Monthly Archives: August 2016

Ben Rhodes, WH NSC Advisor an Employee of Iran Lobby?

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Primer:

A U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship fired three warning shots at an Iranian ship that sailed within 200 yards in the Northern Persian Gulf Wednesday after one of four close calls this week involving U.S. and Iranian vessels, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

The USS Squall fired the shots, according to the official.

On Tuesday, four Iranian small boats “harassed” the USS Nitze, sailing near the guided missile destroyer in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. Navy official told Fox News.

and….

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned government officials not to trust the U.S. after alleged shortcomings in the nuclear deal’s implementation.

Khamenei criticized America’s “misconduct” in implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) during a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet on August 24. Khamenei warned, “This experience teaches us that one cannot trust the promises of any administration in America.” As in his past criticisms of the nuclear deal, Khamenei fell short of calling for Iran to abandon the accord, however. More here.

Benjamin “Ben” Rhodes is President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting. From the beginning of his career, Rhodes has made a mark in policy, international relations, and writing. He worked as an assistant to Lee Hamilton at the Wilson Center, and then went on to the Iraq Study Group Report and the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. He then went on to become President Obama’s foreign policy advisor during the 2008 Presidential Elections. He has worked with President Obama’s negotiating team for the JCPOA agreement and his outreach to the Iranian people, such as the President’s Nowruz Message in 2012.

Rhodes is a speaker at this conference.

NIAC LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

NIAC’s annual three-day Leadership Conference is the event of the year for supporters of peace and renewed friendship between the peoples of Iran and the United States. Participants will cultivate new leadership and advocacy skills, learn from some of America’s most influential thought leaders, interact with elected officials, and network with prominent Iranian American entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders.

Sponsors

NIAC’s Sixth Annual Leadership Conference is brought to you by:

Cap and Trade DID Not Go Away

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New Principles to Help Accelerate the Growing Global Momentum for Carbon Pricing

2015:

  • New report shows the number of implemented or planned carbon pricing schemes around the world has almost doubled since 2012, with existing schemes now worth about $50 billion.

 

  • About 40 nations and 23 cities, states or regions are using a carbon price. This represents the equivalent of about 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, or 12 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
  • And new report lays out six key principles to put a price on carbon – the FASTER principles – for putting a price on carbon based on economic principles and experience of what is already working around the world

The spotlight is on New York now with the upcoming United Nations meeting on the new Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Week New York, and in about two months, global leaders will meet again in Paris for COP 21.  More from the World Bank.

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California’s Cap-And-Trade Program Is Sick And Will Take High-Speed Rail Down With It

Chuck DeVore,  Contributor

Forbes: California concluded its most recent cap-and-trade program auction last week. Out of 44,268,323 metric tons of carbon dioxide credits offered for sale by the state Air Resources Board, only 660,560 were sold, 1.5 percent of the total, raising a paltry $8.4 million out of a hoped-for $620 million. Last May’s auction was almost as bad, raising $10 million out of an anticipated $500 million.

California’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade auction program was expected to bring in more than $2 billion in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2017, a quarter of which is earmarked for the high-speed rail project narrowly approved by voters in a 2008 ballot initiative. As a hedge against uncertainty, a $500 million reserve was built into the cap-and-trade budget. But, with the August auction falling 98.5 percent short, the entire reserve was consumed in the first of four auctions for the fiscal year.

Further complicating matters is a pending lawsuit against the legality of California’s cap-and-trade program. Business groups and fiscal conservatives claim the program amounts to a tax, under a 2010 ballot initiative that better defined what exactly constitutes taxes and fees under California law, thus would requiring a two-thirds majority vote of the legislature.

Further, with the program slated to end in 2020, many businesses that are forced to buy the carbon credits are conflicted by the risk that they may end up buying the California equivalent of Confederate bonds, doomed to be worthless when the state loses its cap-and-trade war.

In the meantime, the High-Speed Rail project, currently promised to cost “only” $68 billion to run from the Bay Area some 400 miles south to Los Angeles may be looking at $50 billion in overruns. To fund the costly train, which was sold to voters as not costing a dime in new taxes, the expected revenue stream from cap-and-trade has been securitized, putting the state on the hook to Wall Street for billions in construction money advanced on the promise of future cap-and-trade revenue.

But the cap-and-trade market is showing dangerous signs of weakness. Not only have auction revenues collapsed in the last two auctions in May and August, but the competitive landscape for the auctions has collapsed as well. The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), a commonly-used measure of competitive markets, signaled that last May’s auction was dominated by a sole market player. Last week’s auction improved somewhat, but was still moderately concentrated among a small number of buyers and sellers.

The lack of interest in California’s cap-and-trade carbon credits shows that the Golden State will likely have to come up with a significant amount of General Fund tax revenue, more than $2 billion annually, to build out its government-run rail project—something that isn’t likely to last much beyond the end of Gov. Jerry Brown’s fourth term in office in January 2019.

California's Cap and Trade Auction is Collapsing

California’s Cap and Trade Auction is Collapsing

**** Back in 2014:

In part from Politico: Cap and trade was a key part of the George H.W. Bush administration’s strategy for reducing acid rain in 1990, and it would have been the centerpiece of the climate bill that stalled and died in the Senate in 2010.

Despite the concept’s bipartisan heritage, cap and trade has become politically toxic in some circles — especially among supporters of coal, the carbon-intensive fuel that would face the heaviest costs under any trading system. Republicans derided the climate bill as “cap and tax,” while West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin famously unloaded a rifle into a copy of the legislation during a Senate campaign commercial.

Still, cap and trade never went away.

With RGGI and California combined, about a quarter of the U.S. population lives in areas covered by trading programs designed to drive down carbon emissions, said Janet Peace, vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, at a Senate briefing Thursday.

Other programs exist in Alberta, Canada; Australia; New Zealand; Norway; and South Korea. Next year, cap-and-trade programs are expected to launch in Switzerland, Tokyo, the United Kingdom and South Africa. Others are in development or undergoing pilot tests in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico and even Kazakhstan.

“Eventually, 250 million people will be covered by a carbon price in China,” Peace said. The full article here.

*** The New York Times stays current on Cap and Trade.

 

C’mon Hillary and Bill, Really?

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Hillary State Dept. Helped Jailed Clinton Foundation Donor Get $10 Mil from U.S. for Failed Haiti

The new batch of emails showing that the State Department gave special access to top Clinton Foundation donors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state brings to mind the case of a shady Miami businessman serving a 12-year prison sentence after scamming the government out of millions. His name is Claudio Osorio, a Clinton Foundation donor who got $10 million from the government after the Clinton State Department reportedly pulled some strings.

Osorio got the money from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal agency that operates under the guidance of the State Department, to build houses in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The OPIC supposedly promotes U.S. government investments abroad to foster the development and growth of free markets. Osorio’s “Haiti project” was supposed to build 500 homes for displaced families in the aftermath of the earthquake. The project never broke ground and Osorio used the money to finance his lavish lifestyle and fund his illicit business ventures. He also ran a fraudulent international company with facilities in the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Germany, Angola and Tanzania that stole millions from investors. Some of the OPIC Haiti money was used to repay investors of his fraudulent company (Innovida), according to federal prosecutors. In September 2013, Osorio was sentenced to 150 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release.

Not surprisingly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) never mentioned Osorio’s Clinton connections and seemed to downplay the $10 million scam of taxpayer funds by focusing on the “victims” that invested in his bogus company. More here.

The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire

In part from WashingtonPost: The foundation now includes 11 major initiatives, focused on issues as divergent as crop yields in Africa, earthquake relief in Haiti and the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide. In all, the Clintons’ constellation of related charities has raised $2 billion, employs more than 2,000 people and has a combined annual budget of more than $223 million.

As donations have surged, particularly as her bid for the Democratic nomination grew closer, she has been forced to answer for whether those supporters have been not merely giving to a charity but also paying to curry favor with a former secretary of state and a would-be president.

Sights on something big

In the beginning of it all, Bill Clinton was feeling unfulfilled.

Plenty of room for their dogs and grandchild(ren) to run around... and with a pool to blow off steam from the stress of the campaign trail.  More photos here.

In the months after he left the White House in 2001, he was living at his family’s new home in Chappaqua, N.Y. His wife was in the Senate. His daughter was away, first at Stanford, then at Oxford. He stewed about leftover legal bills and bad press over last-minute pardons.

To pass the time, he turned to TiVo.
No sign of that pesky server though.

At the same time, Clinton did more formal planning with aides. He was just 56. He would be an ex-president for a long time. He wanted to do something big. And something international. He wanted to stay out of domestic policy, so it didn’t look as though he was meddling in the domain of the president who had succeeded him. Or the senator he was married to.

Ira Magaziner, a longtime aide, had an idea that fit both criteria.

New drugs were available to fight the progress of HIV and AIDS, but in Africa the drugs were too expensive for many people. Magaziner wanted to lower the cost. He knew Clinton didn’t have the money to help, because he was still fundraising for the library and his own legal bills.

But, Magaziner told Clinton, he had a name brand with limitless value.

“We should use that reputation and your contacts for something big. If we succeed at this, we can help save millions of lives,” Magaziner wrote in a memo he handed to Clinton at an AIDS conference in 2002. “If we are not so successful, we still might help save tens of thousands of lives which would not be so bad.”

Expanding in all directions

“Now here’s something else in my hot little hand,” Clinton said, standing on a stage at the Sheraton Times Square, according to media reports. “My old friend Carlos Slim Helú here has just said he’s willing to develop a cellphone network for Gaza and link it to Jordan’s network. Why, thanks, Carlos. Come up here and be recognized.”

It was September 2005. A year and a half after Band’s brainstorm, the first meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative was a smashing success. Some Clinton aides had been skeptical that it would work, but Clinton had shrewdly timed it to coincide with a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly — when New York was already chockablock with world leaders looking for something more interesting than a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

This is quite the story so please read it in full here. There are stunning connections, people, agendas, timelines, money and access. A real picture has emerged on the collusion and the work of Hillary and Bill’s circle of friends. This is hardly the whole story but it does begin to explain why they had at least 2 private servers and refused FOIA requests.

Last year, the Washington Post offer an early comprehensive summary:

The Post identified donations from roughly 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of their political or philanthropic endeavors — a list that includes top patrons such as Steven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as lesser-known backers who have given smaller amounts dozens of times. Not included in the count are an untold number of small donors whose names are not identified in campaign finance reports but together have given millions to the Clintons over the years.

The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation, one of the world’s fastest-growing charities, which supports health, education and economic development initiatives around the globe. A handful of elite givers have contributed more than $25 million to the foundation, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who is among the wealthy foreign donors who have given tens of millions.

Keep reading here as it is full of names and under-handed requests and access.

A Trifecta of Military and Diplomatic Causes for Biden in Turkey

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Groveling to an off the rails NATO member, Vice President Biden has a big agenda meeting with Turkish officials. Should Biden even be the point person for all of this as noted below? Hardly.

The matter of the Kurds has required high attention for Turkey and Biden.

The vice president also offered a stern warning to Kurdish forces on the ground in Syria that they would lose U.S. support if they don’t retreat to the eastern bank of the Euphrates, immediately to the east of Jarabulus.

“We have made it absolutely clear that they [pro-Kurdish forces] must go back across the [Euphrates] River. They cannot and will not, under no circumstances, get American support if they do not keep that commitment,” Biden said, according to Kurdish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News. 

Kurdish involvement in the two-year-old U.S.-led war against the Islamic State group has become a major sticking point between the NATO partners – Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria have proven one of the most capable and effective combat forces on the ground, for a conflict to which President Barack Obama has declined to deploy large formations of American ground troops. The Turks, however, fear empowering Kurdish fighters in neighboring Syria and Iraq could further embolden separatist sentiments among the Kurdish population in Turkey.  More here.

Due to the coup attempt, Erdogan wants Fettulah Gulen returned to Turkey. Biden?

He said it would be an impeachable offence for US President Barack Obama to order the extradition of a foreign national.

“We have no reason other than to cooperate with you (Turkey)… It always takes time… It is never understood why the wheels of justice move deliberately and slowly. It is totally understandable why the people of Turkey are angry,” he said.

Turkish officials have warned that if Pennsylvania-based Gulen is not extradited, relations will suffer further and anti-American sentiment will deepen in the country.

A senior US official said Wednesday Turkey has submitted four extradition requests for Gulen but offered no evidence tying him to last month’s failed coup. More here.

Turkey open to Russian planes at US Incirlik hub

Stripes: STUTTGART, Germany — Could U.S. warplanes soon be sharing the runway at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base with Russian bombers?

That’s up to Moscow, according to a top Turkish official, whose comments on possibly opening the strategic Turkish facility to Russian personnel comes ahead of a damage control visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

When asked on Saturday whether Russia could use Incirlik for airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim answered in the affirmative. “If necessary, the Incirlik base can be used (by the Russians),” Yildirim told reporters.

The prospect of opening Incirlik to Russia, a move that would likely infuriate NATO allies, would put the U.S. military in the awkward position of working and possibly living side by side with an adversary. In addition to being home to about 2,500 U.S. troops, Incirlik houses about 50 U.S. nuclear weapons, according to various watchdog groups.

For Russia, Incirlik is unlikely to offer much tactical value, since its fighter-bombers and attack helicopters already operate from bases in Syria closer to the actual battlefields, and Yildirim made clear that Moscow hadn’t requested use of the air base. Still, a move into Incirlik could offer Russia an opportunity to chip at NATO unity.

Whether Yildirim was serious about the Incirlik offer to Moscow or floating the idea as a sign of leverage against the United States isn’t clear. But what has become apparent in recent weeks is that inside Turkey, where conspiracies abound about the U.S. having covertly backed the attempted July coup attempt, there is growing frustration with the Washington.

In the aftermath of the attempted mutiny by elements of the Turkish military, U.S. officials have publicly backed the government of President Recep Tayyip Erodgan, but also voiced concern about a sweeping purge in Turkey that has resulted in the detention of thousands of military officers, academics and political opposition figures. Such criticisms from America and its NATO allies have prompted a furious response from Erdogan’s supporters, including from pro-government news outlets that have interpreted such criticisms as a sure sign of U.S. sympathy for the mutineers.

The Obama administration has firmly rejected such charges. Still, Ankara also has lashed out at Washington, which it accuses of foot-dragging on a demand that Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who lives in Pennsylvania, be extradited in connection with Turkish allegations he masterminded the coup plot, something the Gulen has denied.

The U.S. has sought to reassure Turkey of its political and military standing inside NATO, and two of the U.S. military’s top generals have made recent visits to Ankara. On Monday, U.S. European Command’s Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti praised Turkey, saying it has a unique standing within the military alliance.

“It sits at the crossroads of the many challenges we face in Europe, from the refugee crisis, to terrorism, to human trafficking,” said Scaparrotti, in a statement after his Monday stop in Ankara for talks. “We are thankful for their leadership and contributions in each of these areas, and for access they have granted us to their bases, which are critical to our operations.”

Still, Turkey has sought closer ties with Russia since the coup, patching up a relationship with Moscow that was deeply damaged after Turkey shot down a Russian bomber around its southern border in November. At the time, Russian took a tough stance, severing many diplomatic and economic ties. Since then, Turkey has apologized for the incident with Erdogan making a formal visit to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.

With relations on the mend, there could be an opportunity for Moscow to play Turkey off the West in an attempt to sow divisions in institutions such as NATO and the European Union, some analysts warn.

“Will Russia’s long game of undermining the EU’s cohesion, the U.S. status as the major superpower, or the role of NATO find fertile ground in post-coup Turkey? One hypothesis is that Russia may go for a long-term game-changing move and lure Turkey away from the West as part of a broader geopolitical reconfiguration,” wrote Marc Pierini, a scholar with the Carnegie Europe think tank and former EU ambassador to Turkey.

For the U.S. and its NATO allies, Incirlik during the past year has emerged as a primary hub for airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

It also has been a place of upheaval.

In March, EUCOM ordered military family members off the post, where dependents have been a presence for decades amid security concerns. The move forced schools to close and likely marked the end of Incirlik as an accompanied tour destination for the Air Force for the foreseeable future. Some experts have questioned the long-term viability of Incirlik as a hub for U.S. Air Force personnel, given the political tensions with Ankara.

The Washington-based Stimson Center also has said the U.S. should consider moving its nuclear weapons out of Turkey, citing possible security concerns in the wake of the attempted coup, which resulted in power being cut off at the base for nearly a week as Turkish authorities sought to regain control. The U.S. was forced to rely on generators to carry out its mission.

“Whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question,” said the Stimson report, which examined various ways to reform the U.S. nuclear program.

EUCOM, which as a matter of policy doesn’t comment on locations of nuclear weapons, nonetheless said that during the attempted coup no U.S. personnel or assets were ever threatened.

“We do not discuss the location of strategic assets,” said EUCOM spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez. “Broadly, we continue to take appropriate security steps to maintain the safety and security of our personnel, our civilian and military personnel, their families and facilities.”

Hillary or Donald Ready for Iran in Iraq, Syria or Yemen?

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Iranian general: We formed Shiite army to fight in Iraq, Syria and Yemen

Retired General Mohammad Ali Falaki, who is currently one of the Iranian forces leaders in Syria, has recently revealed that Iran has formed a “Shiite Liberation Army” led by Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.

 

The Quds Force also known as Pasdaran in Persian is a special forces unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and is responsible for the Islamic Republic’s extraterritorial operation.

“The Shiite Liberation Army is currently fighting on three fronts – Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” he told Mashregh news agency, which is close to the IRGC, in an interview published on Thursday.

The retired general said “This army is not only composed of Iranians but it recruits locally from the regions witnessing fighting.”

Falaki, who is leading part of the IRGC fight in Syria to give support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, advised that it was “not wise to directly involve Iranian forces into the Syrian conflict.”

“The role of our personnel should be limited to training, preparing and equipping the Syrians to fight in their areas, ” he added.

Related reading: IRGC’s Plan to Destroy Israel

Eradicating Israel

Falaki said that the main objective behind the formation of the first nucleus of the ‘Shiite Liberation Army’ is to “eradicate Israel after 23 years, especially that these battalions are now on Israeli borders.”

The general, who is also an Iranian-Iraqi war veteran, also criticized Tehran for its failure to recruit Afghans and not creating a strong group with a tough leader for them on the lines of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement or militia group and its head Hassan Nasrallah.

“We’ve been considering Afghan refugees as dangerous offenders and mercenaries for the past 30 years,” he said. “We did not work on having Afghan groups and leaders like we did with the Shiites of Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain.”

The UN says there are about 950,000 registered Afghan citizens living in Iran but Tehran puts the total number at around 3 million.

However, Falaki praised sacrifices by the ‘Fatemiyon’ Afghan militias in Syria. He said that they only receive $100 for volunteering to fight there, dismissing reports that they expected to receive large sums of money.

He said the Afghan militias in Syria are “sacrificing their lives for nothing” especially that their government in Kabul has decided to arrest those who fought in Syria, with up to 18 years of jail sentence.

IRGC is still having “trouble when dealing with the Afghans in a friendly and brotherly way, because through Iranian eyes they are seen as inferior.”

He said Pakistanis have their ‘Zeynabioun’ militia group, Iraqis have their ‘Heydarioun’ while the Lebanese have Hezbollah.

Falaki also said there is another division for the Hezbollah, grouping both Iraqi and Syrian militias.

All of these militia groups are fighting under IRGC’s command, all wearing the “same uniform” under the same flag.

The article was first published in the Arabic-language website for Al Arabiya News Channel

*****

SoufanGroup: In mid-August, the U.S. Department of Defense released the summary of its annual report on Iran’s military strategy and capabilities. This year’s report was the first to account for the effects of the July 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran. Though the summary is brief, it revealed a considerable amount about the strategic threat that Iran continues to pose to the U.S. and its allies, in spite of the nuclear deal.  

The clearest conclusion the report reaches is that Iran is developing a wide variety of missiles—as well as an offensive cyber warfare capability—in order to project power far beyond its borders. Iran is developing a large arsenal of short-range missiles, both ballistic and cruise, to be able to deny an adversary control of the waters around Iran. When combined with what the report describes as Iran’s acquisition of naval attack craft—‘small but capable’ submarines, a large arsenal of ‘advanced naval mines,’ and armed unmanned aerial vehicles—Iran is positioned to threaten military and commercial shipping in the vital Strait of Hormuz. About one-third of all seaborne traded oil flows through the Strait daily. Iran’s capabilities call into question longstanding assertions by U.S. and allied naval commanders that Iran does not possess the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz for prolonged periods. The assessment has direct relevance; in mid-August, the IRGC reiterated its threat to close the waterway if Iran were attacked.  

Iran’s long-range missiles could place a wide array of U.S. and allied targets within striking distance. Iran’s existing ballistic missile arsenal can already reach all of Israel, as well as U.S. bases in Turkey and southeastern Europe. The Pentagon report mentions Iran’s intent to conduct a launch of its Simorgh space vehicle later in 2016—a vehicle that could be capable of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) ranges (3,000 miles or more) ‘if configured as a ballistic missile.’ An Iranian ICBM would immediately put all of Europe, and perhaps even the U.S. mainland, within Iran’s reach. Still, given Iran’s shortfalls in missile accuracy, these missiles would mainly serve to terrorize civilian populations in targeted countries rather than destroy hardened military targets.         

What is particularly noteworthy about Iran’s advances is that the gains have come primarily from within country. Iran’s missile programs began in the 1980s, largely with technology and skills provided by Russia, China, and North Korea. Missile assistance to Iran has been precluded by international sanctions since 2006, although there continue to be reports of Iran-North Korea missile cooperation in violation of these restrictions. Conventional arms sales and military training for Iran were banned in 2010, and remain so until 2020 under U.N. Resolution 2231, which implemented the Iran nuclear deal.  While Iran-Russia military cooperation in Syria has deepened and the countries have discussed new arms sales to Iran, Russia has not shown any inclination to violate the resolution outright. The resolution does not prohibit joint military activities such as Russia’s use of Iran’s airbases for bomber strikes or Russia-Iran ground cooperation in Syria. 

The Pentagon report also addresses a key question that has clouded the nuclear deal since its inception—how Iran’s regional strategy and activities might change as a consequence of the deal. The report assesses that ‘Iran’s covert activities also are continuing unabated. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Qods Force (IRGC-QF) remains a key tool of Iran’s foreign policy and power projection, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen.’ This assessment contradicts more hopeful assessments that the nuclear deal would moderate Iran’s behavior and suggests that Iran is harnessing its expanding weapons arsenal in efforts to increase its regional influence. Iran’s weapons supplies to its regional allies and proxies have helped keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power; empowered Zaydi Shi’a Houthi rebels in Yemen against a Saudi-led coalition; supported 80,000 Shi’a militia fighters in Iraq; and enabled radical underground Shi’a factions in Bahrain to conduct successful improvised explosive device attacks on security forces. All of these activities have put military and political pressure on Iran’s foremost regional rival, Saudi Arabia, which is undertaking activities opposed to those of Iran in virtually all of these theaters. Iran has been known to provide advanced weaponry to its key proxy, Lebanese Hizballah, in the past. The transfer of even modest amounts of its most sophisticated missiles to Hizballah will likely ensure that any new Israel-Hizballah war could escalate into a regional, and potentially even global, conflagration.

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