Faceoff with Russia

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

Russia a threat to Baltic states after Ukraine conflict, warns Michael Fallon

Russian president Vladimir Putin could repeat the tactics used to destabilise Ukraine in Baltic members of the Nato alliance, the defence secretary has warned.

Michael Fallon said Nato must be ready for Russian aggression in “whatever form it takes” as he acknowledged tensions between the alliance and Moscow were “warming up”.

His comments came after prime minister David Cameron called on Europe to make clear to Russia that it faces economic and financial consequences for “many years to come” if it does not stop destabilising Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces pulled out from the strategically important town of Debaltseve after fierce fighting, which had continued despite the ceasefire agreed following international talks.

‘Nato’s resolve’

Lieutenant James Byrn, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, US Army, said: “We’re actually here training, obviously with our Polish and other Nato allies, just to demonstrate Nato’s resolve and to prepare our allies to be able to work with us and us work with them jointly, in order to succeed against any potential adversaries we may face.”

The exercises span various locations in Poland and the Baltic states, and will involve troops from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as Denmark, Finland, the United States, Germany, France and Portugal. Last year the exercise involved 4,500 troops from several nations.

*** Russian troops took control of Ukraine’s Crimea region. The Kremlin also is backing militant separatists fighting Kiev.

In response to all of this, Washington stepped up military exercises in Europe to help calm its friends and allies. The Marines have been heavily involved in this “European Reassurance Initiative,” now called Operation Atlantic Resolve. The Marines have been stockpiling tanks and other equipment in Scandinavia since last year, 2014.

The Marine Corps’ Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) and Marine Corps Prepositioning Program – Norway (MCPP-N) have been operationally invaluable in supporting our Nation’s interests across the world. These two unique programs provide the essential elements needed to support and execute crisis response, global reach, and forward presence. The Marine Corps’ Prepositioning Programs enable the rapid deployment of Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) and/or augment individual Marine units forward deployed. These forces are uniquely capable of strengthening alliances, securing strategic access, and defeating hostile adversaries. MPF and MCPP-N are keystones in the Marine Corps’ capability for setting the conditions for national security.

*** RIGA, Latvia – Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division offload an M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank from the transportation vessel “Liberty Promise” March 9 at the Riga Universal Terminal docks. More than 100 pieces of equipment, including the tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and assorted military cargo, will move on to sites in other areas of Latvia as well as Estonia and Lithuania in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

WASHINGTON — Russian SU-24 fighter-bombers buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer in international waters in the Black Sea late in May, just days after the Royal Air Force scrambled to intercept nuclear-capable Bear bombers near British airspace. These dangerous Russian games of chicken are now regular occurrences and come hard upon a Russian threat in March to aim nuclear missiles at Danish warships if Denmark joins NATO’s missile defense system.

As tensions between the West and Moscow sharpen over Ukraine, NATO countries have seen a dramatic spike in provocative actions that risk a harrowing accident or devastating miscalculation. A NATO-Russia military-to-military dialogue would reduce these risks — if President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin allow it.

NATO has ratcheted down its political dialogue with Moscow in protest over Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea and involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But the alliance should seek to engage Russia on a professional military level to minimize the danger of missteps or misunderstandings when their forces operate in close proximity or near each other’s territory. They would have good antecedents to draw on: a set of Cold War agreements whose titles clearly convey their purposes.

Obama Favoring Mullahs with Cash Infusions

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Mullahs of Iran have a new standard of confidence on the West lifting financial sanctions after the final deal on the nuclear program is completed. That date is slated for June 30, yet there are signs that date could slide. Who has given the Mullahs this concept of lifted sanctions? The White House.

TEHRAN — With a little more than two weeks before the deadline for a nuclear deal, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said Saturday that he expected relief from economic sanctions within a “couple of months” after an agreement with six world powers was signed.

Mr. Rouhani echoed statements by other Iranian leaders hinting that the deadline might not be met. “We will not waste time, but we should also not restrict ourselves to a specific deadline,” he said.

The pace of sanctions relief is a sticking point. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on any nuclear deal, has demanded that all sanctions be lifted on the day the agreement is signed. Mr. Rouhani’s timetable would allow the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to wait to lift their sanctions until the day the deal takes effect. The United States and its negotiating partners want the sanctions lifted piecemeal, as Iran meets its obligations under the deal.

Mr. Rouhani also said Iran wanted the deal to be approved by the United Nations Security Council, as a hedge against a nullification move by a future leader of a negotiating country.

Mullahs see Obama’s favors for their benefit:

The U.S. makes more concessions to Iran in a prelude to a nuclear deal.

The Obama Administration has long insisted that any nuclear deal will have no effect on U.S. determination to stop Iran’s regional ambitions or support for terrorism. As the political desire for a deal grows more urgent, however, this claim is proving to be hollow. Consider Hayya Bina, or “Let’s Go,” a Lebanese civil-society initiative founded in 2005 by publisher and producer Lokman Slim. Hayya Bina works largely with Lebanon’s Shiites on a variety of health, environmental and citizenship issues, largely as a way to offer a moderate alternative to Hezbollah’s efforts to dominate that community.

The group has received modest funding from the State Department and groups like the International Republican Institute. But as the Journal’s Jay Solomon reported last week, the State Department sent Hayya Bina a letter, dated April 10, which “requests that all activities intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shiite voice be ceased immediately and indefinitely.” To underscore the point, the letter added that Hayya Bina “must eliminate funding for any of the above referenced activity.” Why cut funding? The State Department said the programs weren’t meeting expectations. But it hardly went unnoticed in Lebanon that the cuts came barely a week after the U.S. and Iran struck their framework nuclear agreement in Switzerland April 2. Hezbollah is Iran’s Lebanese subsidiary and has made a practice of going after its domestic opponents, including Mr. Slim.

The withdrawal of U.S. funding “is another desperate PR attempt by the Obama Administration to appease the Iranian regime in order to reach a nuclear deal,” says Ahmad El Assaad, a prominent Lebanese Shiite opponent of Hezbollah. Then there is the curious case of Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman who in 2004 was cited personally by President George W. Bush as the “chief financial officer and money launderer” for the nuclear-proliferation network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. According to a 2004 investigation by Malaysian authorities, in 1994 or 1995 Mr. Khan asked Mr. Tahir to ship uranium centrifuges to Iran. “BSA Tahir organized the transshipment of the two containers from DUBAI to IRAN using a merchant ship owned by a company in Iran,” according to a Malaysian report. “BSA Tahir said the payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about USD $3 million was paid in UAE Dirham currency by the Iranian. The cash was brought in two briefcases.” The Bush Administration put Mr. Tahir on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of sanctioned persons. But the Treasury Department removed his name from that list on April 3, exactly one day after the framework agreement was announced. We asked a Treasury spokesperson why Mr. Tahir’s name was removed and if there was any connection to the Iran deal, and she said the “delisting was based on a determinaton by OFAC that circumstances no longer warrant the blocking of Tahir pursuant to Executive Order 13382.” That order, signed by President Bush in 2005, is “aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.” Mr. Tahir’s delisting strikes us as the equivalent of a backdated check intended to whitewash Iran’s illicit acquisition of centrifuges as having anything to do with a nuclear-weapons program. If the Administration wants to deny this, we suggest it explain the timing publicly. Then there is Iran’s ballistic missile program. Ballistic missiles have long been considered an integral part of Iran’s nuclear program as the most effective way to deliver a weapon, and the Administration pushed for U.N. sanctions on Iran’s missiles in 2010.

When it came time to negotiate, however, the Administration gave in to Tehran’s insistence that it would accept no missile limitations, thus separating the missile and nuclear programs. But now that a deal is near, the Administration is reversing itself again, claiming that for the purposes of sanctions Iran’s missile program is “nuclear-related,” meaning the U.S. is prepared to lift the missile sanctions. And there’s more. “Of the 24 Iranian banks currently under U.S. sanctions,” noted the Associated Press in a story last week, “only one—Bank Saderat, cited for terrorism links—is subject to clear non-nuclear sanctions.” In other words, once the “nuclear-related” sanctions go, so go all the rest, notwithstanding Administration promises. It may be too late to prevent President Obama from striking this deal. But as its contours become clearer, it looks increasingly like a betrayal of our friends, a whitewash of history—and a gift to a dictatorship.

Iran Supplies Cash and Weapons to Taliban

Posted on June 12, 2015June 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

No one can say for sure if the Taliban in designated as a terror group by the United States, other countries or by the United Nations. We do know that the Obama regime has declared that hostilities with the Taliban has terminated. Depending on the day and per the White House, the Taliban has a slippery designation. All the while peace talks continue with the Taliban so, deferring to both Pakistan and Afghanistan appears to be unsettled as the peace envoys are hosted in China.

Iran reportedly stepping up shipments of arms, cash to Taliban

The Iranian government reportedly has stepped up shipments of weapons and money to the Taliban in Afghanistan in recent months.

According to The Wall Street Journal, which cited Afghan and Western officials in its report, Iran’s motivations for stepping up support for the militants are to prevent ISIS from gaining a foothold in Afghanistan and providing a check on U.S. influence ahead of the planned withdrawal of most American troops by the end of 2016.

The report quotes a Taliban fighter as saying that the militants receive weapons from smugglers paid by Iran’s government who traffic the contraband through the remote border region where Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan meet. Among the weapons Taliban units allegedly receive are mortars, machine guns, rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades.

Iran has repeatedly denied providing financial or military aid to the Taliban. No Iranian officials immediately commented on the Journal’s report.

Republican critics of ongoing negotiations between Western powers and Tehran over the future of Iran’s nuclear program say that Iran’s support for the Taliban, Hezbollah, and other militant groups in the Middle East would only increase thanks to the possibility of relief from sanctions have throttled the country’s economy.

“This is further evidence of the administration’s continued willful disregard for the facts on the ground in light of Iranian aggression in the region,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the Journal.

According to the paper, a report compiled by the Pentagon in October of last year says that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps have been delivering weapons to the Taliban since at least 2007. The relationship between Tehran and the Taliban solidified in the summer of 2013 when a Taliban delegation was invited to participate in a conference on Islam.

For the past two years, Afghan officials and the Taliban fighter tell the Journal, Iran has been operating training camps for Taliban inside its territory. At least four of the camps are currently operating.

In at least one case, Iran is even supplying fighters for the Taliban by turning to Afghan immigrants who fled to Iran to escape Afghanistan’s ongoing turmoil. One of them, the Taliban fighter quoted in the report, says he was approached by an Iranian intelligence officer after being detained for working as an illegal laborer.

“At the beginning Iran was supporting [the] Taliban financially,” a senior Afghan official tells the Journal. “But now they are training and equipping them, too.”

***

While the United States continues to advance talks with Iran, Iran betrays all pledges and integrity at the negotiation table. John Kerry and the White House are fine with that. Iran has not given up a single position or any true information as the West gives up ground each day, to what end is still not clear.

U.S. and Western diplomats say they are willing to accept a nuclear deal with Iran that doesn’t require Tehran to immediately disclose alleged work on atomic weapons prior to 2003, when the program first came to light.

After a November 2013 interim accord, the Obama administration said a comprehensive solution “would include resolution of questions concerning the possible military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program.”

But officials told the Associated Press those questions won’t be answered by the June 30 deadline for a final deal, echoing an assessment by the U.N. nuclear agency’s top official earlier this week. Nevertheless, the officials said an accord remains possible. One senior Western official on Thursday described diplomats as “more likely to get a deal than not” over the next three weeks.

Western intelligence agencies say they don’t know the extent of Iran’s alleged work on warheads, delivery systems and detonators before 2003, or if Iran persisted in covert efforts. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation has been foiled for more than a decade by Iranian refusals to allow monitors to visit suspicious sites or interview individuals allegedly involved in secret weapons development.

Instead of resolving such questions this month, officials said the U.S. and its negotiating partners are working on a list of future commitments Iran must fulfill in an agreement setting decade-long curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.

The suspension of some sanctions would be tied to Iran finally answering all questions, giving world powers greater leverage, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the private discussions and demanded anonymity.

Mr. Weinstein is Dead, Hostages Could Have Been Saved

Posted on June 11, 2015June 11, 2015 by Denise Simon

Warren Weinstein is shown in a still from video released anonymously to reporters in Pakistan, Dec. 26, 2013.

Additional details and video of testimony is here.

Amerine received the Bronze Star with “V” for “Valor” device for his service in Afghanistan, where he led the Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha team that protected Hamid Karzai after 9/11 as the future Afghan president drummed up Pashtun tribal support to lead the country.
Now he joins critics of the failed U.S. hostage policy — currently under review by a former Army Delta Force commander at the National Counterterrorism Center — such as Diane and John Foley, whose son James Foley was a journalist beheaded by ISIS in Syria in a grisly video last August.
Amerine claims he led a highly-secret Pentagon team tasked with finding ways to recover Americans held captive in Pakistan’s tribal areas — until a “dysfunctional” bureaucracy bungled the mission on the verge of success.
“In early 2013, my office was asked to help get Sgt. Bergdahl home. We informally audited the recovery effort and determined that the reason the effort failed for four years was because our nation lacks an organization that can synchronize the efforts of all our government agencies to get our hostages home. We also realized that there were civilian hostages in Pakistan that nobody was trying to free so they were added to our mission,” Amerine said in his testimony.
“To get the hostages home, my team worked three lines of effort: Fix the coordination of the recovery, develop a viable trade and get the Taliban back to the negotiating table. My team was equipped to address the latter two of those tasks but fixing the government’s interagency process was beyond our capability,” Amerine said.

Bergdahl was freed in 2014 after five years of captivity in a highly controversial swap for five Taliban leaders held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl now faces charges by the Army for deserting his post in Afghanistan and could wind up in prison for the rest of his life, if convicted.
Amerine said that he and his colleagues had designed a plan to trade an Afghan drug lord, Bashir Noorzai, for the American and Canadian hostages. Noorzai was lured to the U.S., Amerine said, where he was arrested and eventually sentenced to two life sentences on drug charges.
Amerine said his group got as far as working with Noorzai’s tribe and bringing the Taliban to the table about a deal for the drug lord, but then the State Department intervened and killed that deal in favor of the one that eventually freed Bergdahl for five Taliban fighters. Noorzai remains in a high-security prison in California.

The veteran Special Forces field-grade officer told the Senate committee that he, Amerine, also fell under criminal investigation by the Army because the FBI was irked over his criticism of how the Bureau and other agencies mismanaged the hostage crisis and for sharing his frustrations with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He helped Hunter craft legislation to reform and streamline how government agencies should work jointly to handle hostage cases.
“The FBI formally complained to the Army that information I was sharing with Rep. Hunter was classified. It was not,” Amerine said in his testimony, noting that federal law protects military whistleblowers. “The FBI made serious allegations of misconduct to the Army in order to put me in my place and readily admitted that to a U.S. congressman.”
The Army deleted his retirement paperwork and cut off his pay temporarily recently, Amerine recounted.
“It’s utterly ridiculous in my mind,” Amerine said.
U.S. officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately offer comment today regarding Amerine and his claims.
Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said that while the service’s policy dictates that they cannot confirm the names of anyone who “may or may not be under investigation,” Smith noted that “both the law and Army policy would prohibit initiating an investigation based solely on a Soldier’s protected communications with Congress.”
A spokesperson for Hunter, in turn, said that the Army had confirmed to Hunter their investigation into Amerine for “potential unauthorized disclosures” to Congress.

“It’s a sad day for the Army, in its struggle to be truthful,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s spokesperson.
Amerine plans to tell the Committee today, “You, the Congress, were my last resort to recover the hostages. But now I am a whistleblower, a term that has become radioactive and derogatory.
“And let us not forget: Warren Weinstein is dead while Colin Rutherford, Josh Boyle, Caitlin Coleman, and her child remain prisoners. Who is fighting for them?”

WH Ignoring Iran’s $6Billion for Syria Iraq Terror

Posted on June 11, 2015June 11, 2015 by Denise Simon

John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Tony Blinken, Tom Donilon, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama are but part of the team that knew and ignored the billions for years that Iran used to support Bashir al Assad’s terror in Syria and later Iraq. The Obama regime has been gifting Iran money by lifting sanctions for the sake of humanitarian purposes in Iran when the money was not used for that but rather to support the Assad tyrannical power in Syria. Sanction waivers under the Obama regime regarding Iran have been common since the Iranian nuclear talks began.

Now the question is will this White House and State Department come clean and walk away from the P5+1 Iranian nuclear talks? This betrayal is historic.

Iran Spends Billions to Prop Up Assad

By Eli Lake
Iran is spending billions of dollars a year to prop up the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, according to the U.N.’s envoy to Syria and other outside experts. These estimates are far higher than what the Barack Obama administration, busy negotiating a nuclear deal with the Tehran government, has implied Iran spends on its policy to destabilize the Middle East.

On Monday, a spokeswoman for the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told me that the envoy estimates Iran spends $6 billion annually on Assad’s government. Other experts I spoke to put the number even higher. Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, said his research shows that Iran spent between $14 and $15 billion in military and economic aid to the Damascus regime in 2012 and 2013, even though Iran’s banks and businesses were cut off from the international financial system.

Such figures undermine recent claims from Obama and his top officials suggesting that Iran spends a relative pittance to challenge U.S. interests and allies in the region. While the administration has never disclosed its own estimates on how much Iran spends to back Syria and other allies in the Middle East, Obama himself has played down the financial dimension of the regime’s support.

“The great danger that the region has faced from Iran is not because they have so much money. Their budget — their military budget is $15 billion compared to $150 billion for the Gulf States,” he said in an interview last week with Israel’s Channel 2.

But experts see it another way. The Christian Science Monitor last month reported that de Mistura told a think tank in Washington that Iran was spending three times its official military budget–$35 billion annually–to support Assad in Syria. When asked about that earlier event, Jessy Chahine, the spokeswoman for de Mistura, e-mailed me: “The Special Envoy has estimated Iran spends $6 billion annually on supporting the Assad regime in Syria. So it’s $6 billion not $35 billion.”

Either way, that figure is significant. Many members of Congress and close U.S. regional allies have raised concerns that Iran will see a windfall of cash as a condition of any nuclear deal it signs this summer. Obama himself has said there is at least $150 billion worth of Iranian money being held in overseas banks as part of the crippling sanctions. If Iran spends billions of its limited resources today to support its proxies in the Middle East, it would follow that it will spend even more once sanctions are lifted.

The Obama administration disagrees. It says the amount Iran spends on mischief in the region is so low that any future sanctions relief will not make a difference in its behavior. Speaking at a conference this weekend sponsored by the Jerusalem Post, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that even as Iran’s economy has suffered from sanctions in recent years, it has been able to maintain its “small” level of assistance to terrorists and other proxies. “The unfortunate truth remains that the cost of this support is sufficiently small, that we will need to remain vigilant with or without a nuclear deal to use our other tools to deter the funding of terror and regional destabilization,” he said.

Shehadi and other experts acknowledged that their figures were estimates, because the Tehran regime does not publicize budgets for its Revolutionary Guard Corps or the full subsidies it provides to allies. Nonetheless, Shehadi says, Iranian support to Syria today is substantial, especially when factoring in the line of credit, oil subsidies and other kinds of economic assistance Iran provides the Syrian regime.

Steven Heydemann, who was the vice president for applied research on conflict at the U.S. Institute of Peace until last month, told me earlier this year that the value of Iranian oil transfers, lines of credit, military personnel costs and subsidies for weapons for the Syrian government was likely between $3.5 and $4 billion annually. He said that did not factor in how much Iran spent on supporting Hezbollah and other militias fighting Assad’s opponents in Syria. Heydamann said he estimated the total support from Iran for Assad would be between $15 and $20 billion annually.

A Pentagon report released last week was quite clear about what Iran hopes to achieve with its spending: “Iran has not substantively changed its national security and military strategies over the past year. However, Tehran has adjusted its approach to achieve its enduring objectives, by increasing its diplomatic outreach and decreasing its bellicose rhetoric.” The report says Iran’s strategy is intended to preserve its Islamic system of governance, protect it from outside threats, attain economic prosperity and “establish Iran as the dominant regional power.”

If Iran ends up accepting a deal on its nuclear program, it will see an infusion of cash to pursue that regional agenda. Shehadi said this fits a pattern for dictatorships in the Middle East: they preoccupy the international community with proliferation issues while, behind the scene, they continue to commit atrocities.

“In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein was massacring his people and we were worried about the weapons inspectors,” Shehadi said. “Bashar al-Assad did that too. He kept us busy with chemical weapons when he massacred his people. Iran is keeping us busy with a nuclear deal and we are giving them carte blanche in Syria and the region.”