Tag Archives: Iran nuclear deal

Undermining America’s National Security Behind The Scenes

Posted on by

The Iran Nuclear Deal is not a good idea for America or for the world. The deal as it was proposed under President Obama did not attempt to put an end to Iran’s nuclear program–it just fixed things so that Iran would develop an atomic bomb (and delivery system) after President Obama left office. The deal died under President Trump and has not been successfully revived under President Biden, but we may not been done with it yet.

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

A coalition of progressive activists bankrolled by George Soros, Charles Koch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are mounting a secret lobbying campaign to revive the Iran nuclear deal by tying it to the Iranian human rights movement, according to internal correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Activists from groups including J Street, NIAC Action, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are coming together behind a plan to lobby lawmakers to use human rights bills as cover to revive negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran. That’s according to a January email sent from a J Street lobbyist to other activists and obtained by the Free Beacon.

“I’m writing to suggest that this group convene virtually next week to brainstorm and hopefully find consensus on the elements of legislation to support the Iranian people that we could propose to diplomacy-oriented lawmakers,” J Street’s Dylan Williams wrote. “Given the usual need to be discrete [sic], the charged nature of the topic, and the outrageous threats against several members of this group, please do keep this initiative close-hold,” he added.

The activist groups “plan to pursue a dual-track legislative agenda, where they would find a way through legislation to give pro-deal Democrats cover by supporting Iranian women and Iranian human rights, without in any way challenging the revival of a nuclear deal, while at the same time building a coalition of members of the House and Senate willing to write a very public letter to the president urging him to keep the door to diplomacy over on the nuclear file,” a source familiar with the discussions told the Free Beacon.

It is a safe bet that any deal brokered or encouraged by this group of people would result in Iran becoming a nuclear power. What does that look like? I am not sure how much time Iran would waste before getting rid of the ‘little satan’, Israel. At that point, blackmailing Europe would be child’s play. Eventually America would be nuked, but I suspect Europe would suffer first. Remember, the religious fanatics currently in charge of Iran believe that chaos will hasten the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah who will bring Sharia Law to the whole world and reestablish the caliphate. Iran going nuclear would be a nightmare for the entire world.

While We Were Watching Ukraine

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Biden administration’s negotiations with Iran over a nuclear arms treaty.

The article reports:

Republican lawmakers in Congress are fed up with the Biden administration’s secret diplomacy with Iran and refusal to inform the American public about what concessions will be granted to the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism as part of a new nuclear deal.

With negotiations stuck in their final stage amid Iran’s demands that all U.S. sanctions be lifted on its chief terrorist outfit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Republican foreign policy leaders are pressing top Biden administration officials to publicly brief Congress on the state of diplomatic talks.

“With uncertainty surrounding the status of the negotiation, the American people have a right to know what their diplomats agreed to in Vienna, what alternatives your administration is considering, and how you intend to address the wider range of threats from Iran—including its increasingly dangerous missile and drone programs and taking American hostages,” a group of Republican lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees wrote in a letter sent on Wednesday to the White House and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The secrecy surrounding the talks—and Iran’s demands for billions of dollars in sanctions relief that will likely fund its regional terrorism enterprise—are unacceptable and hint that the Biden administration is poised to enter a deal that is weaker than the original 2015 accord, according to Republican representatives Claudia Tenney (N.Y.), María Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Greg Steube (Fla.), Ronny Jackson (Texas), and Don Bacon (Neb.).

During more than a year of negotiations, the Biden administration has refused to brief Congress in an open setting. Biden administration officials, including U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley, have only consented to classified briefings, unlike the Obama administration, which discussed the talks openly with lawmakers and the public. Classified briefings on the deal—which came after lawmakers from both parties chastised the administration for cutting Congress out of the negotiations—are no longer tolerable, Tenney and her colleagues say.

Keep in mind that theoretically all treaties have to be approved by the Senate. President Obama avoided this by signing ‘accords’ which were not approved by Congress. I would hope that President Biden would not be permitted to sign an Iran Nuclear ‘Accord” to avoid the Senate approval process. Aside from not being transparent, the Biden administration seems to function more like a dictatorship than a functioning republic.

While We Were All Watching Ukraine…

Posted on by

On Friday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

Biden on verge of making worst deal ever with Iran

The article reminds us of some recent history regarding Iran and nuclear weapons:

The Obama White House claimed the Iran deal guaranteed the most intrusive inspections the world had ever known, but only Israel’s Mossad found the evidence Iran was cheating — a secret nuclear weapons archive that the mullahs kept hidden before, during and after negotiating the Iran deal. That archive led inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, to at least four previously unknown sites inside Iran. At three of them, the inspectors found traces of uranium.

…Russia has been a leading opponent of the IAEA’s probe in Iran for years. Since Moscow regularly breaks its own international treaty obligations — whether in the use of chemical weapons or the war crimes we see today in Ukraine — Russian diplomats work overtime to shield rogue nations like Iran and Syria from accountability.

The new deal takes Moscow’s side — flouting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lifting sanctions and legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program without first demanding a full accounting of previous and current violations. Put simply, it is an agreement knowingly built on deceit that will encourage other authoritarian regimes to violate their international commitments.

Another important change since 2015: We know so much more about the ways in which key Iranian banks and companies finance terrorism. The Obama administration told Congress that nothing in the Iran deal precluded America from imposing terrorism sanctions on Iran. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, took that promise to heart and directed the Trump administration to impose sanctions on affiliates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Today, the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company and hundreds more entities are subject to US terrorism sanctions — not nuclear sanctions — due to indisputable evidence showing their involvement in financing terrorism. To lift sanctions on these banks and firms without any indication of behavioral change will be unprecedented. The deal will directly subsidize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations — a win for another Russian client state, Syria, as well.

Hopefully this treaty will never get past the Senate, but that doesn’t mean the Biden administration won’t abide by it anyway. We currently have a lawless administration and an impossibility of impeachment due to a Democrat congress and a downright scary line of succcession–Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Grassley, Antony J. Blinken, etc.

Pray for the mid-terms and hope they won’t be too late.

John Bolton On The Revived Iran Deal

Posted on by

Yesterday NewsMax posted an article about the Biden administration’s plan to revive the nuclear deal with Iran.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is seeking to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – Obama’s Iran nuclear deal – but the connected administrations have “no idea how flawed the deal is,” according to former National Security Adviser John Bolton on Newsmax.

“It’s based on near-religious fixation that they want to get back to what Obama did,” Bolton told Monday’s “John Bachman Now.” “The Obama team views the Iran nuclear deal as their second term equivalent to Obamacare in the first term.

“Although they don’t like to say it publicly, it rests on the assumption that if they could just calm the Ayatollahs down and convince them that they don’t need to worry about the United States and Israel, they can solve the nuclear program, Iran will behave like a normal nation, and sweetness and light will break out in the Middle East.

“It really is a fantasy, and it’s a dangerous fantasy.”

It is very obvious that the Biden administration is planning on doing the reverse of anything the Trump administration did. That is unfortunate because a lot of what the Trump administration did made the lives of Americans better and the world safer. However, in the Biden administration, the polices of the Obama administration rule and need to be brought back. Never mind that those policies caused slow economic growth and slow wage growth for Americans and made the world less safe–the Biden administration is going to bring them back!

The article notes:

President Joe Biden’s pushing to resume JCPOA talks – after former President Donald Trump decertified it – is an “extraordinarily dangerous” way to stem nuclear proliferation, Bolton added to host John Bachman.

“They think it was working, and they’re just completely wrong on that,” Bolton said. “They have no idea how flawed the deal is, and they see it as something that can be a model really for their nonproliferation efforts around the world, and it’s extraordinarily dangerous.

“Israel sees it. The gulf Arab states see it. They do not.”

Trump rejected the JCPOA because it merely slowed and did not stop Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

“They’re determined to get nuclear weapons, and any idea that the Biden administration has to get back into this deal really is surrendering to an idea about Iran’s conduct that sadly is not going to come true,” Bolton said.

“It’s going to leave the United States, it’s going to leave our friends in the Middle East, and really around the world at risk of this very dangerous regime.”

Changing a policy that worked simply because it was put in place by a different political party is not a good way to run a country. The Iran deal was one of the few things President Trump and John Bolton agreed on. President Biden needs to learn from President Trump’s successes.

A Preview Of Things To Come

Posted on by

If the election of Joe Biden is allowed to stand, America is going to become a subsidiary of China. If you think I am overreacting, I would like to direct you to an article posted at Legal Insurrection yesterday.

The article reports:

Communist China on Monday demanded the United States to return to the Iran nuclear deal and end all sanctions placed on Tehran under President Donald Trump’s watch once Joe Biden moves into the White House.

“The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions, and the US should also scrap all sanctions imposed on Iran, other third-party entities and individuals,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a video conference with other four signatories of the 2015 nuclear accord.

The Chinese foreign minister’s undiplomatic and stern tone underlines China’s belief in a ‘reset‘ in bilateral relations with a Biden-run administration. According to Chinese media reports, Beijing opened backchannel talks with figures close to the Biden team last month and wants a rollback on the tough policy course pursued by President Donald Trump.

…“A joint statement released by [German Foreign Minister Heiko] Maas and the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Russia and the UK acknowledged their desire to see the treaty upheld and greeted the prospects of a US return to it under incoming President-elect Joe Biden as ‘positive,’” Germany’s state-run DW News reported Monday.

“With Joe Biden on board, all parties to the nuclear deal want to bring it back to life,” the German broadcaster noted in a separate article last week.

The European Union has also joined the diplomatic push to get the U.S. to back the nuclear deal without any preconditions. European powers, mainly Germany, France, and the UK, had lined up huge investments in the oil-rich country before the Trump administration snapped back sanctions on the regime two years ago.

So why would the EU want us to enter into a deal that would eventually allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons aimed at Europe? Because the money to be made in the short term with trade with Iran has blinded them to the future with a nuclear Iran holding them hostage.

There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that a Biden administration will renew the Iran nuclear deal. There is also a lack of realization that the deal will make the world a much more dangerous place. You have only to look at the alliances currently forming in the Middle East to know what the countries closest to Iran think of the intentions of that state.

He Really Said This

Posted on by

On Friday, The Daily Wire posted an article about some recent comments by former Vice-President Biden.

The article reports:

On Thursday, while speaking at an event organized by the rabidly anti-Israel group J Street, former Vice President Joe Biden snapped that President Donald Trump had “put Israel in danger” by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. He also insinuated that Trump has put American Jews in danger because he has “embraced” conspiracy theories.

Biden’s timing was hilarious considering that on Friday, Trump announced that Bahrain became the latest Arab country to normalize relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates having done so in August.

It is also a totally ridiculous statement considering how the Obama administration treated Israel.

The article notes some previous interactions between then Senator Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin:

Biden opposing Israeli settlements is no shock at all; in 1982 Biden reportedly banged on a desk and berated Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that if Israel continued building settlements in Judea and Samaria, the U.S. would cut off financial aid. Begin fired back:

Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.

Begin added:

This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the U.S. lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.

If you have any doubts about how the Obama-Biden administration dealt with the Middle East, please see the article here about how the administration manipulated the media to get favorable press on the Iran deal.

Former Vice-President Biden’s statement about putting Israel in danger is pure garbage. The peace treaties recently put in effect in the Middle East would not have been possible had America remained in the Iran deal. These treaties have more to do with fear of Iran than they do with either America or Israel.

When Lady Justice Removes Her Blindfold Things Go Downhill Quickly

Posted on by

This article is about the Michael Flynn case. I wanted to bring everyone up to date on some recent information about Judge Emmett Sullivan, but I also wanted to inform readers about some of the reasons the deep state does not like General Flynn.

First, the current news. The Gateway Pundit posted an article today which stated that in the past Judge Emmett Sullivan arranged a speaking gig for James Comey at Howard University for $100,000. That does not sound like a person who would be likely to be an impartial judge in the Flynn case. There are some other problems with Judge Emmett Sullivan as an impartial judge listed in the article. Please follow the link above to read the details.

Now, let’s review some past history. The information I am about to share came from the blogosphere. I am sure there are other sources, but these were the most available to me.

On December 4, 2017, Pacific Pundit reported:

Corrupt Andrew McCabe has long been overlooked in this whole “Russia-Collusion” BS that lead to the fake news of Mike Flynn claiming Trump as a POTUS candidate told him to contact the Russians. There McCabe is a Clinton hack who’s wife donated to Hillary’s BFF, Democrat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in the amount of $500,000. But there’s more to this whole Flynn story than what’s been reported by the fake news media. While working for Obama, Flynn intervened after a female employee named Robyn Gritz accused Andrew McCabe of sexual harassment. This enraged McCabe and it lead to the retaliation of investigating Flynn by McCabe and other hacks at the FBI. Funny how the media doesn’t report this story.

…Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.

The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.

The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.

There’s more. On February 4, 2017, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

I am posting this to illustrate the undermining of President Trump that has been going on since before he took office. This is not acceptable behavior in a representative republic. If this is not dealt with and consequences felt, we will lose our republic.

A Policy That Is Working

Posted on by

It is not really in the interest of anyone (other than Iran) for Iran to successfully build an atomic bomb. Iran is a major supporter of terrorism around the world, and no person on earth will be safe if Iran successfully builds a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Europe or North America. The Iran nuclear deal did not stop Iran’s nuclear program–it simply postponed it until President Obama was out of office.

John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article today about the impact of President Trump’s Iran policy on the economy of Iran.

The article reports:

Iran has been roiled by demonstrations against the dramatic increase in the price of gasoline that was dictated by the government earlier this month. The demonstrations have been brutally suppressed, with somewhere between 100 and several hundred protesters killed by police. For several days, the mullahs pulled the plug on internet service to prevent videos of the protests and police brutality to be seen by the outside world.

So why is Iran in turmoil?

The article explains:

In other words, the Trump administration’s sanctions are working. Iran’s government, short of cash, was forced to dramatically raise the price of fuel, even though it knew what the reaction would be. And the resulting explosion–the analogy to the Yellow Vest protests in France is obvious–has shaken the regime.

Trump’s policy of using sanctions to starve the mullahs of cash contrasts favorably with Barack Obama’s inexplicable policy of sending $100 billion dollars to the regime in exchange for empty promises.

President Trump’s policy toward Iran is working.

Why Does The Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) Hate Donald Trump?

Posted on by

Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Why Do They Hate Him So?” The article analyzes the reasons that President Trump is opposed by both the political left and the establishment right.

The article states:

Again, why the unadulterated hatred? For the small number of NeverTrumpers, of course, Trump’s crudity in speech and crassness in manner nullify his accomplishments: the unattractive messenger has fouled an otherwise tolerable message.

While they recognize in the abstract that the randy JFK, the repugnant LBJ, and the horny Bill Clinton during their White House tenures were far grosser in conduct than has been Donald Trump, they either assume presidential ethics should have evolved or they were not always around to know of past bad behavior first hand, or believe Trump’s crude language is worse than prior presidents’ crude behavior in office.

The article continues:

Had Donald Trump in his first month as president declared that he was a centrist Republican —as many suspicious Never Trumpers predicted that he would, true to past form—and promoted cap-and-trade and solar and wind federal subsidies, tabled pipeline construction and abated federal leasing for gas and oil production, stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord, appointed judges in the tradition of John Paul Stevens and David Souter, praised the “responsible” Palestinian leaders, pursued “comprehensive immigration reform” as a euphemism for blanket amnesties, then Trump would be treated largely as a George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush: hated, of course, but not obsessively so.

More importantly, had Trump just collapsed or stagnated the economy, as predicted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, he would now be roundly denounced, but again not so vilified, given his political utility for the Left in 2020 as a perceived Herbert Hoover-esque scapegoat.

Had Trump kept within the media and cultural sidelines by giving interviews to “60 Minutes,” speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bringing in a few old Republican hands to run the staff or handle media relations like a David Gergen or Andrew Card, Trump would have been written off as a nice enough dunce.

But Trump did none of that. So, the hatred of the media, the Left, the swamp, and the celebrity industry is predicated more on the successful Trump agenda. He is systematically undoing what Barack Obama wrought, in the manner Obama sought to undo with his eight years the prior eight years of George W. Bush.

But whereas the Obama economy stagnated and his foreign policy was seen by adversaries and rivals as a rare occasion to recalibrate the world order at American’s expense, Trump mostly did not fail—at least not yet. We are currently in an economic boom while most of the world economy abroad is inert. Had the economy just crashed as predicted, the Trump agenda would have been discredited and he would be written off a pitiful fool rather than an existential monster.

Again, hatred arises at what Trump did even more than what he says or how he says it.

The obvious conclusion:

The bipartisan Washington establishment? If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

And that is absolutely unforgivable.

Be prepared for a very nasty year before the election in 2020. There are a lot of very unhinged people in politics and in the media.

Can I Help You Pack?

Posted on by

Yesterday Fox News reported the following:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Thursday that his country’s delegation would vote for the United Nations headquarters to be moved out of New York if given the chance, in the latest sign of escalating tensions with the United States on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

“If we’re ever asked, we will, of course, vote for it, for the United Nations headquarters to be transferred to a more secure and better country that does not have the narrow viewpoints that we have been witnessing,” he said in response to a question at a press conference. There appears to be no significant movement to move the U.N.

This is probably the first and last time I will agree with President Rouhani.

The article continues:

He mentioned a number of instances of Iranians being barred from entering the U.S. The Trump administration this week restricted senior Iranian government officials and their family members from entering the U.S.

“For years, Iranian officials and their family members have quietly taken advantage of America’s freedom and prosperity, including excellent educational, employment, entertainment, and cultural opportunities in the United States,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Thursday.

“Under this proclamation, designated senior regime officials and their families will no longer be allowed entry into the United States. No longer will elites reap the benefits of a free society while the Iranian people suffer under the regime’s corruption and mismanagement.”

Rouhani accused the U.S. of capitalizing on its position as host nation for the U.N.

“This is the house of peace and house of communications with one another and America must not take advantage of its position as a host and only grant visas to whom America likes,” he said.

Rouhani spoke at a lengthy press conference in which he blamed the U.S. for the collapse of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and called on the U.S. to remove sanctions before talks can occur between the two countries. President Trump had opened the door to talks with the Iranian regime, but has also kept up his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Tehran.

“If these preconditions are taken off the table and then of course the possibility exists to talk with America,” Rouhani said.

Would the UN just leave if all the delegates were asked to pay their parking tickets?

The Leaking Echo Chamber

Posted on by

Real Clear Investigations posted an article today about the targeted anti-Trump leaks to the press coming from the Justice Department.

The article reports:

A trail of evidence appearing in major news outlets suggests a campaign to undermine President Trump from within the government through illegal leaks of classified information, and then to thwart congressional investigators probing the disclosures.

On Monday the Justice Department released a handful of texts and other documents that included two former officials known for their anti-Trump bias – Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI – discussing the DOJ’s “media leak strategy.” Strzok now says, through his lawyer, that that strategy was aimed at preventing leaks. Nevertheless, days later he and Page approvingly mention forthcoming news articles critical of Trump associates.

“The leaks that have been coming out of the FBI and DOJ since 2016 are unconscionable,” said retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano. “There’s a difference between whistleblowing and leaking for self-serving or partisan purposes.”

Past and present U.S. officials say the template for the leak campaign can be traced back to the Obama administration’s efforts to sell the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which made the press reliant on background conversations and favorable leaks from government officials. Obama adviser Ben Rhodes told the New York Times in 2016 that “we created an echo chamber” that “helped retail the administration’s narrative.”

“That same configuration,” said Michael Doran, a senior official in the George W. Bush White House, “the press, political operatives, newly minted experts, social media validators—was repurposed to target Trump, his campaign, transition team, then presidency.” The echo chamber’s primary instrument in attacking the current White House, said Doran, “is the Russia collusion narrative.”

This is the quote from the New York Times article about the echo chamber:

As Malley (Rob Malley, a favored troubleshooter who ran negotiations that could keep the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power during the Obama administration) and representatives of the State Department, including Wendy Sherman and Secretary of State John Kerry, engaged in formal negotiations with the Iranians, to ratify details of a framework that had already been agreed upon, Rhodes’s war room did its work on Capitol Hill and with reporters. In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

This is how it works. Find a cooperative person who wants to be on television as an expert. Feed him the conclusion you want him to draw. Then find another one.

The press is not currently our friend. Maybe that will change someday, but right now that is the situation. If we want to keep our representative republic, we need to vote against the political party that has consistently used government agencies and anyone in the press who was willing to cooperate for partisan purposes.

The Role Of Iran In 9/11

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the role of Iran in the September 11 terror attack on America.

The article reports:

Iranian officials, in a first, have admitted to facilitating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. by secretly aiding the free travel of al Qaeda operatives who eventually went on to fly commercial airliners into the Twin Towers in New York City, according to new remarks from a senior Iranian official.

Mohammad-Javad Larijani, an international affairs assistant in the Iran’s judiciary, disclosed in Farsi-language remarks broadcast on Iran’s state-controlled television that Iranian intelligence officials secretly helped provide the al Qaeda attackers with passage and gave them refuge in the Islamic Republic, according to an English translation published by Al Arabiya.

“Our government agreed not to stamp the passports of some of them because they were on transit flights for two hours, and they were resuming their flights without having their passports stamped. However their movements were under the complete supervision of the Iranian intelligence,” Larijani was quoted as saying.

The remarks represent the first time senior Iranian officials have publicly admitted to aiding al Qaeda and playing a direct role in facilitating the 9/11 attacks.

This is really not a surprise–Iran and Saudi Arabia have often been cited as the two major financiers of terrorism. It is truly unfortunate that as part of the Iran nuclear deal, America paid Iran $400 million in cash which has been used to further the cause of terrorism around the world. The argument can be made that the money was simply Iran’s frozen assets in America (with interest), but the fact remains that the money has been and will be used to fund terrorism and weapons to be used against American soldiers.

Arming The Enemies of America

Posted on by

The Daily Signal posted an article yesterday about one of the consequences of the nuclear treaty with Iran. The treaty paved the way for a transaction that was very profitable for Boeing Aircraft. The treaty got through Congress because both the Republicans and Democrats got something out of it. The American people and the American military, however, did not. The Democrats showed solidarity with their President. The Republicans rewarded Boeing, a major campaign donor, with the lucrative contract to sell airplanes to Iran.

The article reports:

With the blessing of the Obama administration, Boeing Co. has negotiated the sale of a fleet of new jets to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

The $17.6 billion deal between the aviation giant and the Islamic Republic of Iran was made possible by the lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran in January. It is a reckless piece of business that Congress must address.

Under terms of the memorandum of agreement, Boeing reportedly will supply 80 planes—including intercontinental jumbo jets—to state-owned Iran Air.

The carrier, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury, has been routinely commandeered by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics to transport rockets, missiles, and other military equipment, including materials and technologies with ballistic missile applications.

There is little doubt that the weapons transported by these planes will be used against American soldiers. We are funding our enemy.

The article concludes:

Boeing executives say the proposed sale is necessary to remain competitive against Airbus, the European aviation manufacturer that has struck a $27 billion deal with Iran for 118 planes. But that’s the same lame argument Boeing made in lobbying for reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank—from which Boeing was the top beneficiary of export subsidies.

The fact is, projected demand for commercial planes is forecast to rise for years to come, and both manufacturers are carrying huge backlogs that will take years to fulfill.

Rather than tweak the tax code, Congress should, at the very least, explicitly prohibit financing from the Export-Import Bank for the sale of Boeing planes (or any other product) to Iran.

Additional actions are needed as well. The administration has already increased the risk of yet more death and destruction by the terrorist state. Lawmakers should ensure that Boeing and other U.S. companies don’t become tools of Tehran.

It is time to clean house in Washington.

Money Won’t Make This Better

Posted on by

The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday on the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to sweeten the Iran deal for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Frankly, there are some things you just can’t sweeten.

The article reports:

Kerry admits that, despite the deal, Iran will continue to back terrorist groups across the globe and promises to boost military support and funding to Israel and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter comes in response to concerns among lawmakers, Israel, and other Gulf region allies that the nuclear accord will boost the Islamic Republic’s support for terrorism, while leaving traditional U.S. allies on the defense.

“Important questions have been raised concerning the need to increase security assistance to our allies and partners in the region and to enhance our efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region,” Kerry writes. “We share the concern expressed by many in Congress regarding Iran’s continued support for terrorist and proxy groups throughout the region, its propping up of the Assad regime in Syria, its efforts to undermine the stability of its regional neighbors, and the threat it poses to Israel.”

The Obama administration, Kerry claims, is under “no illusion that this behavior will change following implementation of the JCPOA,” or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

If the behavior of Iran will not change following the implementation of the JCPOA, then why are we agreeing to the JCPOA? Wouldn’t it be better to refuse to lift any sanctions or give Iran any money until the leaders of Iran change their behavior (and maybe stop shouting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America“)? I admit that I am only a lowly blogger, but that seems rather obvious to me. Why are we going to give Iran access to millions of dollars to buy more and better weapons to kill American soldiers?

The article reports:

One senior Congressional aide who received the letter said that it is a clear attempt by the administration to placate regional fears about the deal.

“Let’s not be fooled about what the letter represents. This desperate move to placate Israel and our Gulf partners is a tacit acknowledgment that Iran will expand its international terror regime thanks to the nuclear agreement,” the source said. “If this is such a good deal, why does the administration feel compelled to immediately offer arms packages as compensation to our regional allies?”

“No amount of conventional weapons can neutralize the threat posed by the mullahs acquiring nuclear weapons,” the source said. “This type of appeasement is a slap in the face to our closets allies and a wink-wink to the dictators in Tehran.”

Obviously there are people in our government who understand the dangers of this agreement. Unfortunately, there are also many people in our government who choose not to listen to them. I believe this agreement will be able to get through the games being played in the Senate and will go into force. I also believe that the day that happens will be a truly sad day for America. We have turned our backs on our friends and chosen to fund our enemies. That is not wisdom.

Documents We Had Not Even Considered

Posted on by

As the Senate prepares to vote on the Iran nuclear deal, there is more information that has come to light. Other than the two secret side agreements made between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it seems that there may be some pertinent information about Iran in the documents and computer drives taken when Osama bin Laden was killed.

Next week’s issue of The Weekly Standard includes an article by Stephen Hayes and William Kristol about the need to understand Iran’s past behavior in order to predict its future behavior.

The article states:

Here’s an important instance. We have been told by six current or former intelligence officials that the collection of documents captured in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound includes explosive information on Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda over the past two decades, including details of Iran’s support for al Qaeda’s attacks on Americans. Some of these officials believe this information alone could derail the deal. We haven’t seen it. But the American people should see it all before Congress votes on the deal in September.

“There are letters about Iran’s role, influence, and acknowledgment of enabling al Qaeda operatives to pass through Iran as long as al Qaeda did their dirty work against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells The Weekly Standard. “What Congress should demand is to see all the UBL [Osama bin Laden] documents related to Iran and all the documents related to intentions of AQ into the future—they are very telling.”

This really does nothing to convince me that American can do business with Iran. The leaders of Iran have made it clear since 1978 that their goal is to destroy Israel and America and re-establish a caliphate which they will rule. The have been very open about this goal. I don’t understand why President Obama is not listening.

The article concludes:

Highly credible senior intelligence officials who have seen the bin Laden documents say that the collection includes important information about al Qaeda and Iran. The White House has consistently blocked the release of that information. It will take concerted action by the leadership of Congress—in particular, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr along with Chairman Nunes—to wring this information out of the administration.

Not to demand these documents—not to insist on having access to them despite all the administration’s protestations and obfuscations, not to allow the American people to understand the whole truth about the Iranian regime with which the administration has negotiated this agreement—would be an abdication of responsibility on the part of Congress that history would judge harshly.   

Americans and their Senators and Representatives need to be informed about what Iran has been up to in the past and what it is planning for the future.