Who Won The Deal? Iran Or The US Or....

Banksters make out like bandits on Iran deal

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Bob Livingston

Never mind the hubris involved in the U.S. government dictating to a sovereign nation whether it can procure or create specific weapons systems for its own protection; the Iran deal is a boon to banksters and the military-industrial complex.

The deal lifts U.N. financial sanctions on the regime and opens the door for the country to begin (legally) exporting oil again. It seems to do little to curtail Iran’s enrichment of uranium, putting limitations on it rather than halting it and setting in place a phaseout of the country’s centrifuges that begins years down the road.

But here are some key provisions regarding the lifting of U.N., EU and U.S. sanctions:

• The Iranian central bank can now establish banking relationships and branches in EU countries.
• U.S. and eurozone banksters can begin new banking relationships with the Iranian central bank. (That means millions of potential new debt slaves.)
• U.S. banknotes (U.S. debt) can be sold to the Iranian government.
• The Iranian government can receive grants, financial assistance and loans from the EU central bank and EU member states.
• Other governments can buy Iranian debt, including government bonds.
• Iran is free to trade in gold and other precious metals.
• Iran will have billions of dollars available to fund its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries, which will further destabilize the region and facilitate new American arms sales to various opposition regimes and perhaps draw the U.S. into more conflicts.

One has to wonder if a representative of Goldman Sachs or the Rothschilds was involved in the negotiation. He was. His name is John (Kohn) Kerry.

But Iran’s rulers need to be careful crowing too much about this deal. The U.S. rarely honors its deals when there are new regimes to conquer or countries to destabilize. Just ask Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi, Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad — and various Indian tribes — how deals with Uncle Sam often work out… except in the case of Hussein and Gadhafi and most American Indians, they are no longer around to ask.

Should We Go To War With Iran?

Cogent, concise arguments are sometimes hard to come by. However, in the following article, Bruce Thornton, writing in FrontPage Magazine today, makes a very good case for military action against Iran. We were impressed with his explanation of the power structure in Iran and how religion directs it.

This is an excellent article. You might disagree with the premise but he makes a good case to taking  action against Iranian assets in an attempt to bring about change in the country. This is a good starting point for a discussion on the potential of a war with Iran. Do we want one?  Our answer would be no. However, if they shut the Straits or fire on one of our ships or other asset, it may come to that.

What is your opinion?

Conservative Tom

The Case for Military Action Against Iran

Bruce Thornton - FrontPage Magazine,  January 10th, 2012

Iran’s 30-year war against the United States may be reaching its decisive moment. Signs of the worsening crisis abound. Iran just announced it has begun enriching uranium at the Fordo underground nuclear site, a key step to producing more quickly fissile material for a nuclear warhead. As Europe moves closer to embargoing Iranian oil, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard Ali Ashraf Nouri threatens, “ If enemies block the export of our oil, we won’t allow a drop of oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. In support of this threat, the regime continues to stage war games in the area and to warn American warships from passing through the strait into the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile the U.S. and Israel have announced a joint missile defense exercise, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad​ visits America’s enemies in Latin America, bearding the U.S. lion in its own hemisphere of influence.

Iran may be just indulging bluster and bluff. Perhaps the mullahs recall the severe punishment inflicted on its navy in 1988 during the Tanker War​, an earlier attempt to disrupt oil shipments transiting the Persian Gulf. That effort ended when Ronald Reagan​ retaliated for a missile attack on an American warship by eventually destroying two Iranian oil platforms, two Iranian ships, and six Iranian gunboats. Yet our current president has not shown as yet any of Ronald Reagan’s guts and nerve, and the mullahs may be calculating that the bluff will work.

And why wouldn’t they? Iran has been killing Americans for 30 years with impunity, from the 241 military personnel killed in Beirut by a suicide bomber, to the hundreds more soldiers murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian proxy terrorist outfits trained and armed by Tehran. Repeated rounds of sanctions, threats, U.N. Security Council resolutions, and deadlines for cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been contemptuously ignored. Our citizens are arrested and held on trumped-up charges, our ally Israel is threatened with genocide, and incessant anti-American “Great Satan” rhetoric daily pours from Tehran. Just this week a former American Marine was condemned to death by an Iranian court for allegedly being a spy and a “mohareb,” or “fighter against God.” Yet Obama has answered this aggression against our security and interests with appeasing diplomatic “outreach” offered “without preconditions,” and pleas for “mutual respect” that the regime correctly interprets as a sign of weakness and failure of nerve.

Given that Iranian aggression has so far provoked appeasement and empty threats, the mullahs very well could believe that since they are the “best of nations,” as the Koran has it, in any conflict Allah will protect the Islamic Republic and render insignificant America’s overwhelming military superiority. After all, Muslims for centuries have believed in their superiority based on Allah’s special regard for them, as aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry noted in 1939: “Their [Muslims] pride was born of the illusion of their power. Allah renders a believer invincible.” The mullahs today will remember what the Ayatollah Khomeini​ said in 1980, after America’s ill-planned and half-hearted mission to rescue the embassy hostages was ignominiously thwarted by a sandstorm that caused two helicopters to crash and burn: “Those sand particles were divinely commissioned. . . . [President] Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing. . . . Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.”

Thirty years later, we still have not “comprehended” the nature of the Iranian enemy. We have continuously operated with a materialist calculus that ignores the spiritual motives that account for much of Iranian aggression. More depressing still, this is the same mistake the Carter administration made in 1979, when it ignored the religious roots of the Iranian Revolution​, dismissed Khomeini as “nutty” and “a crazy man,” as Carter did, and assumed that the secular political parties and technical elites would eventually rule Iran and marginalize the mullahs, virulent Iranian hostility would wane, and “after a transition period common interests could provide a basis for future cooperation,” as an assistant to the Secretary of State reported. Similarly the West today has assumed that economic punishment, or the desire for “greater international integration,” as Obama put it, can change Iranian behavior. We still don’t believe what a member of the Revolutionary Council said a few months after the seizure of our embassy: “No individual, no official and no Muslim has the right to show forbearance or compromise toward an enemy who is not defeated and is not overthrown.”

The melancholy lesson of history is that force is the “strong magic” that compels fanatical believers to abandon their murderous ideologies or keep them within their own borders. Equivocating about the use of force, or pursuing non-lethal ways to change behavior, such as diplomatic negotiation or economic sanctions, only convinces the fanatic aggressor that he has the gods or history or destiny on his side, that his enemy is weak and lacks conviction, and that a few more blows will achieve the aggressor’s aims. Nor does it matter if the failure to retaliate actually reflects other concerns such as political expediency. There were many reasons Clinton withdrew our forces from Somalia in 1993 after the “Blackhawk Down” battle in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed, but political self-interest and survival were clearly the most important. Yet to bin Laden, the retreat from Mogadishu was like the withdrawal from Vietnam and Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing: the result of America’s “low spiritual morale” and “cowardice and feebleness.” And that perception fed bin Laden’s certainty that the U.S. rested on “foundations of straw” and could be toppled with spectacular terrorist attacks.

Settling the conflict with Iran and keeping it from acquiring nuclear weapons, then, will in the end be achieved with mind-concentrating force that convinces the mullahs to change their ways. One place to start would be to destroy Iran’s navy and shore missile batteries in the Persian Gulf. Degrading the military assets, bases, and production facilities of the Iranian Republican Guard Corp and the paramilitary Basij might provide an opportunity for the dormant Green Revolutionaries to effect regime change. As Indiana University’s Jamsheed K. Choksy wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Once the power of the Basij and the IRGC to enforce the regime’s will upon the people has been seriously compromised, it would not be surprising to see large segments of Iran’s population casting off the theocratic yoke.” A saner regime perhaps would be more amenable to abandoning the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The time is fast running out on policies that refuse to accept the necessity of force in changing Iranian behavior. Military action obviously involves unknowable risks and costs; but allowing a rogue regime, one situated in the middle of a region that produces one-fifth of the world’s oil, to acquire nuclear weapons will likely end up subjecting our security and interests to much greater risks and much higher costs.

Obama Gives Bombs to Israel

With the support of Obama rapidly falling among supporters of Israel, the following article has more than an interesting timing. Why would it be revealed at this time? Has Obama been more supportive than it has been apparent in the past? Are there more things going on now? Or is this a shot across the bow to Iran?  These are questions that come to mind.  What are you thinking?

I am sure that we will never know all the back and forth of diplomacy that have been occurring between Tel Aviv and Washington. If there has been more of this type of activity, why has it not been revealed. Has the Obama Administration been so concerned with appearing neutral that giving these big bomb to Israel would have looked like taking sides? Or was this a quid pro quo for stopping settlements or some other agreement?

The more I write, the more questions that come to mind. We need to watch future developments to determine which way the wind is blowing. The Palestinian Statehood issue will be a good indicator. If the US vetoes the application, we can confirm that for the time being the Administration is on Israel's side, however, if Washington finds some middle ground or a caveat toward the vote, it will also telegraph Obama's position.

We would hope that our government would favor Israel but, that has not been readily apparent over the past nearly three years. Time will tell.

Why did Obama give bunker-buster bombs to Israel?

By Laura Rozen | The Envoy – 8 hrs ago

Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv March 24, 2011. (Cherie Cullen/Defense …

In late 2009, the Obama administration transferred 55 so-called bunker-buster bombs to Israel. The 5,000-pound bombs conceivably put Israel in the position to attack Iran's buried nuclear facilities--or to target Hezbollah's buried bunkers in Lebanon.

The revelation, first reported by Newsweek's Eli Lake Friday, received independent confirmation via a sensitive U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last month.

In a November 2009 meeting among senior American and Israeli military and diplomatic officials, "both sides . . . discussed the upcoming delivery of GBU-28 bunker busting bombs to Israel, noting that the transfer should be handled quietly to avoid any allegations that the USG [U.S. government] is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran," the leaked Nov. 18, 2009 U.S. cable states. ThinkProgress's Ali Ghraib first reportedon the U.S. cable.

Israel had earlier requested the deep-penetrating bombs from the Bush administration, Lake reported. But according to Lake's report, Bush had deferred the Israeli request, not wanting to give Israel a "green light" to bomb Iran. (However, another leaked U.S. cable discusses Israeli media reports suggesting the Bush administration transferred an earlier shipment of GBU-28 bombs to Israel, in 2005. "All media continued coverage of the forthcoming arms sale by the U.S. of GBU-28 bombs to Israel," an unclassified April 2005 U.S. diplomatic states.)

American policymakers had--and indeed have--many reasons to be wary of Israel initiating a confrontation with Iran--chief among them the roughly 150,000 American troops the United States currently has deployed on either side of Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other forces and assets assigned to bases in Qatar, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region.

So why has the Obama administration seemingly reversed that call? After all, the Obama White House has sought to curtail Iran's nuclear program through diplomatic and economic measures--and the export of 5,000-pound bunker buster bombs to Israel would seem to severely test Israeli patience for that slow and frustrating effort. And, secondly, why is the information emerging now--nearly two years after the administration carried out the deal?

Some policy observers suggest that the U.S. military under Obama was trying to "hug Israel close," in order to increase its feeling of security and thus hopefully stave off the prospect that Israel might launch a surprise strike on Iran on its own, thereby wreaking all sorts of havoc with U.S. military and diplomatic initiatives in the region.

The reported transfer may have been a "gesture" by the Obama White House "to assure the Israelis we love them," one Washington Iran expert who insisted on anonymity told The Envoy via email. (Still, he confessed that he found the ultimate motivation behind the transfer mystifying.)

It's also worth noting that the pending U.S. transfer of the 5,000-lb. bunker buster bombs was discussed at a Nov. 18, 2009 meeting--approximately a week before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a ten-month partial freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank that the Obama administration had sought. But there is no insinuation in the Nov. 18, 2009 cable of any sort of quid pro quo for the bunker buster deal. Rather, it was mentioned in the context of U.S.-Israeli discussions on approaches for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

As to the timing of the revelation, while some observers have suggested that American officials may have leaked it in order to burnish Obama's pro-Israel credentials as he faces a tough 2012 presidential campaign, Lake himself, in an interview with NPR Saturday, discounted such a political motivation by his initial sources. Lake also said on Twitter that Obama White House officials were not among the U.S. and Israeli sources for his story. (Nevertheless, some Democratic Congressional staffers have eagerly circulated the Lake report, seemingly seeking to beat back the Republican narrative that Obama has not demonstrated sufficient support for the Jewish state.)

The simpler explanation may in this case be the more compelling one: American and Israeli officials initiated the disclosure of the information now to send a potent warning to Iran.

Such a message would be well timed, in view of other recent developments in the Iranian nuclear effort. Last month, Tehran announced that it had started moving nuclear centrifuges to a buried underground facility in Qom. American officials have been concerned that as Iran proceeds with transferring its enrichment program from its current Natanz facility to the underground Qom facility, Israel might choose to launch a preventive strike aimed at thwarting Iran's nuclear initiative before it becomes harder to target at the buried Fordo facility near Qom.

The Obama "administration is interested in sending message to the Iranians that we have lots of things we can do that are tougher, ... [that it] can ratchet up the pressure on Iran," suggested Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an interview with The Envoy Monday. "The administration may be lifting its skirt a little bit to show some ankle."

(And in actuality, Israel has received earlier shipments of U.S. bunker buster bombs, analysts said. For instance, the Bush Defense Department announced in 2008 plans to sell 1,000 GBU-39 smart bunker buster bombs to Israel, "to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability," according to an Associated Press report. However, Israeli analysts said at the time that the smaller, 250-pound, precision GBU-39 bombs were more useful against buried arsenals in Lebanon and Gaza--not Iran: "You would need something a lot heavier" for Iran, former Israeli military strategic planner Shlomo Brom told the AP. "The GBU-39 can penetrate 6 feet of concrete, and 6 feet is not enough" for targeting Iran's buried nuclear facilities, he said. By contrast, analysts note that the bunker busters reportedly transferred in the 2009 Obama deal are 5,000-pound bombs--e.g. twenty times heavier than the ones the Bush administration shipped in 2008.)

Could the disclosure now that Israel has the means to strike Iran's underground nuclear facilities change Iran's nuclear decision-making calculus? It's hard to know with any certainty, given that so many factors that might influence such a decision are still very much in play.

But in a meeting with journalists in New York last week, attended by The Envoy, Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not discount the possibility of an Israeli strike--and he warned harshly against it.

"The Zionists are quite eager to be able to damage the security of Iran," Ahmadinejad said through a translator at the Sept. 22 lunch with journalists, using "Zionists" to refer to the Israeli government. "It's their ultimate dream to be able to transgress against Iran. Certainly know Iran's response will be quite hard and it will be regretful for them. We assure everyone we will defend ourselves. I hope they avoid that fatal mistake."

Message delivered--and received?