Iran's Revealing Defiance of the U.S. and U.N. - By Roger Aronoff - http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/61831/irans-revealing-defiance-of-the-u-s-and-u-n-opinion/#C61WOHKESBIjD9FF.97
Having already received its big payday from the "nuclear deal" that was never signed, Iran continues to spit in the face of the U.N. and the Obama administration, the latter of which has so valiantly attempted to defend Iran's honor and justify this fiasco, even claiming it as a great foreign policy achievement. The latest act of defiance by Iran is an $8 billion dollar shopping spree, courtesy of its recently unfrozen assets, which were released because they supposedly convinced the IAEA that they have no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
Several sources are reporting the planned purchase. NBC News is reporting, "Moscow plans to sell Iran state-of-the-art warplanes, tanks and missile systems, Russian state media said Wednesday-a haul that could reportedly total up to $8 billion."
The Washington Free Beacon is also reporting the sale, writing that Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and terrorism analyst, said that "the Obama administration set the stage for these arms deals by providing Iran with sanctions relief too early under the nuclear accord." He added that "Secretary of State John Kerry frontloaded Iran's payday for all the wrong reasons. If the [nuclear deal] was meant to last 10 or 15 years, it would make sense to release the cash over that time frame."
"But, because Kerry didn't want any successor holding Iran's feet to the fire on compliance with the deal, he gave Iran its payday up front," Rubin explained. "It was wholly predictable-and indeed, it was predicated early and often-that Iran would invest that money disproportionately in its military and not actually help its own people."
As Fox News reported, this purchase is in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed on July 20th of last year, just days after the unsigned agreement between Iran and the P5+1 was publicly announced. "The ban explicitly forbids 'battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, [and] warships...' from being purchased by Iran without prior approval from the U.N."
It appears that CNN is staying away from this story. As we pointed out last month, CNN's Wolf Blitzer continues to mislead viewers that this is a signed deal-when the administration itself has already admitted to Congress that it wasn't.
Blitzer isn't the only one getting the story wrong. "One of Donald Trump's stock campaign lines is that the Iran nuclear agreement was terrible," said Fareed Zakaria on his February 7th CNN show, Fareed Zakaria GPS. "Iran has ended up with a much worse deal than it expected."
"The real prize for Tehran was not the return of its funds frozen in banks in Asia and Europe because of international sanctions, totaling about $100 billion," said Zakaria. "It was to finally get back into the markets as the second largest oil producer in the Middle East and reap the riches of the boom....That's what they were banking on when making their concessions at the nuclear table."
Actually, Iran made few-to-no concessions during its diplomacy with the West. President Obama and the P5+1 did not even get a signed deal for their efforts. Instead, they got a series of political obligations which Iran has no intention of living up to, but which Iran can use to influence the United States and other nations.
This administration-not Iran-made concession after concession at the bargaining table. Iran can challenge any request for inspections at "undeclared but suspected" sites for 24 days, or even months, according to The Wall Street Journal. Also, the enriched uranium that this totalitarian regime sent to Russia was exchanged for uranium ore which could be enriched by Iran at a later date.
Iran was not required to reform its political leadership as part of the deal, nor told that it must do something about its human rights record. Instead, the regime has belligerently tested two ballistic missiles. In addition, Iran is still free to continue its terror abroad while receiving $100 billion or more in previously inaccessible funding.
How, then, will cheap oil undermine the many benefits that Iran will receive as part of this unsigned agreement?
In his analysis Zakaria compares oil prices of $100 per barrel in 2013, when the interim agreement was signed, to current prices. This conveniently overlooks the fact that oil prices had fallen to nearly half that when the "deal" was announced in July. If the main reason for participating was oil prices, then why did the Iranians agree to the terms of these political agreements in the first place?
If Iran has lost something in pursuit of this agreement, it is not readily apparent. Iran didn't get the short end of the stick in this exchange; it got the entire stick.
Iranian President Rouhani awarded medals of honor on February 8 to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, and nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi for their roles in the nuclear negotiations. This, after honoring the generals who captured our American sailors and held them at gunpoint. Secretary of State John Kerry had even expressed his "gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation" in releasing the sailors. Defense Minister Dehghan, who was Iran's representative in Russia this week for the $8 billion shopping spree, was reportedly one of the founders of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and was an architect of the 1983 bombing that killed 241 U.S. service members in Beirut, Lebanon.
Not only has Iran gained sanctions relief, it is now free to pursue its broader agenda in the Middle East-in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, and in Yemen. But the mainstream media, aided by CNN, seek to keep the public in the dark about this disastrous deal while Iran gains more and more influence, and more and more weapons.
"The problem is that a fundamental shift in the balance of power is taking place in the region in Iran's favor," wrote Aaron David Miller in an opinion piece for CNN on February 2. "For a start, Iran gains access to frozen assets without having to end its support to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, stop backing the Shiite rebels in Yemen who are fighting a proxy war with the Saudis or back off from its support to Lebanese Hezbollah."
And, he argues, "...America's dependence on Iran is actually increasing" because, "Washington, having gone all-in on the nuclear deal, needs Iran to uphold its commitments, something critical to the Obama administration's legacy." This analysis, of course, was relegated to an opinion column rather than one of their Sunday cablecasts, like Zakaria's show.
CNN continues to peddle misleading analysis unchallenged, casting the Iran deal somehow as a loss for Iran, when, in fact, it is an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. and its allies-a debacle that handed the Iranian regime virtually everything it sought. It is not only the administration that is concerned about President Obama's legacy, but the reporters themselves, who will go to any lengths to print news that will bolster his reputation.
Fundamentalists and Revolutionary Guards steal Iran's elections - http://www.debka.com/article/25262/Fundamentalists-and-Revolutionary-Guards-steal-Iran's-elections
US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Kerry fondly hoped that the nuclear agreement signed with Iran would bring to the surface a new type of leader - more liberal and less liable to restart the nuclear program - in the twin elections taking place in the Islamic Republic Friday, Feb. 26.
They are in for a disappointment, say debkafile's Iran analysts.
But one change is almost certain. The Iranian voter will be choosing for the first time on one day a new parliament (Majlis) and the Assembly of Experts, the only body competent to choose the republic's next supreme leader. The incumbent, 75-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not expected to outlast the four-year term of the next Assembly of Experts. He has been struggling with prostate cancer for more than five years. Treatment and surgery have failed to halt its spread to other parts of his body. And strong medication is necessary to keep him looking alert and vigorous in his public appearances.
Speculation is already rife in Tehran about who the next Assembly of Experts will choose as his successor.
Seen from the perspective of Iran's Islamic regime, the supreme leader's overarching duty is to continue the legacy of its revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor, Ali Khamenei.
Rather than meeting the expectations of the US president, his main job is to continue strengthening Iran on its path of religious extremism, ideological subversion, export of the Shiite revolution (by terror) and the continuation of the nuclear program.
The biggest political bombshell of the election campaign was a proposal by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani to establish a national leadership council now, instead of choosing a new leader later. This was intended to replace the single dictatorial rule of the supreme leader by a collective leadership.
Iran's fundamentalists, especially the powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), were in uproar about a proposal they viewed as so dangerous for the regime that they threatened to confiscate the Rafsanjani clan's extensive property and put him on trial for corruption and fraud.
His beloved son Mahdi has already been in jail for months on those charges.
But Rafsanjani is not easily cowed. He knew that if he backed down, the extremists would crack down on him still harder.
So this week, he announced that he had pulled the strings which gave Hassan Rouhani victory in the last presidential election. And, in the campaign leading up to the Assembly of Experts vote, he threw his support behind a moderate cleric, Hassan Khomeini, who happens to be the grandson of the Islamic regime's iconic founder.
The IRGC and radical mullahs thereupon launched an offensive to thwart what they believed to be Rafsanjani's dangerous plan to establish a triumvirate with Rouhani and Khomeini Junior to head a future government.
Senior radical clerics, such as ayatollahs Ahama Alam-Alhoda, Mohammad Mesbah-Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati, and Mohammad Yazi, slandered him and fought to remove his candidates for the twin slates.
They branded the former president and members of a "reformist" list as British agents, a particularly malicious charge because the UK is still seen in Iran as a symbol of colonialism and meddler in foreign politics.
Ayatollah Khamenei himself harshly denounced "foreign agents" as "addicted to foreign influence," who should be barred from the Assembly of Experts.
Young Khomenei saw the light and withdrew his candidacy for its membership. But Rafsanjani stood out to the last as a central figure in the two campaigns, even after a majority of the candidates condemned as "moderates and reformists" were barred from the elections.
In the end, the two slates were left with no more than 30 moderate candidates out of a total of 3,000 vying for the 375 seats in the two bodies.
Their defeat as a group was predestined, and the two elections leave Iran more politically and religiously radicalized than before.
A key figure expected to take center stage in the new parliament is Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, whose daughter is married to Khamenei's mover-and-shaker son. Another is Haddad-Adel, one of Khamenei's top advisers, who heads a faction of religious fundamentalists and IRGC officers. He is the frontrunner to succeed Ali Larijani as Speaker of the next Majlis.
They are all expected to gang up to prevent President Rouhani from running for a second term when it runs out in two years - contrary to the Obama administration's hopes. They will also do their best to make him a lame duck and whipping boy for all the country's economic ills for the remainder of his presidency.
He will find the new parliament less cooperative than the outgoing House under Larijani when he tries to introduce liberal policies.
Unofficial results of the two elections are expected to be released Friday night. The extremists and hardliners have engineered them so that they will win big and set Iran on a course that it is even more radical than before on such key issues as its nuclear weapons program and intervention in Syria and other Middle East conflicts. They will keep the feud with Saudi Arabia alive and pursue every possible means of venting their bottomless hatred of Israel and seeking its destruction.
Israel says Iran building terror network in Europe, US - Menelaos Hadjicostis -
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-says-iran-building-terror-network-europe-us-144806804.html
Israel's defense minister on Wednesday accused Iran of building an international terror network that includes "sleeper cells" that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives in order to strike on command in places including Europe and the U.S.
Moshe Yaalon said Iran aims to destabilize the Middle East and other parts of the world and is training, funding and arming "emissaries" to spread a revolution. He said Tehran is the anchor of a "dangerous axis" that includes Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa and other cities in the region.
"The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America," Yaalon said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart.
Israel considers Iran the biggest threat to the region, citing its support for anti-Israel militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and has been an outspoken critic of the international nuclear deal with Iran.
The Israeli defense minister offered no direct evidence of such sleeper cells existing in the U.S. or Europe, but referred indirectly to the case of a Hezbollah member who was jailed in Cyprus last June following the seizure of nine tons of a chemical compound that can be converted into an explosive.
A Cypriot court sentenced Lebanese Canadian Hussein Massam Abdallah to six years in prison after prosecutors said he admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.
Yaalon said Cypriot authorities had "defeated attempts by Hezbollah and Iran to establish a terror infrastructure" on the island that aimed to expand "throughout Europe."
Yaalon said that apart from the refugee crisis, the war in Syria has resulted in "widespread infiltration by murderous, merciless terror organizations" that belong to global jihad and are partly funded by Iran.
He said that requires western nations to counter attempts to carry out "massive terror attacks."
Yaalon's trip to Cyprus was the first official visit by an Israeli defense minister to the east Mediterranean island.
BE SURE TO CHECK OUT MY ALL NEW PROPHECY AND CREATION DESIGN WEBSITES. THERE IS A LOT TO SEE AND DO..........
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.