Islamists in Government Roles There and Here

Why Are Londoners Uncomfortable with a Muslim Mayor?

by Raheem Kassam

One-third of Londoners are said to be “uncomfortable” with the idea of a Muslim mayor, according to a new YouGov poll for LBC radio. What seems to have especially excited some is the revelation that 73 percent of UK Independence Party (UKIP) voters in London feel the same way. But can they really be blamed?

The reason some of the people are “uncomfortable” is undoubtedly going to be a level of xenophobia. But the majority, I believe, are subconsciously internalising the public performances of Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom and are rightly concerned by them.

Critics might point to the fact that UKIPers, across the board according to the poll, are less “progressive,” leading the field in discomfort for the idea of a female mayor (12 percent), a homosexual mayor (26 percent) and an ethnic minority mayor (41 percent). Well, yes, UKIP is a party of traditionalists and conservatives first and libertarians second. I don’t think anyone should try to hide from that or try to explain it away. But the discomfort about a Muslim mayor (73 percent) requires some deeper thought.

Sayeeda Hussain Warsi (left) resigned from Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet, calling his Israel policy “morally indefensible.” Former Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman (center) fell due to corruption charges. MEP Amjad Bashir (right) was kicked out of UKIP for “grave” financial irregularities.

Look at the shining examples we have of high profile Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom: Baroness Warsi, former Mayor Lutfur Rahman, ex-UKIPer Amjad Bashir, and of course one of the people tipped to challenge for the Labour candidacy, Labour MP Sadiq Khan.

“But wait! What about Syed Kamall? Sajid Javid? Khalid Mahmood? Rehman Chishti?” I hear you ask.

Quite. But what about Humza Yousaf, Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, and Yasmin Qureshi?

By and large, Muslim politicians in the UK tend to be far more … divisive, to be polite. There are several camps. Some, like Lutfur Rahman and Baroness Warsi, have Islamist links. Some have questionable backgrounds, such as the defence of Louis Farrakhan or Guantanamo Bay detainees (Sadiq Khan), and one let UKIP down in a big way, while being investigated for improper behaviour (Amjad Bashir).

Humza Yousaf (left), a member of the Scottish parliament, was previously media spokesman for a radical Islamist charity. Labour MPs Shabana Mahmood (center) and Yasmin Qureshi (right) are more concerned with boycotting Israel than serving their constituents.

Others engage in sectarian politics at a whim. George Galloway, though he doesn’t claim to be a Muslim (others claim he converted), divided and conquered in Bradford West and was, as a result, turfed out. Politicians like Ali, Mahmood, and Qureshi are united by their demonisation of Israel and tolerance of extremism.

And Tory-elected officials like Kamall, Javid, and Chishti are precisely why Conservative voters in London are more comfortable (39 percent against) with a Muslim mayor. One of their leading candidates is a practicing Muslim – they’d have to be.

Perhaps the argument can be made that UKIP voters are not xenophobic or anti-Muslim – although one might argue they are more likely to be anti-Islam, and that’s a discussion for another time – but rather that they have simply been paying attention.

When you couple the backgrounds of a lot of leading Muslim politicians in Britain with the more objective, black-and-white worldview that UKIP voters have, they are naturally predetermined to be more sceptical.

You might argue that UKIP voters shouldn’t see things in such a clear-cut way and shouldn’t attribute the failings of one Muslim politician to others. There are evident trends, similarities, and commonalities, but that contention would be a decent compromise approach.

Unfortunately, while there are a handful of decent Muslim politicians in Britain, I can’t help but think that the highest-profile ones have let people with my name and background down. It’s no different than UKIPers being sceptical of a Conservative mayor, or Labour being sceptical of a Tory one.

Maybe I should run for London mayor on a UKIP ticket? Or maybe not.

***

In America:

Muslims in the U.S. military

Muslim police officers

White House has approved Muslims serving in government

Government internships for Muslims on Capitol Hill

Exactly how is there a reconciliation with taking an oath?

ISIS ‘End of the World’ Manifesto Investigation

ISIS ‘Mein Kampf’ Blames Israel for Global Terrorism

Experts pouring over secret Islamic State dossier found in Pakistan’s tribal badlands; Arutz Sheva gains an exclusive look.
First Publish: 8/16/2015, 8:52 PM

 

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Reuters

Intelligence officials are comparing a newly discovered secret Islamic State document to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” as it blames Israel for the rise of the Islamic State and crowns U.S. President Barack Obama as the “Mule of the Jews.”

Found in Pakistan’s remote tribal region by American Media Institute (AMI), the 32-page Urdu language document promotes an “end of the world” battle as a final solution. It argues that the Islamic leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims, under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”

“It reads like the caliphate’s own Mein Kampf,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who reviewed the document. “While the world is watching videos of beheadings and crucifixions in Iraq and Syria the Islamic State is moving into North Africa the Middle East, and now we see it has a strategy in South Asia. It’s a magician’s trick, watch this hand and you’ll never see what the other is doing.”

Retired U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn and other U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the authenticity of the document based on its unique markings, specific language used to describe leaders and the writing style and religious wording that matched other Islamic State records.

Flynn said the undated document, “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” is a campaign plan that “lays out their intent, their goals and objectives, a red flag to which we must pay attention.”

The document serves as a Nazi-like recruiting pitch that attempts to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror.  It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans and urges al-Qaeda to join Islamic State.

Its tone is direct: “Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah. This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal center for human rights who heads Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project, compares the Islamic State threats in the document to the rise of Nazism pre-World War II.

The brutal killing of a teacher and three children at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012 by an Algerian Islamist was a major signal to the Jewish community that Europe was no longer safe and that not enough was being done to curtail the rise of anti-semitism, he said.

“It’s important to remember what our founder, Wiesenthal said, ‘it often starts with the Jews but it never ends with the Jews,” Cooper said. “As a matter fact [Islamic State] did not create anti-semitism but they are taking advantage of it, and they are building on it.”

The document advocates creating a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan to trigger a war in India and provoke an Armageddon-like confrontation with the United States. It also details Islamic State’s plot to attack U.S. soldiers as they withdraw from Afghanistan and target America diplomats and Pakistani officials and blames the rise of jihadi organizations on the establishment of Israel.

“No sooner had the British government relinquished control of Israel, Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jews, declared the independence of the State of Israel, triggering a global migration of Jews to the Jewish State, and launching the systematic persecution of Palestinian Muslims who had to abandon their homes and migrate,” the document states.

The document discloses the history of Islamic State dating back to the early 1990s and explains why in 2011 its leader, Abu Bakr al- Bagdhadi, unleashed car bombs to avenge Osama bin Laden’s death, and boasts about the suicide rates of American soldiers.

“Urban centers across Iraq exploded with car bombs and IED’s. The losses inflicted upon Americans, apostates, and heretics were unprecedented, as were the suicide rates amongst U.S soldiers,” the document states. “This state of affairs forced Mule of the Jews, U.S President Obama to announce an exit plan.”

The battle plan to “end the world” is described in six phases (three of which have already passed) – ripping pages from al-Qaeda’s original plans to defeat the west, in a graphic illustration of how ISIS sees itself as the true heirs to Osama Bin Laden’s legacy.

  • Phase 1 “Awakening” 2000-2003: Islamic State calls for “a major operation against the U.S. .. to provoke a crusade against Islam.”
  • Phase 2 “Shock and Awe” 2004 – 2006: Islamic State will lure U.S. into multiple theatres of war, including cyber-attacks and establish charities across the Muslim and Arab world to support terrorism.
  • Phase 3 “Self-reliance” 2007-2010: Islamic State will create “interference” with Iraq’s neighboring states with particular focus on Syria.
  • Phase 4 “Reaping/extortion/receiving” 2010-2013: Islamic State will attack “U.S and Western interests” to destroy their economy and replace the dollar with silver and gold and expose Muslim governments’ relations with Israel and the U.S.
  • Phase 5 Declaring the Caliphate 2013-2016: Not much details offered here. The document just says, “The Caliphate According to The Prophet.
  • Phase 6, Open Warfare 2017-2020:  Islamic State predicts faith will clash with non-believers and “Allah will grant victory to the believers after which peace will reign on earth.”

The document urges followers of al-Qaeda and the Taliban to join the Islamic State in overthrowing Arab governments who have relations with the U.S. and Israel, unlike al-Qaeda, which believed it was “important to weaken the U.S before launching an armed revolt in Arab states and establishing a caliphate.”

In response to the document, a senior ranking Israeli official said that in the Middle East the world faces two threats – from Islamic State and from Iran. “We need not strengthen one at the expense of the other. We need to weaken both and prevent the aggression and arming of both,” he warned.

Alistair Baskey, deputy spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council said Islamic State is being monitored “closely to see whether their emergence will have a meaningful impact on the threat environment in the region.”

The document builds on evidence that Islamic State is expanding into the region where the September 11 attacks were born. A united Taliban, backed by the hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenue now enjoyed by Islamic State, would be a “game-changer,” officials said.

The document warns that “preparations” for an attack in India are underway and predicts that an attack will provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with America: “Even if the U.S tries to attack with all its allies, which undoubtedly it will, the (entire global Muslim community) will be united, resulting in the final battle.”

A war in India would magnify Islamic State stature and threaten the stability of the region, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution who served more than 30 years in the CIA. “Attacking in India is the Holy Grail of South Asian jihadists.”

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry denied the presence of Islamic State in the region, calling it only “a potential threat.”

Unlike al-Qaida, whose focus was the United States and other western nations, the document said Islamic State leaders believe that’s the wrong strategic goal. “Instead of wasting energy in a direct confrontation with the U.S., we should focus on an armed uprising in the Arab world for the establishment of the caliphate,” the document said.

The failure to target the radical Islamic ideas has given the group breathing room to spread throughout the world much like Hitler did.

“We did a lousy job predicting what Hitler was going to do in the 1920s, 1930s – honestly, we blew it,” Cooper said. “It’s hard to take seriously or believe that such hatred was real or would be possible. They made jokes about Jews, degraded Jews but nobody believed that they would be capable of what they were saying.  So now, when groups, like [Islamic State] come along and say they are going to do A B and C, you have to take them for their word.”

***

This is not the first revelation when it comes to Islamic State in Pakistan, such that who in the White House, the National Security Council or at the United Nations is really taking heed from 2014?

NBC: QUETTA, Pakistan — ISIS has created a 10-man “strategic planning wing” with a master plan on how to wage war against the Pakistani military, and is trying to join forces with local militants, according to a government memo obtained by NBC News.

What is a caliphate?

“They are now planning to inflict casualties to Pakistan Army outfits who are taking part in operation Zarb-e-Azb,” says the alert, referring to the military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and other militants that was launched in June in a tribal region near the Afghan border.

Labeled “secret,” the memo was sent by the government of Balochistan, a southwestern province that borders Afghanistan, to authorities and intelligence officials across Pakistan last week. Akber Durrani, the province’s home secretary, called it “routine” and said Sunni militant group and its sympathizers do not have a stronghold there.

But the document suggests that ISIS has Pakistan in its cross-hairs, warning that the group aims to stir up sectarian unrest by dispatching the local militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on offensives against Pakistan’s minority Shiite Muslim community, further destabilizing a country already battling Taliban and al Qaeda elements. Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims. Mistrust has existed between Shiites and Sunnis for around 1,400 years.

Secret letter sent by the government of Balochistan regarding ISIS activity in Pakistan.
Secret letter sent by the government of Balochistan regarding ISIS activity in Pakistan. NBC News

ISIS has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq. It claims to have recruited 10,000 to 12,000 followers in tribal areas on the Afghan border, including in Hangu, which is known for hostility between Shiites and Sunnis, the memo says.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has claimed responsibility for violence against Shiites, and Sipa-e Muhammed, which has struck against Sunnis, were banned after 9/11.

Just days ago, the chief minister of Balochistan, Dr. Malik Baloch, told journalists he had no information about the presence of ISIS in the province. “However, there are fundamentalists whose approach is similar to that of ISIS,” he said.

The memo recommended “strict monitoring” of militants and “extreme vigilance” to ward off any attacks.

There have been other signs of ISIS flexing its muscles in the region. In late September, a pamphlet apparently made by the self-proclaimed caliphate was distributed among Afghan refugees in Pakistan exhorting them to pledge allegiance and lashing out against “America and the rest of the infidels.”In late September, ISIS-aligned militants launched a brutal offensive in Afghanistan alongside Taliban fighters that has left more than 100 people dead. Fifteen family members of local police officers were beheaded and at least 60 homes were set ablaze, officials said.

International Red Cross is a Political Wing for Foreign Policy

Red Crescent too….

Hamas Charter: Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim Brothers
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.

Article Twenty-Eight
The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It does not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires. It relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations. All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion.
The Arab states surrounding Israel are required to open their borders to the Jihad fighters, the sons of the Arab and Islamic peoples, to enable them to play their role and to join their efforts to those of their brothers among the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The other Arab and Islamic states are required, at the very least, to facilitate the movement of the Jihad fighters from and to them. We cannot fail to remind every Muslim that when the Jews occupied Holy Jerusalem in 1967 and stood at the doorstep of the Blessed Aqsa Mosque, they shouted with joy: “Muhammad is dead, he left daughters behind.” Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. “Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.” Read all 36 Hamas Charter Articles here.

Cant make this up! Notice how blame always included Israel.

Red Cross Offers Workshops in International Law to Hamas

NYT: GAZA CITY — A new training regimen for fighters in Hamas’s armed wing employs slide presentations and a whiteboard rather than Kalashnikov rifles and grenades. The young men wear polo shirts instead of fatigues and black masks. They do not chant anti-Israel slogans, but discuss how the Geneva Conventions governing armed conflict dovetail with Islamic principles.

The three-day workshop, conducted last month by the International Committee of the Red Cross, followed numerous human-rights reports accusing both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, of war crimes in their devastating battle last summer, and came as the International Criminal Court prosecutor conducts a preliminary inquiry into that conflict.

It was clear during the opening session that the Red Cross would face a steep climb to convince militant Islamists that international law should govern their resistance against Israel.

“The prophet used to give orders to his army that you don’t kill any child, don’t cut any tree,” one fighter said promisingly, lending Quranic support to the principle of distinguishing between soldiers and civilians. “As long as he is not fighting me, I should not kill him.”

But a colleague soon countered, “The prophet is different than today,” and the conversation quickly shifted from Hamas’s own questionable methods to the enemy.

“They killed us, they killed our babies,” one militant insisted, speaking of the Israeli military. Of the humanitarian principles underpinning both Islam and international law, he added, “Sometimes we need to overlook these things, because the situation is different.”

The Red Cross developed its program in conjunction with Islamic scholars several years ago, but ramped it up after last summer’s deadly battle. So far this year, it has conducted six sessions for a total of 210 fighters from Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades and two other Gaza armed groups. Another workshop is scheduled for this week.

 Skeptics may question the utility of teaching humanitarian law to a guerrilla force that the United States and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization. The Qassam Brigades fired thousands of rockets and mortars toward Israeli cities last summer; its weapons caches have been found in civilian homes and schools across Gaza, and Israel alleges that it uses Palestinian residents as human shields, purposely risking their lives to mobilize international ire against Israel.

But Red Cross leaders say they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike, if only because they now consider their international image a critical component of their struggle.

Mamadou Sow, who heads Red Cross operations in Gaza, said that in April he presented a critique of Hamas’s conduct during the 2014 hostilities to its top political and military leaders, and that they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.” He said they also “challenged us to keep in mind the topology of the Gaza Strip,” one of the most densely populated patches on the planet.

“For the first time,” said Jacques de Maio, director of the Red Cross delegation in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “Hamas is actually, in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law.”

He added, “Whether this will translate into something concrete, time will tell.”

Besides participating in the workshops, Hamas has altered its propaganda in the aftermath of the war. New talking points stress that tunnel attacks last summer targeted military positions, not civilian communities, and argue — dubiously — that rockets fly toward civilian areas because the Gaza groups lack guiding technology.

Still, Hamas leaders routinely praise attacks on Israelis, and there are widespread reports that Qassam is rebuilding tunnels to infiltrate Israeli territory.

Last week, in announcing the arrest of a Qassam fighter in July, Israel’s security service said that he had told interrogators “the organization’s fighters endanger many civilians by storing explosives in their homes, on the instructions of Hamas commanders.”

Mr. de Maio of the Red Cross acknowledged that “a big ethical, fundamental question would be, ‘Are we now shaking hands with the devil?’ ” But he said his group’s work with rogue rulers and rebels around the world had altered their modi operandi. He cited a 2011 episode in Afghanistan in which operatives painted a vehicle like an ambulance. “We engaged with the Taliban and it was a long process,” he said. Eventually commanders issued an order saying it was a mistake that should not be repeated, “and it didn’t happen again.”

The Red Cross and the Qassam Brigades let reporters from The New York Times observe the first day of the workshop in July, on the condition that neither the trainers nor the participants be named, and that no photographs be taken. Role-playing and case studies — one exercise involved an armed group firing on an invading tank from the garden of a civilian home, near a hospital — were also off limits.

Most of the men were in their 20s and wore trim beards. Their leader opened by saying, “All what we’re going to hear we can find in our religion,” urging them “to take it very seriously” and reminding them to silence their cellphones.

The seminar unfolded in a room of Al Salam Restaurant, overlooking the beachfront where four young cousins were killed by Israeli missiles in 2014, a seminal episode that prompted one of the loudest international outcries of the war. Israeli military investigators later classified the attack as a tragic mistake.

During five hours of conversation, the fighters did not reflect on their own questionable activities or debate any situations they faced regarding risk to civilians while operating in Gaza’s urban landscape. Instead, they repeatedly turned the focus to Israel.

“You are dealing with an enemy that there’s not any difference between soldier and civilian,” insisted one fighter in a plaid shirt.

“Israelis violated everything,” another declared. “You say this also to the Jews?”

Yes, the Red Cross officials said, they conduct similar sessions with the Israeli military. This prompted more outrage. “You equalize the victim and the criminal,” one fighter said accusingly. “All of you, until now, you did not denounce the crimes of the Zionists.”

Others challenged Red Cross war efforts — providing water to refugee camps, repairing downed power lines, restoring cellular service, arranging with Israel to evacuate the wounded from bombarded areas.

“What was your role when the massacre in Rafah happened?” one fighter wanted to know, referring to Black Friday, when Qassam fighters took the remains of a slain Israeli soldier after a tunnel battle, prompting an Israeli assault that killed as many as 200 civilians. “We were besieged inside the hospital — why didn’t the I.C.R.C. help us?”

The trainer allowed, “The whole environment was very complicated, we couldn’t deal with everything and every place — you can’t have a war without victims.”

The Qassam coordinator, who gave only his nom de guerre, Abu Mahmoud, refused to let participants be interviewed about their experience or to engage in any substantive discussion of the group’s methods. “We did not commit war crimes as much as the Israelis did,” he said, adding that “civilian casualties happen because we are not an organized army.”

As for the International Criminal Court inquiry into both sides, he said with a shrug: “It will not affect us. We are, eventually, victims and they are occupiers, so there is no comparison.”

A 23-year-old Qassam member who participated in a similar workshop in May 2014, was permitted to speak only with Abu Mahmoud monitoring. He said that he had “signed a paper saying I should not kill civilians” upon joining Qassam four years ago, and that last summer, “the rules and teachings of this training made me fight within limits.”

Pressed for examples, the fighter recalled one instance in which “some of my colleagues wanted to have a military task inside a school, but we prevented this from happening.”

“We explained the consequences of such actions,” he said. “What will happen in the I.C.C. against us, and the international community. We don’t want to have a weakness point, and that the occupation will use it against us.”

Germany’s Long History with Iran, Surfaced with Jimmy Carter

If you saw the movie Argo, well it appears very little of it was either true or purposely was designed to include Germany’s hidden relationship with Iran. Sheesh…things are for sure coming into play and full understanding given the recent Iran nuclear deal.

Iranian Hostage Crisis: West Germany’s Secret Role in Ending the Drama

By Klaus Wiegrefe

The day after the last day of his presidency, Jimmy Carter flew to Frankfurt to greet 52 American diplomats who had been held as hostages for about a year by radical students in United States Embassy in Tehran. Now they were being attended to in a US Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt, and Carter wanted to express his sympathy.

On Jan. 21, 1981, the ex-president had warm, but mysterious, words for his German hosts. At the time, Helmut Schmidt, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, of the liberal FDP, were leading West Germany in the former capital city of Bonn. The Germans, Carter said, “helped us in a way I can never reveal publicly to the world.”

The race to apportion credit began only moments after the words about Germany’s mysterious role had been uttered. Chancellor Schmidt allowed himself to be celebrated by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which wrote that “Bonn appears to have played a decisive role.” Foreign Minister Genscher was lauded by the tabloid Bild, which claimed the “release had been negotiated at night at Genscher’s.” And Middle East negotiator Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski was praised in the daily Die Welt.

The occupation of the US Embassy and the 444-day hostage situation remains one of the most dramatic events of the post-World War II era. It represented the Western world’s first encounter with the radical Shiite movement of Ayatollah Khomeini, which was violating the rules of international law. A mob could be seen burning American flags on the embassy property, and for a time Iran and the US appeared to be on the verge of war. In the end, however, everyone claimed to have helped them to reach a peaceful solution.

The details of the German contribution, however, remained unclear. Now historian Frank Bösch, the director of the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam and SPIEGEL have conducted research in German archives and spoken with period witnesses. This has revealed that the West German government at the time had a “smooth intermediary role,” as Bösch puts it. And one of the key figures, it turns out, is barely known: Gerhard Ritzel, the German ambassador in Tehran.

Witnesses from the time describe the small, portly native of the Odenwald region in central Germany, who died in 2000, as a very sly man. He’s also one whose career is rich in anecdotes. As a young diplomat in the 1950s, he pretended to trip at a reception in Bombay (now Mumbai) so that he could fall on top of a banquet table covered with colored rice kernels in the shape of a swastika. In India, the swastika is a symbol of luck and the thoughtless host had served it up in honor of his German guests. Before a meeting with Soviet diplomats, Ritzel ate sardines and drank his colleagues under the table.

Contact with the Opposition

When Ritzel took his post in Tehran in 1977, the shah, who had a good relationship with Bonn, was still in power. Iran was Germany’s largest source of oil and, in exchange, was pressing Schmidt and Genscher for the planned export of submarines, frigates and nuclear power plants.

At the time, Ritzel was also trying to establish contact with the fundamentalist Iranian opposition. They were adventurous meetings, which he told everyone about afterwards. Before the meetings, a car would pick him up in front of a hotel, and the driver would drop him off somewhere in Tehran with a note pressed into his hand. On it stood: “Wait here, a blue pick-up will come by.” He would then changed cars one more time and ultimately had to cross various courtyards and climb into an upper floor whose wall had been punctured by a mortar. There he met his interlocutors, a group that would soon be taking over power in Iran.

In January 1979, after millions of people demonstrated against him, the shah left Iran. A few weeks later, Khomeini returned from his Parisian exile and announced the beginning of an Islamic Republic.

Ritzel quickly came to terms with the regime change. The West feared that Iran could slip into the Soviet sphere of influence. Khomeini seemed to be the lesser evil — and the new regime didn’t appear to have much of a future. “The ayatollahs can’t govern the country in the long run,” Chancellor Schmidt prophesized in March 1979. He conveyed to Khomeini that Iran would remain an “important external trading partner, regardless of its form of government.”

Ritzel, however, seems to have truly liked Khomeini. The Shiite leader, he later claimed, was a “humanitarian.” He also argued that the West should be “thankful if he is around for many more years.”

Ritzel as Intermediary

The ambassador purposefully established contact with people in the “Imam’s” milieu. He profited from the fact that Khomeini was partly surrounded by men who had lived in the West Germany, including Sadeq Tabatabaei, who had completed his doctorate at the Ruhr University in Bochum. His sister had married one of the ayatollah’s sons.

Tabatabaei became a senior government official in Tehran and Ritzel’s main interlocutor. After the beginning of the hostage-taking on Nov. 4, 1979, he also became the Germany’s main source of hope in the quickly escalating crisis. Khomeini put his support behind the students, describing the United States as “the great Satan,” while President Carter imposed strict sanctions, demanding that his allies do the same and ordering the preparations for a military attack.

Ritzel was one of the few Western diplomats officials in Tehran would still listen to. In order to safeguard German export interests, the government in Bonn wanted a quick end to the crisis. Ritzel obtained permission for a delegation from the International Red Cross to visit the hostages. He had newspapers brought to the imprisoned Americans, including a January 1979 issue of DER SPIEGEL featuring Khomeini on the cover at the top of the stack. When the revolutionary leader wanted to convince the shah to face the “complaints of the Iranian people,” the relevant letter was given to Ritzel. The shah, however, refused to accept it.

The situation in Tehran was confusing for the Americans, because self-described middlemen were constantly popping up. The Americans first approached Ritzel in May 1980. Together with Genscher, he flew to Vienna to meet with then US Secretary of State Edmund Muskie. There, Muskie and Ritzel had a one-on-one conversation, and when Tabatabaei found out about it, the Iranian declared that he could be of service to the German ambassador.

At the request of the Americans, the German Foreign Ministry passed Ritzel’s situation reports on to the US. The Iranians were worried that a retaliatory military attack would take place if the hostages were released. They also wanted back the deposits of $12 million that Carter had had frozen in US banks and access to the shah’s fortune, which they believed to be in the US. On May 27, the US Embassy in Bonn communicated that Ritzel should tell the Iranians that Carter would “seriously consider” a declaration to this effect.

Ritzel’s Savvy Ploy

In order to get the ayatollahs to compromise, the resourceful Ritzel undertook a journey to the spiritual leader of the holy city of Mashhad. He politely asked for the terms “truth,” “justice” and “hospitality” to be interpreted for him from an Islamic perspective.

After three days of religious-spiritual debate, the ayatollah asked the visitor why he had really come to visit. Ritzel’s honest answer: He was looking for arguments for the release of the hostages. “I will think about this,” answered the cleric. Soon after, a messenger arrived at Ritzel’s, with a document from the cleric for Khomeini that indirectly frowned upon the hostage-taking. Years later, Genscher raved about how the diplomat had created a “basis for the trust” on the part of the Iranians in the German government.

On Sept. 9, Tabatabaei offered to meet with a US delegation in West Germany. Under Khomeini’s instruction, he asked that Germany keep the minutes for the meeting, and that Genscher “be involved” in the discussions for as long as possible.

One week later, the secret negotiations between Tabatabaei and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher began in the guest house of the German Foreign Ministry in Bonn under Genscher’s leadership. Christopher was surprised when he met Tabatabaei: A good-looking man in his mid-thirties wearing flannel pants and a sporty tweed blazer. He hadn’t thought that a representative of the Khomeini regime could look like that.

His demands, however, posed problems for the US emissaries. Ultimately, Washington couldn’t take control over the now-dead shah’s funds. American creditors were also demanding compensation for confiscated Iranian assets.

But Christopher did offer a guarantee that the US would not attack and held out the prospect that approximately $6 billion in gold and other assets would be released. The gold was to be handed over with the help of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank. Christopher also agreed to “help overcome banking secrecy” to access the shah’s fortune. Genscher added that this seemed “exceptionally far-reaching and very substantial,” and that his government could not offer anything on that scale. Even years later, Christopher still seemed convinced that without the help of the foreign minister, the discussions would have fallen apart at this point.

Carter noted in his diary that, for the first time, he was certain that he was “in direct contact” with Khomeini.

An agreement seemed to be close. Over the following weeks, Ritzel met with Tabatabaei almost every day. For reasons of secrecy, the latter was now referred to as “the traveler” in German documents.

Sudden Twist

In early October, the Americans deposited drafts for legislative decrees — with which Carter wanted to resolve the disputed points — in the US Embassy in Bonn. Genscher helped where he could. He offered to Tabatabaei that Germany would take on the “role of guarantor when it comes to Americans’ adherence of their obligations.” He agreed to “positively influence public opinion about Iran” and suggested meetings in Berchtesgaden, Germany, or Saudi Arabia.

Then, suddenly, the Iranian side froze up again, for reasons that have been widely speculated. The American election was set to take place on Nov. 4 — did Khomeini want to prevent Carter from getting a boost in the election if the hostage drama came to an end? Or had another group gotten the upper hand in the power struggle in Tehran?

In any case, Tabatabaei delivered alarming news on Nov. 9. He said he was in danger of being arrested and that Ritzel needed to make sure that all documents testifying to Tabatabaei’s role were destroyed.

That fear ended up being exaggerated: Tabatabaei, who died earlier this year, was later named special envoy. But when the Iranians took up negotiations with the United States again in November, they bypassed him and his German connection. Algeria ended up helping release the Iranian billions and on Jan. 20, 1981, the hostages were flown out of the country. US President Carter’s praise for the Germans, however, endured. Without their prior mediation, Historian Bösch says, the agreement wouldn’t have worked out. Even the suggestion to include Algeria came from Bonn. According to the records, it came from Helmut Schmidt.

U.S. Germany to Remove Missile Defense Systems from Turkey

WTH??? Anyone who believes the reasons for these decisions needs to think again.
I personally will throw in my reason, it is part of the Iran Deal where under the P5+1, John Kerry and Wendy Sherman along with The White House gave up yet another major item….missile defense. Iran and the IRGC must be delighted.
Berlin:  Germany on Saturday said it would withdraw its two Patriot missile batteries from Turkey early next year, ending its role in a three-year NATO mission to help bolster the country’s air defences against threats from Syria’s civil war.

The German army, known as the Bundeswehr, said on its website that the mandate for the mission would run out on January 31, 2016, and would not be renewed.

Germany will also call back around 250 soldiers who are currently deployed in southeastern Turkey as part of the mission, the statement said.

“Along with our NATO partners, we have protected the Turkish people from missile attacks from Syria,” Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen was quoted as saying in the statement.

“We are ending this deployment in January 2016,” she said, adding that the main threat in the crisis-wracked region now came from the Islamic State group.

Turkey turned to its NATO allies for help over its troubled frontier after a mortar bomb fired from Syrian territory killed five Turkish civilians in the border town of Akcakale in 2012.

The United States, the Netherlands and Germany each sent Patriot missile batteries in response. Germany’s Patriot missile system is based in the Turkish town of Kahramanmaras, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Syrian border.

Originally used as an anti-aircraft missile, Patriots today are used to defend airspace by detecting and destroying incoming missiles. NATO deployed Patriot missiles in Turkey during the 1991 Gulf war and in 2003 during the Iraqi conflict.

FNC: The U.S. military is pulling its Patriot missiles from Turkey this fall, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced Sunday.

It is unclear if the decision to pull the missiles is in response to Turkey’s unannounced massive airstrike against a Kurdish separatist group in northern Iraq on July 24. The strike endangered U.S. Special Forces on the ground training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, angering U.S. military officials.

The U.S. military was taken completely by surprise by the Turkish airstrike, which involved 26 jets, military sources told Fox News.

Patriot missiles have been upgraded in recent years to shoot down ballistic missiles, in addition to boasting an ability to bring down enemy aircraft. The U.S. military has deployed these missiles along Turkey’s border with Syria.

When a Kurdish journalist asked the Army’s outgoing top officer, Gen. Raymond Odierno, about the incident over northern Iraq at his final press conference Wednesday, Odierno replied: “We’ve had conversations about this to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. It is influenced by Marxist ideology and has been responsible for recent attacks in Turkey, killing Turkish police and military personnel. A separate left-wing radical group was responsible for attacking the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul last week.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said in recent days that Turkey has a right to defend itself against the PKK.

A senior military source told Fox News that Turkey is worried about recent gains by Syrian Kurds, some affiliated with the PKK. But the group is seen as an effective ground force against ISIS, helping pinpoint ISIS targets for U.S. warplanes.

The Turks, however, worry Syrian Kurds will take over most of the 560-mile border it shares with Syria.

Currently, ISIS controls a 68-mile strip along the Turkey-Syria border, but Turkey does not want Kurdish fighters involved in the fight to push out ISIS from this portion of the border because it would enable the Kurds to control a large swath of land stretching from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Right now Syrian Kurds occupy both sides of the contested 68-mile border controlled by ISIS.

Of the 30 million Kurds living in the Middle East, 14 million reside in Turkey. They are one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without its own country.

Despite Turkey being listed among the 62-nation anti-ISIS coalition, it has yet to be named as a country striking ISIS in the coalition’s daily airstrike report.

A week ago, after months of negotiations, the U.S. Air Force moved six F-16 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey from their base in Italy and several KC-135 refueling planes. Airstrikes against ISIS in Syria soon followed.

The decision to allow manned U.S. military aircraft inside Turkey came days after an ISIS suicide bomber killed dozens of Turkish citizens.

Part of Turkey’s reluctance to do more against ISIS is because Turkey wants the U.S. military to take on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But that is not U.S. policy.

“We are not at war with the Assad regime,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said recently.

The animosity between Turkey and Syria goes back decades. In 1939, Turkey annexed its southern most province, Hatay, from Assad family land. Syria has never recognized the move and the two countries have been at odds ever since.

There was no immediate reply from the Pentagon or State Dept. when contacted by Fox News asking what prompted the decision to pull the U.S. missiles from Turkey.