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Showing posts with label Iran nuclear deal. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

If True, Biden Could Be Finished

During Obama Years, Biden Reportedly Helped Soleimani, Iran Gain More Power in Middle East

Stephen Maturen / Getty ImagesDemocratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event on Jan. 3, 2020, in Independence, Iowa. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

By Ben Marquis
Published January 6, 2020 at 6:47pm

Following the targeted airstrike to take out top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, prominent Democrats and establishment media figures criticized President Donald Trump for ordering the strike.

One of those critics of Trump’s justifiable killing of Soleimani was former Vice President Joe Biden, a top 2020 presidential candidate, who said in a statement that the president’s decision was akin to having “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” a move that threatened to escalate conflict and chaos in an already chaotic environment.

Obviously left unmentioned in Biden’s statement, however, was the particular role that he himself had played in helping to create the chaotic “tinderbox” that is Iraq, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

As it turns out, Biden played a significant role in the process that allowed Iran to more fully exert its influence on the Iraqi government and render that nation something of a puppet state to the Iranian regime in Tehran, which occurred around the time that then-President Barack Obama was precipitously withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq.

Biden is alleged to have urged a secular pro-America politician at the time to step aside and allow somebody else, a more religious and pro-Iran leader, to step up in his place.

That revelation was included in a lengthy and admittedly fascinating profile of Soleimani from 2013 in The New Yorker — which has received renewed attention in the wake of his death — that documented the Iranian general’s rise to power and the scope of his control over the broader Middle East through a host of interviews with a variety of current and former top officials in a number of different countries.

In 2010, pro-American Iraqi politician Ayad Allawi helped his party win a majority of seats in the Iraqi Parliament, but was forced to step down from a bid to become prime minister after allegedly being told to do so by Biden.

Allawi told The New Yorker that he would have had no problems building a majority government and being prime minister if he’d had the backing of the U.S. government. He claims that he was instead informed directly by Biden that “you can’t form a government” and was pushed aside in favor of Nuri Al-Maliki, who had essentially been handpicked during behind-the-scenes negotiations involving Soleimani.

A key sticking point of Soleimani’s negotiations that involved Iraqi Shiites and the Kurds was that “no Americans” could remain in the country. One unnamed former Iraqi politician told The New Yorker that Soleimani “completely outmaneuvered” the Americans, while “in public they were congratulating themselves for putting the government together.”

Do you think the Obama administration is responsible for the problems our nation faces in the Middle East today?

According to Allawi, the Americans only wanted to stay in Iraq if their involvement could be kept to a minimum, and the moves by Soleimani to install Maliki over Allawi seemed to provide an easy out for the Obama administration.

“I needed American support,” Allawi recalled. “But they wanted to leave, and they handed the country to the Iranians. Iraq is a failed state now, an Iranian colony.”

Which brings us back full-circle to today. Iraq became a puppet state of Iran in large part because of Biden and Obama’s refusal to back a pro-American leader, mostly because they didn’t want to deal with any potential trouble they might have encountered from continued Iranian-backed resistance from the Soleimani-organized Shiite militias.

Bear in mind also that all of this was occurring while the Obama administration was secretly negotiating the eventual Iran nuclear deal. Staying in Iraq and supporting a pro-America Iraqi leader would undoubtedly have made those negotiations far more difficult, if not impossible to advance to a conclusion.

In other words, this alleged instance of Biden and Obama bowing to the whims of the Iranian regime is but one example of many of how the last administration ceded influence and power to Iran.

Now that Iran has tacitly taken over Iraq, thanks in part to Biden and Obama, Biden wants to complain about how Trump has taken action to reduce that influence and power and protect our nation’s substantial investment in Iraq.

Don’t think for one moment that Trump will let this pass if Biden ultimately wins his party’s nomination in 2020, as what Biden and Obama did — and more to the point, did not do — in Iraq will become a weapon in Trump’s favor to be used against the former vice president.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Does This Really Surprise Anyone?

Evidence that Iran Violated the Nuclear Deal Since Day One?

by Majid Rafizadeh
September 23, 2019 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14910/iran-nuclear-deal-violations

The IAEA first ignored the reports about Iran's undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic's compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran's illicit nuclear activities.
New evidence shows that Iran's theocratic establishment was most likely violating the nuclear agreement since the day that Obama's administration and Tehran struck the deal in 2015.
The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran's ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

The Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program at a faster pace. Recently, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran declared that Tehran has activated advanced centrifuges. Pictured: The Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

The Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program at a faster pace. Recently, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) declared that Tehran took the third step in increasing its nuclear activities by activating advanced centrifuges: 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges.
The previous two steps that Tehran took included: increasing the enriched uranium stockpile beyond the 300kg cap, which was set by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and enriching uranium to levels beyond the limit of 3.67 percent.
As part of its rush to a nuclear breakout capability, the Islamic Republic of Iran is also expanding its research and development work beyond the limitations set by the JCPOA. Iranian nuclear agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told a televised news conference, "We have started lifting limitations on our Research and Development imposed by the deal ... It will include development of more rapid and advanced centrifuges."
The ruling mullahs are claiming that Iran's recent moves and violations of the nuclear deal are the fault of the US government, because the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA, but the claim is a lie. New evidence shows that Iran's theocratic establishment was most likely violating the nuclear agreement since the day the Obama administration and Tehran struck the deal in 2015.
To clarify: Do you remember when the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano immediately to inspect an "atomic warehouse" in Iran last year?
Netanyahu stated in his speech to the UN General Assembly that Iran had a "secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and material from Iran's secret nuclear weapons program." Tehran claimed that the warehouse, which is located in a village (Turquz Abad) in the suburbs of Tehran, was a place where carpets were cleaned.
At the same time, two non-partisan organizations based in Washington, DC -- the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) -- released detailed reports about Iran's undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities as well.
The IAEA first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic's compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran's illicit nuclear activities. Iran's clandestine nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak were revealed by the opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
In any event, after a significant amount of pressure was imposed on the IAEA, and after the IAEA's chief passed away and Iran was reportedly able to moving the suspected materials out of the secret nuclear facility, inspection of the site was recently implemented.
What was the outcome? Even though the Iranian leaders had cleaned up the facility, the IAEA's inspectors were able to detect traces of radioactive uranium at the site. Israel's warning and other reports had proved accurate.
Now, Tehran is declining to answer the IAEA's questions about the secret facility. More importantly, one of the most basic requirements of the nuclear deal (while it lasted) was that Iran had to reveal its nuclear activities to the IAEA -- a condition with it even overtly failed to comply.
In other words, the detection of radioactive particles in Turquz Abad, Iran's reluctance to answer simple questions about the secret facility and non-partisan evidence about Iran's nuclear activities at the location, all point to the fact that Tehran was most likely violating the nuclear deal since it was reached.
Where, you may ask, are the strong advocates of the nuclear deal after the new evidence revealed that Iran has long been violating the nuclear deal and pursuing its nuclear ambitions? They are silent.
The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran's ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Follow Majid Rafizadeh on Twitter

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Thursday, May 10, 2018

Kasich And Flake Are Part Of The Problem, Not The Solution

Nolte: Never Trump Grifters John Kasich and Jeff Flake Flip-Flop on Iran Deal

293

Associated Press

by JOHN NOLTE9 May 20181,376

Remember how during the 2016 presidential primary those oh-soprincipled Never Trumpers kept warning us that Donald Trump was a con man, a faux conservative, a secret Democrat making promises (including about exiting the Iran deal) he had no intention of keeping? Remember how those oh-so principled Never Trumpers told us that anyone who believed Trump’s promises was a bumpkin, a hillbilly, a yokel, a jake, a hick, a clodhopper, a Grade A hayseed?

Well, here we sit 15 months into Trump’s presidency, a presidency where he has proved to be the most promising-keeping-sumbitch-of-a-president in my lifetime. And here is Never Trump once again proving themselves to be the true soy boy swindlers.

Yes, while Trump kept his promise to exit the disastrous Iran deal, a promise he made countless times on the campaign trail, look who was actually lying to us — no less than oh-so principled Never Trump Resistance Leaders Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), who were both against the Iran deal before they were for it.

With an 18 percent approval rating in his home state, and to avoid a humiliating primary loss, Flake has wisely chosen not to run for re-election. But when he still thought he would have to face voters, Flake strongly and publicly opposed the Iran deal.

“While Congress has received assurances from the administration that it does not forfeit its ability to impose sanctions on Iran for behavior on the non-nuclear side, these assurances do not square with the text of the [agreement],” Flake said (quite correctly) at the time.

But now, we know that this Never Trumper was hustling us because now, Flake is magically in favor of the Iran deal and is even slamming Trump (on far-left CNN, naturally) for keeping his promise to withdraw:

Kasich is even worse. If you recall (and it is certainly understandable if you don’t), Kasich ran for president in 2016, and while running for president, Kasich told us over and over again that he was so gosh-darned opposed to the Iran deal, he wanted the Senate to go “nuclear” to stop it.

Per NBC News, the “Ohio governor regularly slams the Iran deal on the campaign trail, and he told the crowd on Tuesday ‘it’s a bad agreement. There are so many very poor parts of this thing.’”

Opposing the Iran deal was a major talking point for this son-of-a-mailman during his humiliating presidential run.

Kasich did say he would not tear the deal up on day one, that he would only withdraw if Iran violated the agreement. But today, and even though Iran has repeatedly violated the agreement, oh-so principled Kasich is all but admitting his prior opposition to the deal was a shell game.

“President Trump’s decision to withdraw … was a mistake. It has gotten us nothing other than to remove constraints on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons,” Kasich now says:

So it was not Trump who was swindling us with red meat on the campaign trail. It was not Trump who was conning us with rhetoric about being opposed to the deal. It was oh-soprincipled Never Trump.

In other words, voting for an establishment hack like Kasich would have been the true sucker move.

But we rubes already knew that.

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Tuesday, January 7, 2020

If True, Biden Could Be Finished

During Obama Years, Biden Reportedly Helped Soleimani, Iran Gain More Power in Middle East

Do you think the Obama administration is responsible for the problems our nation faces in the Middle East today?

Monday, September 23, 2019

Does This Really Surprise Anyone?

Evidence that Iran Violated the Nuclear Deal Since Day One?

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Kasich And Flake Are Part Of The Problem, Not The Solution

Nolte: Never Trump Grifters John Kasich and Jeff Flake Flip-Flop on Iran Deal

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