trumpet. Whatever happened to the “snapback economic sanctions” that were supposed to be the West’s insurance policy against Iran’s cheating?

The Administration could also warn Iran that the Treasury Department will bar global banks from conducting dollar transactions with their Iranian counterparts in the event of another test, and that it will rigorously enforce “know your customer” rules for foreign companies doing business with counterparts in the Islamic Republic, many of which are fronts for the Revolutionary Guards.

The U.S. needs to provide allies with military reassurance against the Iranian threat. Supplying Israel with additional funds to develop its sophisticated Arrow III anti-ballistic missile system would send the right message, as would an offer to Saudi Arabia to sell Lockheed Martin’s high-altitude Thaad ABM system. The State Department and Pentagon will have to explore diplomatic and military options in case the deal unravels.

Trump Challenges the Internationalist Order What the hysterical response of the opposition tells us. Bruce Thornton

A job begun is half done, as the Romans used to say. Restoring our nation’s pride in its exceptionalism, and keeping our government’s obligation to put our country’s interests and security first, is job number one for the new president. After just one week in office, President Trump has made a good start at dismantling the internationalist order that for nearly a century has tried to weaken and subordinate national sovereignty and identity to globalist institutions. The hysterical response of the global elites and this country’s fellow-travelers tells us Trump is drawing blood.

Trump’s executive orders and comments on securing our southern border, renegotiating NAFTA, and banning refugees from jihadist-infested countries––from a list drawn up during the Obama administration by the way–– drew the usual blustering dudgeon. Mexico’s complaints about Trump’s comments were laughably hypocritical. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said, “Mexico does not believe in walls.” Of course they don’t believe in their northern border because Mexico uses illegal immigration into the U.S. to get rid of people for whom they have no jobs or opportunities, and from whom they secure $25 billion a year in remittances, more than the revenues from the sale of oil.

But the last border you want to try to cross illegally is Mexico’s southern border, notorious not for any wall, but for the brutality, including torture and rape, inflicted on those caught. Even Mexican-Indian citizens are apprehended and abused as suspected illegal aliens from Central America. This animus against immigrants is no surprise, given the harsh protections of citizenship enshrined in Mexico’s constitution, which makes illegal entry a felony. And there are numerous draconian restrictions on legal immigrants, such as prohibitions on owning property and serving in government or the military. Or consider Article 33, which states, “The Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining he may deem inexpedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action.” Compare that with the extensive legal protections for even criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. The Mexican president is merely mouthing globalist pieties in order to serve his own country’s national interests.

The same hypocrisy is evident in the mainly European complaints about Trump’s moratorium on immigration from certain countries. Last week foreign immigrants from such places who had been detained at airports were blessed with restraining orders by two federal judges in Virginia and New York. The ACLU applauded this slap-down of Trump’s “unconstitutional Muslim ban,” a willful distortion of the plain text of the executive order. And as a globalist outfit congenitally hostile to its own country, the ACLU seems to think there is a Constitutional “civil liberty” for anybody from anywhere to enter the U.S.

Trump Admin Prepares Exec Order to End Funding for UN Agencies Giving Full Membership to PA, PLO .By: Hana Levi Julian*****

The Trump administration is preparing two executive orders that are likely to cause an earthquake in the Middle East

The New York Times reported Wednesday in a breaking story that the staff of U.S. President Donald J. Trump is preparing an executive order that would terminate funding for any United Nations agency or other international organization that gives full membership to the Palestinian Authority or the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In addition, the order terminates funding for programs or activities that fund abortion or circumvent sanctions against Iran or North Korea.

According to the report, the draft order also calls for terminating funding for any organization that is “controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” or is held responsible for persecution of marginalized groups, or systematic violation of human rights.

Moreover, the order calls for a minimum 40 percent cut across the board in remaining U.S. funding of international organizations, and establishes a committee to make recommendations as to where the cuts should be made.

The list of potential targets includes funding for peacekeeping operations, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, aid to nations who “oppose important United States policies” and the United Nations Population Fund.

A second executive order calls for a review of all current and pending treaties with more than one other nation – applicable only to those not “directly related to national security, extradition or international trade”– and asks for recommendations on which to retain.

Samantha Power Reinvents Obama’s Record on Russia By Claudia Rosett

By all means, let’s have a debate about the dangers of American presidents and their administrations purveying “alternative facts.” But could the members of the media most ostentatiously seething over President Trump — and now busy presenting their own alternative facts — please spare us the pretense that the White House is suddenly in danger of losing its credibility. What’s left to lose? We’ve just had eight years of the Obama administration beaming out alternative facts “narratives” to the mascot-media echo chamber, on the theory that saying something makes it so (“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; Iran’s “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program; the Benghazi “video”; etc.).

It is Trump’s job to reverse this rot, not to adapt Obama’s fiction techniques to suit himself. But if anyone’s curious about the kind of fakery that Trump and his team should strive to avoid — in the interest of integrity and good policy — Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has just given us a showcase example. In her farewell speech as UN ambassador, delivered Jan. 17 to the Atlantic Council, Power conjured an entire alternate universe, less by way of presenting alternative facts than by omitting a number of vital facts altogether. The result was to erase from the picture some of the most disastrous failures of the Obama administration, while insinuating that Trump is already complicit in the resulting mess.

Let me stipulate that Power did issue a warning that is valid, important, and urgent. Her topic, as she explained at the start of her speech, was “a major threat facing our great nation: Russia.”

Yep, no question about that. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a growing threat, as some of us have been arguing for more than a decade.

But it was on Obama’s watch that Russia became a mushrooming threat to a degree that even Obama and his team could not in the end ignore — welcoming Edward Snowden, snatching Crimea from Ukraine, moving back into the Middle East, backing the Assad regime and bombing in Syria, hacking hither and yon, and frustrating Power at the UN with its veto on the Security Council.

It was Obama himself, with his policy of “engagement,” who helped lay the groundwork for this rising threat — deferring to dictators, betraying allies, downsizing the U.S. military, and sneering at those who warned there would be hell to pay. Putin drew the logical conclusions, read this U.S. retreat as an invitation, and made his moves. One might have supposed that after years of Obama apologizing for America, Samantha Power in her swan-song lecture could have summoned the strength of character to apologize for Obama, and for her own role, as one of his top envoys. (Don’t hold your breath).

For Putin, Obama offered the opportunity of a lifetime — to roll right over that old “rules-based order,” which always depended on American leadership, and which Power now warns us is threatened by Russia. Obama began with the 2009 “reset,” including the gift to Putin of yanking missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. Obama went on to promise Putin “more flexibility” after his 2012 reelection. In the 2012 presidential campaign debates, Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s warnings about Russia, scoffing that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Trump’s State Dept. Holds Back Obama’s $221 million to the PA

Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, is very upset with President Obama’s last-Friday-in-office decision to send the Palestinian Authority $221 million, because Granger had placed a hold on it, because the PA had broken its commitment to the US and sought membership in international organizations, according to an early Wednesday PA report. Those Congressional holds are not legally binding, but they are part of the ongoing business between the Administration and the branch of the legislator which holds the purse strings. Like disgruntled office workers on their last day at work, Obama and Kerry broke that trust because they no longer had any business with this body.

So now President Trump’s State Department says it plans to review the rule-breaking decision to send $221 million to a Palestinian Authority that also breaks the rules, AP reports. On Tuesday, the department said it would make adjustments to in this unruly payment, to make sure it complies with its new priorities.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Business Insider that “Congress had been looking at various behaviors from Palestine — unilateral attempts at statehood, corruption, incitement of violence, and paying salaries to people in jail for terrorism — and that’s why the hold has been there.”

An earlier AP story reported that the Obama administration had been pressing Congress to release the money for a while, saying it was needed for humanitarian aid, political and security reforms, and “rule of law.”

Granger said in a statement Tuesday: “I worked to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars would fund the Palestinian Authority unless very strict conditions were met. While none of these funds will go to the Palestinian Authority because of those conditions, they will go to programs in the Palestinian territories that were still under review by Congress. The Obama Administration’s decision to release these funds was inappropriate.”

The Palestinian Authority pays out an estimated $140 million a year to the families of suicide bombers and salaries to imprisoned terrorists, which is around 10% of their annual budget.