04/29/15

Iran Literally Fired a Shot Across an American Ally’s Bow, But Obama Won’t Dump His Disastrous Deal

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

What, if anything, would cause President Barack Obama to step away from the negotiating table with Iran?

This is the question I find myself pondering in light of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy Patrol’s unchecked act of aggression on Tuesday against America’s interests in the Straits of Hormuz – an act that in a sane world would in and of itself put an end to the president’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran.

As of this writing, reports indicate that the Iranian Navy Patrol fired shots at and ultimately seized a commercial cargo ship, the M/V Maersk Tigris, which flies under the Marshall Islands flag. Some believe Iran was even targeting a U.S. vessel.

An Iranian warship takes part in a naval show in 2006. (Photo: AP)

In a helpful dispatch, commentator Omri Ceren notes the significant implications of such an action given that the U.S. is: (i) Treaty-bound to secure and defend the Marshall Islands, and (ii) Committed to maintaining the free flow of commerce in the strategically vital waterways of the Middle East — as affirmed just one week ago on April 21 by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf and Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren.

The U.S. fulfilling its obligations to its protectorate, and acting to ensure vital shipping lanes remain open are not trivial matters.

Further, this act can be seen as a brazen test of the sincerity of U.S. resolve, as it was timed to coincide with the opening of the Senate’s debate on the Corker-Menendez Iran bill.

Yet there is a broader and perhaps more important context in which to consider what Ceren calls an act of “functionally unspinnable Iranian aggression.”

Even if we ignore the history of Iranian aggression against the U.S. and its allies since the deposal of the Shah in 1979, the firing upon and seizing of the Tigris marks the latest in a long series of such provocations that Iran has undertaken in just the last few months. Consider:

On February 25 the Iranian Revolutionary Guard blew up a replica U.S. aircraft carrier during defense drills
On March 24 it was reported that the Iranian regime had increased its naval threats against the U.S., including “[T]hreats to take over and sink American aircraft carriers and other warships; to close the Strait of Hormuz and Bab El-Mandeb; to carry out large-scale missile attacks inside and outside the Persian Gulf; and to mine the Persian Gulf”
On March 31 Basij militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stated that “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable”
On April 1 it was reported that an Iranian military observation aircraft had “buzzed” an armed U.S. navy helicopter over the Persian Gulf during March 2015
On April 12 it was reported that Iran had been working to deliver surface-to-air missiles to the Houthis in Yemen
On April 13 it was reported that Iran had increased arm shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas
On April 14 Russia lifted its ban on the sale of missiles to Iran, no doubt with the firm support of the Iranians
On April 17 it was reported that Iran was sending an armada of seven to nine ships – some with weapons – toward Yemen
On April 18 Iran celebrated Army Day with calls of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”
On April 19 the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s deputy leader Gen. Hossein Salami declared that there would be no inspections of military sites under any nuclear deal, threatening “We will respond with hot lead [bullets] to those who speak of it…;” and
On April 24 the Iranian Navy Patrol intercepted the Maersk Kensington, a U.S.-flagged vessel

This rhetoric and action comports with Iran’s historic hostility toward the U.S. since the fall of the Shah. Lest we forget, this list of atrocities includes, but is certainly not limited to:

The 1983 bombing of the U.S. army barracks in Beirut
Aiding and abetting Al Qaeda with respect to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on our nation
Funding, training and arming terrorists responsible for slaying American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Would Iran’s most recent actions in the Strait of Hormuz coupled with the litany of other recent and historical bellicose acts lead one to question whether it is in the United States’ interest to continue negotiating with the mullahs?

Put more directly: In what respect can the U.S. consider Iran to be a reliable, honorable negotiating partner?

Iranian women hold an anti-US sign, bearing a cartoon of US President Barack Obama, outside the former US embassy in Tehran on November 2, 2012, during a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of seizure of the US embassy which saw Islamist students hold 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days. This year’s rally came just days before US presidential election in which Republican challenger Mitt Romney has made Iran’s controversial nuclear programme a top foreign policy issue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Concerning the content of the nuclear deal being negotiated, it should be noted that the Iranians have stated the agreement accomplishes the very opposite of what the American public been led to believe. With respect to sanctions, Iran says they will be fully lifted upon the execution of the accord. As MEMRI notes, in an April 9 address, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini gave a speech in which he called America a “cheater and a liar” and

publicly set out the negotiating framework for the Iranian negotiating team, the main points of which are: an immediate lifting of all sanctions the moment an agreement is reached; no intrusive oversight of Iran’s nuclear and military facilities; the continuation of Iran’s nuclear research and development program; and no inclusion of any topics not related to the nuclear program, such as missile capability or anything impacting Iran’s support for its proxies in the region.

It is no wonder then that the nuclear deal has been lambasted on a bipartisan basis, including at the highest levels of the national security establishment. Even former Secretary of State James Baker is highly critical of the Iran deal – and his animus toward Israel, perhaps the primary casualty of the deal, may be second only to that of President Obama.

As to whether Khameini’s portrayal of the deal is accurate, former CIA analyst and Iran expert Fred Fleitz asserts that under the terms of the agreement, Iran will (i) be able to continue enriching uranium, (ii) not have to disassemble or destroy any enrichment equipment or facilities, (iii) not be required to “permit snap inspections and unfettered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities, including military bases where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear-weapons work,” (iv) be able to continue to operate its Arak heavy-water reactor, a plutonium source, in contravention of IAEA resolutions and (v) be subjected to an eased sanctions regime that will be incredibly difficult to re-impose.

If this were not enough, so intent is the Obama Administration on reaching a deal that it has been reported that for signing this agreement, Iran may even receive sweeteners including a $50 billion “signing bonus.”

The contorted logic used by the president in defense of his progressive stance towards Iran is worthy of Neville Chamberlain. During an interview with New York Times soulmate Thomas Friedman, Obama opined:

Even for somebody who believes, as I suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu believes, that there is no difference between Rouhani and the supreme leader and they’re all adamantly anti-West and anti-Israel and perennial liars and cheaters — even if you believed all that, this still would be the right thing to do. It would still be the best option for us to protect ourselves. In fact, you could argue that if they are implacably opposed to us, all the more reason for us to want to have a deal in which we know what they’re doing and that, for a long period of time, we can prevent them from having a nuclear weapon.

Sen. Tom Cotton provides a necessary corrective in a recent interview:

I am skeptical that there are many moderates within the [Iranian] leadership … I think it’s kind of like the search for the vaunted moderates in the Kremlin throughout most of the Cold War, with the exception that we could always count on the Soviet leadership to be concerned about national survival in a way that I don’t think we can count on a nuclear-armed Iranian leadership to be solely concerned about national survival.

As for Lord Chamberlain, Sen. Cotton – he of that irksome letter to Iran — takes a more charitable view, noting:

It’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain to compare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain’s general staff was telling him he couldn’t confront Hitler and even fight to a draw—certainly not defeat the German military—until probably 1941 or 1942. He was operating from a position of weakness. With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012-2013 from a position of strength … not just inherent military strength of the United States compared to Iran, but also from our strategic position.

To those who recognize reality, this deal – coupled with our weak response to the ongoing provocations of the Iranian Government — not only threatens our national security and that of our allies, but reflects an utter dereliction of duty to uphold the Constitution, and protect our people against foreign enemies.

In a word, it is treasonous.

02/6/15

Why the West is Losing to Islamic Supremacists

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

During a recent lecture on the nature of and threat posed by Iran, with whom President Barack Obama’s Chamberlainian negotiations continue apace, an existential question arose: Why does the West remain asleep regarding Islamic Supremacism and the doctrine on which it is based?

I posit that there are three main reasons, which also go a long way towards explaining why we are currently losing to the global jihad: (i) Progressive multiculturalism, moral relativism and materialism; (ii) Profound willful ignorance; and (iii) An inability to cope with the staggering implications of the threat we face.

Since the days of George W. Bush, we have heard the oft-repeated trope that Islam is a religion of peace, and moreover one of the world’s great religions, with the same ethics, values and principles as Judaism and Christianity.

Originally, the Western elite argued that those who killed in the name of Islam were merely misinterpreting and perverting the religion. These, one should note, were the relatively more clear-eyed ones. Others attributed genocidal jihadism to poverty, lack of education or global warming.

Now we have completely severed the jihadist head from the Islamic body (theo)politic, arguing that the barbarians who comprise Islamic State, or as the Obama administration obediently likes to say, Daesh, in spite of the first “I” standing for “Islamic,” are nihilists.

For a people steeped in progressivism for decades, this can be the only reasonable conclusion.

Islamic supremacism does not comport with the belief system of our elites, who assert that all peoples are the same, all religions consist of the same values and beliefs, and that material concerns trump all others, including spiritual or idealist ones.

For those who honestly believe such things — as opposed to the ones who spout platitudes out of political expediency and to gloss over threats they dishonestly claim to have already defeated – throwing up one’s arms and claiming that jihadism stems from an ideology of nothingness is the most coherent of an entirely incoherent set of answers. Even better is to declare that violent extremism is the enemy, so as to smear conservatives while they’re at it.

This pervasive misunderstanding of Islam reflects a profound ignorance, in that it neglects the fact that the Koran and hadith comprise a unique belief system fundamentally different from, and in fact antithetical to the historically Judeo-Christian West.

For those interested, there is a mass of literature from authors such as Dr. Andrew Bostom, Andrew McCarthy, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye’or who lay this out in concrete and copiously sourced terms.

Better yet, look to the texts and words of leading Islamic scholars such as Hassan Al Banna and Sayyid Qutb, prominent modern-day figures like Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ayatollah Khameini, Hassan Nasrallah, and the content being taught at mosques right here in America.

If you would like to ignore the compendium of Islamic doctrine that calls for and compels Muslims to bring about a totalitarian world under which all submit to Allah’s rule, all one has to do is look at states whose governments are based in Shariah law to see Islam in practice.

Theory and practice aside, I am willing to wager that the vast majority of those commenting on Islam in the media and political establishment have never opened up a Koran, let alone heard the word hadith. Of the small percentage who have, invariably you will hear the argument that while parts of the Koran are violent, others are peaceful. Such a view evinces further ignorance however, as it fails to address two essential Islamic concepts: (a) Abrogation and (b) taqiyya.

Abrogation refers to the fact that as the Koran reflects Allah’s divine revealed word, where there are textual contradictions, those passages revealed later must supplant those that preceded it. These later passages are frequently more violent than the earlier peaceful ones.

Taqiyya refers to strategic lying and deception – covering up one’s true intentions so as to defeat one’s enemies. This manifests itself in acts of sabotage, subversion and the propagation of strategic disinformation, not unlike what the Communists did during and after the Cold War.

Others will argue that just as the Koran has violent verses, so too do the Old and New Testaments. But Jews and Christians do not go out and slaughter in the name of their G-d in a modern-day global Crusade like the jihadists are waging. Moreover, the values and principles that flow from these two religious systems have led to the miracle that is Western civilization. The Muslim world on the other hand, especially where Islamic doctrine is followed in its purest form, resembles the seventh century one that preceded it.

Lest you think those who have studied Islam in schools are better off, in America’s universities taqiyya has become an art form. Many of the Middle Eastern departments at our country’s most prestigious academic institutions have been found to put on a “moderate” public face while serving as Trojan horses for anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Westernism — all consistent with Islamic doctrine.

This should come as no surprise, as these departments – and even K-12 schools — are often funded by Islamic nations who are the primary backers of Islamic supremacism themselves.

For those able to see past multiculturalism, moral relativism, materialism and actually study Islam in theory and practice, recognizing that the religion at the very least as understood by millions of Muslims is not only incompatible with, but hostile to our very existence, this is a staggering realization. It offends our pluralistic, tolerant sensitivities to think that such a massive, religiously-justified threat could exist. For while similarly savage enemies marched throughout the 20th century, none were tinged with theology, and Communism for its part was explicitly anti-religious.

Moreover, there are uncomfortable practical questions that such a threat raises. Who exactly are we fighting if there are millions of jihadists, aiders, abettors and enablers all over the world? How are we to fight them? What measures can we take to secure the homeland that are both sufficient and consonant with a free society?

Today, the West is clearly not even at the point of asking these questions, which reflects a lack of education on behalf of some, and denial on the part of others. That it is considered a bold act to utter phrases like “Radical Islam,” or “Islamic extremism” or “Islamism,” in the face of now over 25,000 jihadist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001 indicates as much. Imagine what kind of stones it would take to repeat after Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan, that in effect there is no such thing as “moderate Islam” or “Islamism,” and such “descriptions are very ugly…offensive and an insult to our religion…Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Rather than deal with reality, we figuratively bury our heads in the sand. Meanwhile, savage jihadists lop off and literally bury infidel heads in the sand.

If we are going to turn the tide in a war that we are currently not fighting, it is imperative that a sizable number of Americans wake up. It behooves all men and women of good conscience to educate their fellow citizens, and spark this awakening.

The future of Western civilization depends upon it.