Iran’s Mullahs Say Thank You to Obama

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

MEMRI October 15, 2015 Special Dispatch No.6187 Senior Iranian Negotiators Salehi, Kamalvandi: On October 19 President Obama Will Announce Lifting Of American Sanctions http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8799.htm

According to senior Iranian negotiators, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and an architect of the nuclear agreement (JCPOA), and Beherouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on October 19, 2015 President Obama will announce that sanctions will be lifted and not merely suspended, contrary to the July 14,

2015 text of the agreement to which Iran is obligated.[1]

If this report proves accurate, it means that President Obama surrendered to the threats and demands of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to amend the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) on this critical point, because lifting sanctions instead of suspending them will not allow their automatic reimposition (“snapback”). In this way, President Obama’s promise that the agreement incorporates the security mechanism of restoring the sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation, has been broken.

It should be emphasized that Salehi’s statement has not been verified at this stage by any Western or American source.

Khamenei issued his demands and threat on September 3, 2015 in a public address before Iran’s Assembly of Experts[2] and the Iranian Majlis incorporated them in the text that it approved on October 13, 2015.[3]

Following Khamenei’s address in early September 2015, contacts between Iran and the US and the P5 +1 powers took place September 28, 2015, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly but their results were not published[4] and subsequently Khamenei issued a guideline on October 7, 2015 banning contacts with the US.[5]

Endnotes:

[1] Fars (Iran), October 15, 2015; ILNA (Iran), October 15, 2015.

[2] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6151, Khamenei Declares That He Will Not Honor The Agreement If Sanctions Are Merely Suspended And Not Lifted, September 4, 2015.

[3] See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 1192, The Iranian Majlis Has Not Approved The JCPOA But Iran’s Amended Version Of It, October 13, 2015.

[4] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6162, Expected September 28 NY Meeting

Between P5+1 Foreign Ministers And Iran Could Signify Reopening Of Nuclear

Negotiations To Address Khamenei’s September 3 Threat That If Sanctions Are

Not Lifted, But Merely Suspended, There Will Be No Agreement, September 21,

2015.

[5] Twitter.com/khamenei_ir, October 7, 2015.

Quote of the Day:

President Obama and his foreign-policy admirers—a dwindling lot—hoped that the nuclear deal would make Iran more open to cooperation in the Middle East and with the U.S. Mark this down as another case in which the world is disappointing the American President.

–Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “The Mullahs Say Thanks”

The Iran deal seemed to be predicated on the notion that if we made all sorts of concessions to Iran it would become a different kind of regime. It would play nicer with President Obama’s imaginary friend “the international community.”

It hasn’t gotten off to a good start. For starters, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, held captive for more than a year, was just convicted of espionage. Reporters keep referring to the Iranian “justice” system, as if there had been a fair trial open to the public. Sure.

The verdict was announced on Monday. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

The timing of the conviction won’t escape students of history. Friday was the 444th day of his captivity. That was the number of days U.S. diplomats in Iran spent as hostages following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mr. Rezaian’s conviction three days later is the mullah equivalent of mailing a dead fish to an adversary.

Mr. Rezaian’s brother has said that he thinks our government should let the Iranians know that “there will be consequences.” Strongly worded letter to follow. But even if our government responded (and it won’t), the mullahs aren’t listening.You see, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei just banned further diplomatic negotiations with Washington.

In other news from our Iranian friends, the regime tested on Sunday a guided ballistic missile that code-named Emad (“Pillar”), which the Journal notes is in violation of the nuclear deal. This is also in violation of a recent U.N. Security Council resolution banning any Iranian tests of guided missiles for eight years. It will be difficult for Secretary of State John Kerry’s crack team to glean further information directly, however, because of that Iranian ban on talking to Washington.

If Iran were not a regime bent on nuclear power and destruction and if this were not so dangerous for the world, particularly our mistreated ally (?) Israel, you’d almost have to cheer the mullahs for their gutsiness. But the regime is a totalitarian monstrosity and Israel is in danger of annihilation, which makes it all very unfunny. The Wall Street Journal comments:

The more likely outcome is that the Obama Administration will find a way to explain that the missile test doesn’t violate the nuclear accord that Mr. Obama considers a crowning achievement. Meanwhile, Iran’s government will bank up to $150 billion that it can deploy to back its militia proxies in the Middle East. Add the new Iran-Russia offensive in Syria, and Tehran would appear to have taken the nuclear deal as a signal that it can now do whatever it wants without consequence.

The American recessional continues apace with word that the U.S. is pulling our Patriot missile defense systems from Turkey. This is a nice bookend to one of President Obama’s earliest foreign affairs initiatives, scrapping the missile-defense system for Poland, which would actually be rather nice to have just now as Vladimir Putin is raging through the neighborhood.

Don’t worry, though. President Obama is heading for a climate change conference. Hat tip for this post.

Meanwhile, the IAEA completed it’s first report on an inspection site:

VIENNA (AFP) –

The UN atomic watchdog said Thursday it has completed on schedule gathering information in its probe into Iran’s alleged past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said that, in line with a plan agreed with Iran in July, its chief Yukiya Amano will now provide a “final assessment” on the investigation by December 15.

The IAEA keeps close tabs on Iran’s declared nuclear facilities to ensure that no atomic material is diverted by Iran to any covert weapons programme, an aim denied strenuously by Tehran.

Under a landmark July deal between Iran and six major powers, Iran will dramatically scale down its nuclear activities in order to render any effort to make an atomic bomb virtually impossible.

But the IAEA also wants to probe claims that at least until 2003, Iran conducted research into making nuclear weapons, including with explosives tests at the Parchin military base, something it also denies.

On July 14 — the same day as the wider deal with major powers — Iran and the IAEA agreed a separate “road map” agreement aimed at completing an investigation into these activities by December 15.

The plan included Iran providing the IAEA with information by August 15, which happened on schedule although the IAEA said that there remained “ambiguities” to be resolved.

Thursday’s announcement by the IAEA also helps clear the way for preparations to begin for the implementation of the wider deal between Iran and major powers.

The accord, hailed as a massive diplomatic achievement after over decade of rising tensions, won final approval in Iran on Wednesday as a top panel of jurists and clerics gave it the green light.

Members of the US Congress failed in September to torpedo the deal, with President Barack Obama securing enough support in the Senate to protect the agreement.

In return for downscaling its programme, painful UN and Western sanctions on Iran are due to be lifted. Iranian officials have said this should happen by the end of 2015 or January at the latest.

Putin’s Coalition Forces in Syria vs. Obama’s

Posted on October 14, 2015October 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Iran: Iranian MPs arrive in Damascus before joint offensive ~ A delegation of Iranian lawmakers arrived in Damascus on Wednesday in the build-up to a joint operation against insurgents in northwest Syria, and said U.S.-led efforts to fight rebels had failed.The visit, led by the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, came as Iranian troops prepared to bolster a Syrian army offensive that two senior officials told Reuters would target rebels in Aleppo.
The attack, which the officials said would be backed by Russian air strikes, underlined the growing involvement in the civil war of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s two main allies, which has alarmed a U.S.-led coalition opposed to the president that is bombing Islamic State militants.

“The international coalition led by America has failed in the fight against terrorism. The cooperation between Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia has been positive and successful,” Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB as he arrived at Damascus airport.

The delegation was due to meet Assad, said officials.

Iran has sent thousands of troops into Syria in recent days to bolster the planned ground offensive in Aleppo, the two officials told Reuters. More here.
China: China’s Syria Connection ~A 2011 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service highlighted the role China has played in arming Assad’s military, providing $300 million worth of arms from 2007 to 2010.
For proof of continuing support, February 2013 saw the United States impose sanctions on China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, a state-owned company, for allegedly conducting military transfers to Syria in violation of nonproliferation legislation.

China seems happy to let Russia and Iran take on the role as Assad’s main supporters. Even though China is less obvious than the other two nations, it is nonetheless far from neutral.

Despite Chinese rhetoric of supporting a political solution, its actions suggest otherwise.

China’s selective use of its “noninterference” policy has seen them (alongside Russia) veto three Western-backed Security Council resolutions seeking to bring Assad to the negotiating table. As a permanent member of the Security Council, any international solution would require Chinese acquiescence.

Furthermore, in an interview given to the Financial Times in June, Kadri Jamil, Syrian deputy prime minister for the economy, boasted that China has joined Iran and Russia in delivering $500 million a month in oil and credit to Syria. The majority of Syria’s oil is in the largely rebel-held north and northeast of the country, and the network of pipelines connecting the wells to the population centres are vulnerable to rebel attack. As a result, Syrian oil production has fallen by as much as 95 percent during the ongoing conflict, and the importance of Chinese aid should not be underestimated. Chinese financial and material support supplements Russian and Iranian aid and has allowed the Assad war machine to remain militarily effective. More here.
Cuba: Cuban Troops Join the Russian Offensive in Syria ~ Russian President Vladimir Putin has made waves of late with his military offensive in Syria, and now he has on-the-ground backing of the Cuban variety. One of the world’s leading centers for research on Cuba has released breaking details of the Castro regime’s presence in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.+
The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami shared via email on October 13, 2015, that General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, head of the Cuban Armed Forces, had already landed in Syria. He is, they write, “leading a group of Cuban military personnel … in support of Syria’s dictator Assad” and, in Cold War fashion, the Russian contingent.+

The ICCAS researchers shared with the PanAm Post that the intelligence came directly from a spokesman of the US Defense Department, and is corroborated by an unnamed but friendly military in the Middle East. They report two Russian-made planes arriving in Syria carrying approximately 300 Cuban soldiers.+

They further detail that the Cuban soldiers will man Russian tanks that have been provided to Syrian head-of-state Bashar al-Assad. Their duty will be to fight Islamic State forces and others who threaten Assad’s grip on power. More here.

Back in 2014, Obama announced his member nation coalition to take on Islamic State and the Khorasan Group:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday morning called the U.S.-led attacks against terrorist targets in Syria a sign that Arab nations in the Middle East and Congress at home are committed to destroying the Islamic State, the terrorist group that occupies large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Eremites, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar all joined the U.S. in the attacks against the Islamic State that included a strike package of stealth fighters, bombers, drones and Tomahawk missiles, Obama said.

“America is proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these nations as part of our common security,” the President said in brief remarks from the South Lawn of the White House, just before departing for New York City. “The strength of the coalition makes clear that it is not America’s fight alone.”

In addition to hitting Islamic State targets, Obama said the coalition operation in Syria was meant to disrupt a plot “against the United States and our allies by seasoned al-Qaeda operatives [there] known as the Khorosan Group.”

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinians and Death

Posted on October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Shocking moment Palestinian drives his car into crowd of Israelis at bus stop and then hacks one of them to death before he is shot by police

As Palestinians Stab Jews, Obama Friend Khalidi Says US Should Stop Supporting Israel

BenShapiro: Rashid Khalidi, President Obama’s favorite Palestinian terrorist apologist, has a piece defending the latest spate of Palestinian terrorism in The New Yorker today.

Khalidi made his name as an advisor to Yassar Arafat’s terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization. He then got a job as a professor at the University of Chicago before moving onto Columbia University, where he took over as chair of the Middle East Studies program, named in honor of terror apologist Edward Said. Khalidi has been a longtime Obama friend and ally; Obama infamously attended a 2003 dinner in honor of Khalidi, tape of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The Times then suppressed the tape.

In today’s New Yorker, Khalidi argues that the Oslo Accords should never have taken place – that somehow, Israel handing over guns and land to Palestinian terrorists, as well as paying all their water and power bills, has been a boon for Israel. Khalidi called Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas’ declaration of an end to Oslo at the United Nations “long overdue” and said that Oslo had resulted in “the current upsurge in violence against Palestinians and settlers in the occupied territories.”

Actually, Jews are being stabbed to death in Jerusalem, the Jewish capital of the State of Israel. And Oslo’s main result was the legitimization of an international terrorist group on the world stage. But Khalidi explains that Oslo was never designed as part of a peace process; instead, it was all a sophisticated Jewish ruse to keep those innocent Palestinians under their thumb. In fact, says Khalidi, “The only part of Oslo that was faithfully implemented, in fact, is the protection that the P.A. provides to Israel by policing its own people.”

If by “policing its own people,” Khalidi means using the guns Israel gave the PA to pursue terrorist activities against Jews, that’s exactly correct. But Khalidi says that now that Abbas has disowned Oslo, it’s time for the United States to embrace a “new paradigm.” That paradigm would follow the lead of “young people, people of color and progressives,” who “oppose unconditional US support for Israel.” Khalidi enthusiastically embraces the possibility of sanctions on Israel, and cheers new polls showing that Democrats only favor Israel over Palestinians by ten points.

Khalidi concludes:

It is time for American politicians and policymakers to stop hiding behind the fictions of Oslo. If they really wish to avoid more of the same, they must abandon bankrupt strategies and meaningless platitudes and act vigorously to end a system of military occupation and colonization that would crumble without their support.

The Khalidi family used to babysit the Obama children. They are ideologically and philosophically aligned. Obama said at the 2003 bash for Khalidi – a bash at which a Palestinian likened Zionists to Osama Bin Laden – that Khalidi’s conversations provided “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases….It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table, [but around] this entire world.”

Khalidi told The Los Angeles Times that Obama took a pro-Israel position in 2008 in order to win the election.

The mask is off now, however. President Obama’s ideological allies, from Jeremiah Wright to Khalidi, have spent this week attempting to rip down Israeli self-defense even as Palestinians stab Jewish children in the streets of Israel’s capital. And Obama’s administration says and does nothing. Why would they? They’re on Rashid Khalidi’s side.

Only Obama Adheres to Iran Deal, Others Pretend

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

Primer:

SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 11 Oct.’15:”Fiery Scenes as Iran MPs Give Partial Nod to Nuclear Deal”, Agence France Press

SUBJECT: Iran’s ‘partial nod’ to nuclear deal

FULL TEXT: Iran’s parliament gave a partial nod to a nuclear deal with world powers Sunday but only after fiery clashes and allegations from a top negotiator that a lawmaker had threatened to kill him.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, went on the attack for the government at the end of a boisterous debate where he and other officials were accused of having capitulated.

Ultraconservative lawmakers repeatedly warned of holes in the text of the agreement and criticized President Hassan Rouhani for suggesting MPs were deliberately delaying the deal.

Red with anger, Alireza Zakani, who headed a panel reviewing the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, for two months, demanded “fundamental changes” to the text.

“This deal serves Wendy Sherman” and not Iran’s interests, Zakani said, referring to America’s senior negotiator in talks which resulted in the agreement in Vienna on July 14.

Hardliners in Tehran often railed against two years of diplomacy that led to the deal. Iran’s government says the accord will protect the country’s nuclear program while seeing sanctions lifted.

Despite Sunday’s[11 Oct] disagreements, the outlines of a motion titled “Iran’s Plan for Reciprocal and Proper Action in Implementing JCPOA” were approved by 139 of 253 lawmakers present.

One-hundred lawmakers voted against and 12 abstained. Iran has 290 MPs in total. They stopped short of endorsing the nuclear accord on Sunday and said specific details of the text are to be discussed and voted on Tuesday. Members of the U.S. Congress failed in September to torpedo the White House’s historic deal with Iran.

Salehi, an atomic scientist by training and a former foreign minister, hit out at what he said was the “immoral” behavior of some MPs in the way they had responded to talks and the deal.

Having to raise his voice, Salehi said: “Truth might be bitter for some… Listen. Listen. Hear me once and for all. Hear it from someone who is going be buried under cement.”

The latter remark was in reference to a lawmaker who Salehi said took a vow to kill him because the government agreed to remove and disable the core of a reactor at Arak, one of Iran’s nuclear sites.

“We negotiated within a framework and principles. Who set that framework? Me? A minimum and maximum was set for us,” Salehi said.

So-called red lines for the talks were also laid down by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Supreme National Security Council that he oversees.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led Iran’s diplomacy with the six powers, attended Sunday’s parliament session but he did not speak publicly. State television broadcast only live audio of the session over stills of the parliament, citing “opposition from Majlis authorities.”

However, pictures posted on social media sites showed the fierce exchanges.

Now to Obama:

Obama will be the only person sticking to Iran deal

By Amir Taheri

NYP: Sometime this week, President Obama is scheduled to sign an executive order to meet the Oct. 15 “adoption day” he has set for the nuclear deal he says he has made with Iran. According to the president’s timetable the next step would be “the start day of implementation,” fixed for Dec. 15.

But as things now stand, Obama may end up being the only person in the world to sign his much-wanted deal, in effect making a treaty with himself.

The Iranians have signed nothing and have no plans for doing so. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has not even been discussed at the Islamic Republic’s Council of Ministers. Nor has the Tehran government bothered to even provide an official Persian translation of the 159-page text.

The Islamic Majlis, the ersatz parliament, is examining an unofficial text and is due to express its views at an unspecified date in a document “running into more than 1,000 pages,” according to Mohsen Zakani, who heads the “examining committee.”

“The changes we seek would require substantial rewriting of the text,” he adds enigmatically.

Nor have Britain, China, Germany, France and Russia, who were involved in the so-called P5+1 talks that produced the JCPOA, deemed it necessary to provide the Obama “deal” with any legal basis of their own. Obama’s partners have simply decided that the deal he is promoting is really about lifting sanctions against Iran and nothing else.

So they have started doing just that without bothering about JCPOA’s other provisions. Britain has lifted the ban on 22 Iranian banks and companies blacklisted because of alleged involvement in deals linked to the nuclear issue.

German trade with Iran has risen by 33 percent, making it the Islamic Republic’s third-largest partner after China.

China has signed preliminary accords to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors. Russia has started delivering S300 anti-aircraft missile systems and is engaged in talks to sell Sukhoi planes to the Islamic Republic.

France has sent its foreign minister and a 100-man delegation to negotiate big business deals, including projects to double Iran’s crude oil exports.

Other nations have also interpreted JCPOA as a green light for dropping sanctions. Indian trade with Iran has risen by 17 percent, and New Delhi is negotiating massive investment in a rail-and-sea hub in the Iranian port of Chah-Bahar on the Gulf of Oman. With help from Austrian, Turkish and United Arab Emirates banks, the many banking restrictions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear program have been pushed aside.

“The structures of sanctions built over decades is crumbling,” boasts Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Meanwhile, the nuclear project is and shall remain “fully intact,” says the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi.

“We have started working on a process of nuclear fusion that will be cutting-edge technology for the next 50 years,” he adds.

Even before Obama’s “implementation day,” the mullahs are receiving an average of $400 million a month, no big sum, but enough to ease the regime’s cash-flow problems and increase pay for its repressive forces by around 21 percent.

Last month, Iran and the P5+1 created a joint commission to establish the modalities of implementation of an accord, a process they wish to complete by December 2017 when the first two-year review of JCPOA is scheduled to take place and when Obama will no longer be in the White House. (If things go awry Obama could always blame his successor or even George W Bush.)

Both Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have often claimed that, its obvious shortcomings notwithstanding, their nuke deal with the “moderate faction” in Tehran might encourage positive changes in Iran’s behavior.

That hasn’t happened.

The mullahs see the “deal” as a means with which Obama would oppose any suggestion of trying to curb Iran.

“Obama won’t do anything that might jeopardize the deal,” says Ziba Kalam, a Rouhani adviser. “This is his biggest, if not the only, foreign policy success.”

If there have been changes in Tehran’s behavior they have been for the worst. Iran has teamed up with Russia to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, mocking Obama’s “Assad must go” rhetoric. More importantly, Iran has built its direct military presence in Syria to 7,000 men. (One of Iran’s most senior generals was killed in Aleppo on Wednesday.)

Tehran has also pressured Iraqi Premier Haidar al-Abadi’s weak government to distance itself from Washington and join a dubious coalition with Iran, Russia and Syria.

Certain that Obama is paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent “deal” the mullahs have intensified their backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last week a delegation was in Tehran with a long shopping list for arms.

In Lebanon, the mullahs have toughened their stance on choosing the country’s next president. And in Bahrain, Tehran is working on a plan to “ensure an early victory” of the Shiite revolution in the archipelago.

Confident that Obama is determined to abandon traditional allies of the United States, Tehran has also heightened propaganda war against Saudi Arabia, now openly calling for the overthrow of the monarchy there.

The mullahs are also heightening contacts with Palestinian groups in the hope of unleashing a new “Intifada.”

“Palestine is thirsty for a third Intifada,” Supreme Guide Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan said in an editorial last Thursday. “It is the duty of every Muslim to help start it as soon as possible.”

Obama’s hopes of engaging Iran on other issues were dashed last week when Khamenei declared “any dialogue with the American Great Satan” to be” forbidden.”

“We have no need of America” his adviser Ali-Akbar Velayati added later. “Iran is the region’s big power in its own right.”

Obama had hoped that by sucking up to the mullahs he would at least persuade them to moderate their “hate-America campaign.” Not a bit of that.

“Death to America” slogans, adoring official buildings in Tehran have been painted afresh along with US flags, painted at the entrance of offices so that they could be trampled underfoot. None of the US citizens still held hostages in Iran has been released, and one, Washington Post stringer Jason Rezai, is branded as “head of a spy ring “in Tehran. Paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent deal, Obama doesn’t even call for their release.

Government-sponsored anti-American nationwide events are announced for November, anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. The annual “End of America” week-long conference is planned for February and is to focus on “African-American victims of US police” and the possibility of “self-determination for blacks.”

According to official sources “families of Black American victims” and a number of “black American revolutionaries” have been invited.

Inside Iran, Obama’s “moderate partners” have doubled the number of executions and political prisoners. Last week they crushed marches by teachers calling for release of their leaders. Hundreds of trade unionists have been arrested and a new “anti-insurrection” brigade paraded in Tehran to terrorize possible protestors.

The Obama deal may end up as the biggest diplomatic scam in recent history.

ISIS, Toyota Trucks and the U.S. State Dept

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

File this one under…..’shaking my head’.

Where did Islamic State get all those Toyota trucks?

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was founded in Doha, Qatar in 2012. It is a lobby operation in Washington DC supporting the banner of the Free Syrian Army, presently led by Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition.

Sadly, while the West attempted to support the anti-Assad forces in an admittedly failed program this week with particular emphasis on Russian intervention into Syria with bombing of only an estimated 10% of Islamic State forces, the U.S. has terminated this program. Many of those trained by Special Forces and the CIA fell victim to being kidnapped, killed or defected to Islamic State and those pesky Toyota rides were seized by ISIS fighting factions.

As airspace de-confliction talks continue between Russia and the United States, a decision was made by Secretary Carter to begin to support the Kurds instead as airstrikes by the U.S. has picked up some pace in the last two days.

Heh, perhaps the targets now being watched are convoys with U.S. State Department Toyota trucks in the hands of Islamic State.

Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved: Evidence Show Transferring Was Through Turkey

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of Russia’s air operations over Syria and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.

ABC News in their article, “US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks,” reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury’s inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

Mystery Solved

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the “Free Syrian Army.”

US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, “Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels,” reported that:

So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It’s fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public.

The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.

Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become.

Russia’s intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa.