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Anguished Liberals Plan to ‘Scream Helplessly at the Sky’ on Anniversary of Trump Election By Debra Heine

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Progressives have taken their Trump derangement syndrome to a whole new level…

Thousands of anguished libs in Boston and Philadelphia will be taking part in scream fests on Nov. 8 to commemorate the anniversary of Donald Trump’s election. Liberals in other cities around the country are likely to step up to the crazy plate as well as the big day draws near.

Over 4,000 Facebook users in the Boston area have RSVP’d to attend the event they’re calling “Scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election.” Another 33,000 have expressed interest in attending the event at the 383-year-old Boston Common.

The organizers say in a Facebook post: “Come express your anger at the current state of democracy, and scream helplessly at the sky!”

“This administration has attacked everything about what it means to be American,” Johanna Schulman, an activist and one of the organizers of the event, told Newsweek. “Who wouldn’t feel helpless every day? Coming together reminds us that we are not alone, that we are part of an enormous community of activists who are motivated and angry, whose actions can make a difference.”

Their actions may make a difference, to be sure, but perhaps not in the way they are intending. The sight of these unhinged minions binging on bitterness, self-pity, and outrage coming together to collectively howl at the moon is something that will drive more Americans into the arms of Trump.

“While the event calls upon people to Scream Helplessly, we want to convert that sense of helplessness into resistance, into action, and maybe even into optimism,” Schulman told Newsweek. “Although it is important to acknowledge the tragedy that befell our country on November 9th, we cannot let it defeat us!”

In Philadelphia, 538 people also plan to “scream helplessly at the sky” to mark Trump’s one-year anniversary as seen in a similar Facebook post. More than 3,000 people are “interested” in attending the event.

The event description reads: “Let’s have a primal scream for the current state of our democracy! Gather together after work at Philadelphia’s City Hall.”

The event is hosted by Philly UP (Philadelphia United for Progress), which describes itself as a “grassroots, feminist, intersectional group of passionate Philadelphia progressives.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The UN’s Mugabe Moment, and Its Perennial Iran Problem By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Every so often the United Nations decides to dignify a tyrant, or a tyranny, in ways so in-your-face perverse that it draws public attention, provokes highly embarrasing protest — and the UN scuttles to back away. So it went with the recent decision by the World Health Organization to appoint as one of its goodwill ambassadors the longtime tyrant of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.

On Oct. 18, the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, of Ethiopia, announced he was “honored” to name Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador. For good measure, Tedros praised Zimbabwe as “a country that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the center of its policies to provide health care to all.”

On Oct. 20, Geneva-based UN Watch put out a press release calling Mugabe’s appointment “sickening,” and noting that Mugabe’s brutal rule had turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of Africa into a basketcase, devastating its health care system along the way — while Mugabe went outside the country for his own medical needs. There was plenty of other protest, from the U.S., the UK, medical professionals worldwide, and so forth. On Oct. 22, Tedro announced he was rescinding Mugabe’s appointment.

So… problem solved?

Nope, not by half. For the UN, the embarrassment will likely fade. But the over-arching problem here — of which Mugabe’s fleeting four days as a goodwill ambassador is merely a symption — is a United Nations that inveterately dignifies and honors tyrants and tyrannies, though usually in less prominent fashion.

For a sampling of just how deep this problem runs, take the case of Iran — ruled since 1989 by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This is a regime that President Trump accurately described in his Oct. 13 speech on the Iran nuclear deal as “having raided the wealth of one of the world’s oldest and most vibrant nations, and spread death, destruction, and chaos all around the globe.” Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and leading predator of today’s Middle East, with a record of terrorist bombings and assassinations carried out by its agents and mascot terrorist groups from the Middle East to Latin America to Europe to Asia. Iran’s regime — a longtime client of North Korea’s weapons bazaar — spent years cheating its way around UN sanctions on its rogue nuclear and missile programs, and under the current UN-approved nuclear deal has carried on, with brazen bad faith, testing ballistic missiles. Iran’s regime brutalizes its own citizens, especially women, and in 2009 crushed mass protests by beating and shooting its own people in the streets. Remember the murder of Neda Soltan.

There’s a solid argument to be made that under the UN’s 1945 Charter, which says that membership is open to peace-loving states that respect human rights, today’s Iran does not belong in the UN at all.

But at the UN, Iran’s regime not only enjoys a seat as one of the 193 member states. It also enjoys the privileges of holding seats on a remarkable array of the governing boards of major UN agencies. These are positions less publicly prominent than that of a goodwill ambassador. But they are potentially more influential for directing the funds and activities of these agencies, accessing information, and horse-trading political favors behind the scenes.

Currently, Iran sits on the 36-member board of the UN’s flagship agency, the UN Development Program, or UNDP, which disburses billions annually, and in field offices around the world serves as chief coordinator for other UN agencies, and doubles, when needed, as a representative of the secretary-general. Iran has a clear affinity for the UNDP, where it chaired the governing board in 2009, while under UN sanctions for its rogue nuclear program. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Official Says UK Will Not Prosecute Returning ISIS Terrorists From Syria and Iraq By Patrick Poole

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

A top UK official told the BBC last week that ISIS terrorists from the UK returning from Syria and Iraq will not be prosecuted. Instead, the government will try to reintegrate them back into society because they were “naive” when they joined the genocidal terrorist group.

This came just two days after the chief of the UK’s MI5 spy service gave a rare speech warning that the terrorism threat was higher than he had ever seen.

Maybe, just maybe, these two statements are related.

Just yesterday, one government minister suggested that the best way to deal with returning ISIS terrorists would be to kill them. And it has been just over a month since an Iraqi refugee attempted to detonate an IED on a London subway, injuring 30 — a refugee who was already part of the UK’s “deradicalization” program.

The “no prosecution” policy statement for ISIS terrorists was made by Max Hill, the UK government’s new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. Hill told the BBC last Thursday:

We are told we do have a significant number already back in this country who have previously gone to Iraq and Syria.

That means that the authorities have looked at them and looked at them hard and have decided that they do not justify prosecution and really we should be looking at reintegration and moving away from any notion that we are going to lose a generation from this travel.

…

It’s not a decision that MI5 and others will have taken lightly. They, I am sure, will have looked intensely at each individual on return.

…

But they have left space, and I think they are right to do so, for those who travelled, but who travelled out of a sense of naivety, possibly with some brainwashing along the way, possibly in their mid-teens and who return in a sense of utter disillusionment. We have to leave space for those individuals to be diverted away from the criminal courts.

About 850 jihadists are believed to have left the UK to travel to Syria and Iraq in recent years, with more than 400 already having returned. In terms of raw numbers, this is second only to France:

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Mueller Investigates Podesta By Daniel John Sobieski

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Once again, as in the case of Hillary and Uranium One, the search into alleged collusion between Team Trump and Russia has backfired with the announcement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Tony Podesta, the brother of former Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, and the Podesta Group and its connections with Ukraine. Even Robert Mueller and his team of Democratic donors ad operatives sometimes go where the evidence really leads:

The probe of Podesta and his Democratic-leaning lobbying firm grew out of Mueller’s inquiry into the finances of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to the sources. As special counsel, Mueller has been tasked with investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for a non-profit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). Podesta’s company was one of many firms that worked on the campaign, which promoted Ukraine’s image in the West.

The sources said the investigation into Podesta and his company began as more of a fact-finding mission about the ECMU and Manafort’s role in the campaign, but has now morphed into a criminal inquiry into whether the firm violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.

There is more to this story than the legacy media has been willing to report to this point, including John Podesta’s dealings with Russia and Hillary and the Democratic Party’s collusion with Ukraine to slime Team Trump. John Podesta is the doofus whose password was found to be “password” in the Russian hacking investigation and may have violated federal disclosure laws for not disclosing he was paid to sit on the board of various Russian entities:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, may have violated federal law when he failed to fully disclose details surrounding his membership on the executive board of Joule Unlimited and the “75,000 common shares” he received. The energy company accepted millions from a Vladimir Putin-connected Russian government fund.

Podesta joined the executive board of Joule Unlimited Technologies — a firm partly financed by Putin’s Russia — in June 2011 and received 100,000 shares of stock options, according to an email uncovered by WikiLeaks. Podesta’s membership on the board of directors of Joule Unlimited was first revealed in research from Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer.

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Europe: Journalists Against Free Speech by Judith Bergman

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Gone is all pretense that journalism is about reporting the facts. These are the aims of a political actor.

Being bought and paid for by the EU apparently counts as “press freedom” these days.

According to the guidelines, journalists should, among other things, “Provide an appropriate range of opinions, including those belonging to migrants and members of minorities, but… not… extremist perspectives just to ‘show the other side’…. Don’t allow extremists’ claims about acting ‘in the name of Islam’ to stand unchallenged…. where it is necessary and newsworthy to report hateful comments against Muslims, mediate the information.”

The European Federation of Journalists (EJF), “the largest organization of journalists in Europe, represents over 320,000 journalists in 71 journalists’ organizations across 43 countries,” according to its website. The EJF, a powerful player, also leads a Europe-wide campaign called “Media against Hate.”

The “Media against Hate” campaign aims to:

“counter hate speech[1] and discrimination in the media, both on and offline… media and journalists play a crucial role in informing…policy … regarding migration and refugees. As hate speech and stereotypes targeting migrants proliferate across Europe… #MediaAgainstHate campaign aims to: improve media coverage related to migration, refugees, religion and marginalised groups… counter hate speech, intolerance, racism and discrimination… improve implementation of legal frameworks regulating hate speech and freedom of speech…”

Gone is all pretense that journalism is about reporting the facts. These are the aims of a political actor.

A very large political actor is, in fact, involved in the “Media against Hate” campaign. The campaign is one of several media programs supported by the EU under its Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC). In the REC program for 2017, the EU Commission, the EU’s executive body, writes:

“DG Justice and Consumers [the EU Commission’s justice department] will address the worrying increase of hate crime and hate speech by allocating funding to actions aiming at preventing and combating racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance… including dedicated work in the area of countering online hate speech (implementation of the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online)… DG Justice also funds civil society organisations combatting racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance”.

This political player, the EU, the biggest in Europe, works openly at influencing the “free press” with its own political agendas. One of these agendas is the issue of migration into Europe from Africa and the Middle East. In his September State of the Union address, the president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, made it clear that whatever Europeans may think — polls repeatedly show that the majority of Europeans do not want any more migrants — the EU has no intention of putting a stop to migration. “Europe,” Juncker said, “contrary to what some say, is not a fortress and must never become one. Europe is and must remain the continent of solidarity where those fleeing persecution can find refuge”.

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Thanks to Obama, America is two steps behind Iran in Middle East by John R. Bolton

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

The fall of Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, is unarguably an important politico-military milestone, albeit long overdue. Nonetheless, ISIS, a metastasized version of Al Qaeda, remains a global terrorist threat, and prospects for Middle Eastern stability and security for America’s interests and allies are still remote.

Even as ISIS was losing Raqqa, Iraqi regular armed forces and Shia militia were attacking Kirkuk and its environs, held by Iraqi Kurds since June 2014, when ISIS burst out of Syria and seized large swathes of territory from Baghdad’s collapsing army.

The battles for Raqqa and Kirkuk reveal much about the mistakes in U.S. strategy for defeating ISIS, and the consequences of not supporting Iraqi Kurdish efforts to establish an independent state. The two battles are closely related, proving again the historical reality that the Middle East is replete with multi-party, multi-dimensional conflicts, and contains more troublemakers than peacemakers.

Most importantly for Washington, Raqqa and Kirkuk demonstrate that Tehran’s malign regime is on the march, while American policy stands in disarray, even while President Trump rightly condemned Iran’s continued regional belligerency and support for global terrorism. How this came to be is a lesson in bureaucracy. Existing policies, on auto-pilot as always when new presidents take office, especially when Republicans replace Democrats, persisted after January 20, without being subjected to searching review and modification.

Had the incoming Trump administration immediately reversed Barack Obama’s support for the Baghdad government, effectively a satellite of Tehran’s mullahs, we would not be, as we are now, objectively supporting Iran’s hegemonic regional ambitions. President Trump did order a faster operations tempo against ISIS, and made significant changes in the rules of engagement for U.S. military activities.

Unfortunately, however, he was apparently not given the option to dump Obama’s strategy of relying on regular Iraqi government troops and Shia militia, both dominated by Iran. Of course, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds could not have defeated ISIS alone, despite receiving U.S. advice and equipment and carrying a major part of the hostilities. The new administration should have pressed other Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in addition to Syrian opposition forces, to take more substantial military roles.

The result is that, today, as the ISIS caliphate disintegrates, Iran has established an arc of control from Iran through Iraq to Assad’s regime in Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. If this disposition of forces persists, Iran will have an invaluable geo-strategic position for possible future use against Israel, Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula’s oil-producing monarchies. Thanks to Obama and the bureaucracy, the United States seemingly has no post-Raqqa politico-military policy, allowing Iran greater regional dominance by default.

Iran’s grand strategy became even more evident in the swift pivot of significant military resources from the anti-ISIS campaign to the anti-Kurd campaign, resulting in Kirkuk’s capture. Iraq’s government and its sycophants have said the Kirkuk assault was necessitated by Iraqi Kurdistan’s overwhelming vote for independence on September 25. In fact, the referendum merely provided a pretext, not the reason, for the Iran-directed military action.

The real reason was that ISIS’s impending demise freed up regular and militia forces for what could be just the first stage in an Iranian effort to re-subjugate Iraqi Kurds to Baghdad. (To be sure, the Kurds themselves may have been partially responsible for their Kirkuk defeat. Conflicting media reports indicate that one Kurdish faction may have tried to cut a deal with the Baghdad — and implicitly Tehran — authorities, leading to Kurdish resistance around Kirkuk melting away.)

U.S. strategy, designed under Obama but continued by default under Trump, thus focused on one war while Iran was preparing for or waging three wars. Unfortunately, the cliché fits all too well: Washington is playing checkers while Tehran is playing not merely chess, but three-dimensional chess.

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Canada’s Anti-Islamophobia Motion by A. Z. Mohamed

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Even though at this stage, M-103 is non-binding, as one of its supporters — Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood — wrote, “Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning.”

It sounds as if the next step is to try to make a non-binding resolution binding; and as if the eventual aim is to reinforce and legitimize the term Islamophobia, to limit freedom of speech, and to prevent Canadians from criticizing radical Islam, Islamic sharia, and practices such as wife- beating, honor killing and female genital mutilation (FGM).

Fear or anger toward radical Islam and Muslims are unlikely to be caused by an “irrational hatred and fear of Islam,” or “Islamophobia”. They are, however, likely to be triggered by global radical Islamic terrorist attacks and as more people become aware of the aggressive and intolerant nature of many Quranic verses, of the Muslims Prophet’s hadiths, of what Canadian Muslim clerics (imams) are preaching and of radical Islam.

The Canadian Liberal Party’s anti-Islamophobia motion, M-103, is not a law; it is a non-binding formal proposal, an opinion by Parliament. The motion’s text calls on the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”

However, the House of Commons Heritage Committee heard on September 27 that it is more likely to lead to “thought control, oppression, disharmony and criminalization of non-Muslims, ” according to the National Post.

The hearing also revealed that there are many doubts about the motion’s vague language. Committee members spent much of the time, the National Post added, trying to explain exactly what M-103 means.

The controversial motion passed 201 votes to 91 in March, after months of bitter debate, and protests and counter-protests, across Canada, and in the aftermath of the January 29 mosque shooting in Quebec City, where six Muslim men were murdered.

(Image source: Parliament of Canada)

Careful, objective reading of the latest hate crime statistics in Canada, for 2015 (released in June 2017), exposes that the motion is biased in both its wording and priorities. It is also an act of favoritism in that it singles out Islam and only Islam for special treatment.

The motion sets forth the term “Islamophobia,” mentions it twice by name, places the government’s condemnation of “Islamophobia” first, and “all forms of systemic racism” and “religious discrimination” only after it.

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Judicial Watch says State Department sits on a ‘motherlode’ of Clinton documents

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

In a bombshell announcement, Judicial Watch announced that the State Department has not even searched the majority of Hillary Clinton emails that it obtained from the FBI during the criminal investigation into Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State. In a statement on Monday, the transparency advocacy group declared that the State Department told a federal court that it has yet to process 40,000 of 72,000 pages of Clinton records that the FBI recovered last year. The revelation came during a federal court hearing in Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking the former top diplomat’s emails that were sent or received during her tenure from February 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).

The hearing before Judge James E. Boasberg, focused on the State Department’s processing of the tens of thousands of emails Clinton failed to disclose when she served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama. Some were sent by her top aide, Huma Abedin, and found by investigators on the laptop of her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. Thus far, the State Department has processed 32,000 pages of emails and released a small number. However, another 40,000 pages remain to be processed.

According to Judicial Watch, Judge Boasberg ordered the State Department on October 19 to “explain how its anticipated increase in resources will affect processing of records in this case and when the processing of each disk is likely to be completed.” The State Department under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions have previously argued before the court that there was diminished public interest in the Clinton emails.

In November 2016, the State Department was ordered to produce no less than 500 pages of records a month to Judicial Watch, emails of which the FBI found in its investigation into Clinton’s non-government email system. The State Department has produced 23 batches of documents so far. At the current pace, said a statement from Judicial Watch, the Clinton emails and other records won’t be fully available for possible release until at least 2020. Clinton attempted to delete 33,000 emails from her non-government server. The FBI investigation recovered or found a number of these missing emails, many of which were government documents.

The lawsuit was originally filed in May 2015.

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SYDNEY WILLIAMS: A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Posted By on October 23rd, 2017

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.” John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936

In universities, we were exposed – at times through the lens of prejudicial teachers, but ones with less bias than today – to the writings of political philosophers, from Socrates to Locke to Marx. We glimpsed the ancient Greeks and Romans. We read history and surveyed the Bible. We grazed on the works of economists, like Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. While most of us did not study these philosophers and economists in detail, they were, at least, unmasked for our inspection. We were taught to think – to reason for ourselves – to determine what principles would help guide us past the Scyllas and the Charybdis’ we were bound to encounter. Today, too much focus in our universities is on issue-specific, special studies that pass as education.

It is the ability to think independently that is critical for democracy. Today, that is at risk. STEM programs help with jobs, but a vibrant democracy depends on a broadly educated electorate. For most older American, the concepts of personal liberty and economic freedom, along with a legacy of democracy and respect for institutions, are deeply ingrained. These beliefs have kept us free and democratic. Yet, youth today seems less critical, less challenging of their teachers. They believe what they hear and read in the mainstream media and on social media. The threat to democracy comes not from coarse, loud-mouthed people like Mr. Trump, but from subtle, cavalier politicians who surreptitiously insinuate themselves into our minds under the guise of doing good. To me, the biggest risk to our country is from within – elitists on both coasts, in the media, academia and in Washington, who use the threat of populism as justification for plutocracy.

Politics is an empirical process. Ours has changed over the past two hundred plus years, adapting to differing conditions and mores. The President is more isolated and more powerful. Congress has not expanded in line with the population growth, and has ceded responsibility to the Executive. Today, the judiciary (at least, those who are not activists) and local government most closely resemble what the Founders envisioned. Politicians, regardless of Party, exude an arrogance that sets them above those they represent. Many are hypocrites, spouting promises, with no intention of upholding them; passing laws, while exempting themselves; beholden to lobbyists and special interests, rather than the people; pledging prudence, but practicing profligacy. They use identity politics, which are counter-productive to assimilation and unity, leading, as they do, toward pluralism – a salad bowl instead of a melting pot.

Beware dogmatism born of ignorance. Like all self-respecting pundits, I see things I like and things I don’t. I have beliefs, and I have doubts. I do not believe climate skeptics are deniers, or that extremists come only from the Right, or that Francis Fukuyama was correct in proclaiming that the fall of the Soviet Union represented the end of history. I do not want to be lectured to by a supercilious Al Gore on climate – a man who made millions, while frightening gullible innocents. I do not want to be instructed on morality by cocky, ethically-challenged late-night hosts, like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. I do not want to be preached to by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on civility in politics, when they look upon conservatives as gun-toting, Bible-thumping “deplorables.” I do not want to listen to anti-Trump rants from sanctimonious Ivy League professors, hiding behind ivory towers. I don’t like duplicity or hypocrisy. I don’t like those who invoke identity politics, and I don’t respect those who use public fame to generate private wealth. I do not believe that any country, government, system or political party is perfect, but I do believe ours comes closest. I do like a sense of humor, civility and respect. I also believe that citizens have the responsibility to be conversant on matters of public policy, or, at least within reason, and that they should always exercise their right to vote. While unions have served a useful purpose, in recent times public sector ones have become more interested in preserving jobs and benefits, regardless of the costs to taxpayers. As well, in impeding progress by delaying or denying innovation, they have become advocates for the status quo.

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The Iran-Hamas Plan to Destroy Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 23rd, 2017

Iran’s goal in this move? For Hamas to maintain and enhance its preparation for war against Israel.

Iran’s message to Hamas: If you want us to continue providing you with financial and military aid, you must continue to hold on to your weapons and reject demands to disarm.

Iran wants Hamas to retain its security control over the Gaza Strip so that the Iranians can hold onto another power base in the Middle East, as it does with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In a historic reawakening, Iran is once again meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. This this does not bode well for the future of “reconciliation” between Hamas and Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction run by President Mahmoud Abbas.The re-emergence of Iran, as it pursues its efforts to increase its political and military presence in the region, does not bode well for the future of stability in the Middle East.

The Iranians are urging Hamas to hold on to its weapons in spite of the recent “reconciliation” agreement signed between Hamas and Fatah under the auspices of Egypt. Iran’s goal in this move? For Hamas to maintain and enhance its preparation for war against Israel.

A high-level Hamas delegation headed by Saleh Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s “political bureau,” traveled to Tehran last week to brief Iranian leaders on the “reconciliation” deal with Fatah. During the visit, Iranian leaders praised Hamas for resisting demands (by Fatah) to disarm and relinquish security control over the Gaza Strip.

“We congratulate you on your refusal to abandon your weapons, an issue that you consider as a red line,” Ali Velayati, a senior Iranian politician and advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, told the visiting Hamas officials. “The Palestinian cause is the most important cause of the Islamic world, and after all this time you remain committed to the principle of resistance against the Zionists despite all the pressure you are facing.”

During the visit of a high-level Hamas delegation to Iran last week, Ali Velayati (pictured above in 2016), a senior Iranian politician and advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the visiting Hamas officials: “We congratulate you on your refusal to abandon your weapons…” (Image source: Hamed Malekpour/Wikimdia Commons)

Arouri and his colleagues rushed to Tehran to seek the support of the Iranian regime in the wake of demands by Abbas that Hamas allow the Palestinian Authority to assume security control over the Gaza Strip. The “reconciliation” agreement stipulates nothing about the need for Hamas to disarm, and Hamas officials have stressed during the past two weeks that they have no intention of laying down their weapons or dismantling their security apparatus in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas views the demand to disarm as part of an Israeli-American “conspiracy” designed to eliminate the Palestinian “resistance” and thwart the “reconciliation” accord with Abbas’s Fatah. Hamas’s refusal to disarm is already threatening to spoil the “reconciliation.”