Category Archives: IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

Obama Concession to Iran: Russian Arms?

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Obama Admin Considers Permitting Advanced Russian Arms Sales to Iran

White House might not invoke laws triggering new sanctions
FreeBeacon: The Obama administration has the power to sanction key Russian arms sales to Iran, but has so far abstained from exercising this right under U.S. law, prompting some in Congress to question whether the administration is “acquiescing” to the arms sales in order to appease Iran, according to conversations with sources and recent congressional correspondence to the White House exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

President Barack Obama has the authority under U.S. law to designate as illegal Russia’s contested sale to Iran of the S-300 missile system, an advanced long-range weapon that would boost the Islamic Republic’s regional military might.

However, the administration has declined for weeks to clarify its stance on new sanctions, despite expressing opposition to the sale. Administration officials have further declined to answer questions from the Free Beacon and other outlets about whether the president will consider taking action in the future.

The administration’s hesitance to act has prompted a new congressional inquiry, the Free Beacon has learned, and has sparked accusations that the White House is not exercising its sanction authority in order to prevent Iran from walking away from last summer’s nuclear deal.

Rep. Steve Chabot (R., Ohio) sent an inquiry to the White House about the matter more than a month ago. The White House has not responded.

“Given the series implications for the United States and our allies in the region, I respectfully request that you quickly determine that Russia’s transfer of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems advance Iran’s efforts to acquire ‘destabilizing numbers and types of advances conventional weapons’ and impose the necessary U.S. sanctions once the Russian delivery takes place,” Chabot wrote to the White House on April 7, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

Chabot outlined concern “that without such a determination the United States may be viewed as acquiescing to this transfer” of a major defensive weapons system to Iran.

Chabot told the Free Beacon on Thursday the administration has not responded to multiple inquiries about the potential designation.

“Despite multiple inquires to the U.S. Department of State, I still have not received a response on Russia’s S300 surface-to-air missile system transfer to Iran,” Chabot said. “This apparent dismissal leaves me wondering what exactly the Administration is hiding. I am really asking a simple question – is the introduction of a sophisticated weapon system into Iran, that has not been there previously, going to illicit the appropriate U.S. sanctions response? I am not sure why the Administration has found it so hard to come to a determination. The S300 is one of the most advanced anti-aircraft missile system’s in the world and significantly bolsters Iran’s offensive capabilities and stands as a serious hurdle to our efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state. This is absolutely a destabilizing conventional weapon system.”

When contacted for comment, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that the administration has not made a final determination about whether the S-300 sale would trigger additional U.S. sanctions.

“We’re continuing to closely follow reports concerning the delivery of the S-300 defensive missile system from Russia to Iran‎,” the official said. “We have not made a determination as to whether this delivery, if and when complete, would trigger any actions under U.S. authorities.”

“These systems would significantly bolster Iran’s offensive capabilities and introduce new obstacles to our efforts to eliminate the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. I believe existing U.S. sanctions should be used to deter Russia from transferring this or other dangerous weapons systems to Iran,” Chabot said.

The sale is technically permitted under current United Nations resolutions governing weapons sales. However, the Obama administration has the right to veto the sale at the U.N. Security Council. The administration has not committed to doing so.

U.S. law also grants the president the right to designate such sales as illicit and therefore open to sanctions.

The Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act of 1992 grants the president authority to sanction the sale of “advanced conventional weapons” to Iran by any nation.

“U.S. law provides your administration with the authority to apply U.S. sanctions in response” to the sale, Chabot explains in his letter. “For example, the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act and the Iran Sanctions Act provide authority for you to sanction individuals or countries that you determine are aiding Iran’s efforts to acquire or develop ‘destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons.’”

Sanctions would kick in if the president decides that such a sale would destabilize the Middle East and shift regional balance.

“Iran’s acquisition of these systems would embolden Tehran to adopt a more threatening regional posture and to pursue offensive activities detrimental to regional stability in the belief that the systems would deter retaliation,” according to Chabot.

Reporters as well as lawmakers have attempted for weeks to get an answer from the administration about whether the president would make such a determination.

One foreign policy adviser who works closely with Congress on the Iran issue told the Free Beacon that the administration can no longer waffle on the issue.

“The administration tried to look the other way, but got called out for it by Congress. Then they spent a month and a half hoping that the whole thing would go away,” the source said. “Now I don’t know what they’re going to do, since it’s obvious that they’re letting Iran import advanced weapons in violation of U.S. law just to preserve the nuclear deal.”

That Iran Propaganda Strategy Thing Began in 2011

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Amazing what details can be uncovered and how dates and people all seem to tell a much different story when facts are compiled.

A deeper look is required into Ploughshares and the deep relationship with the White House, as the world has been punked by some well placed organizations and some money…imagine that.

Related: White House Makes the Case for Iran Diplomacy (lots of details here)

Related: Ploughshares at the White House in 2011

Related: Where did Ploughshares get the Money? (Whoa on this one)

Related: Commitments, Verification and Next Steps (Ploughshares going to do the work?)

The Secret History of the Iran-Deal ‘Echo Chamber’

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Bloomberg: A network of advocates, experts and messaging specialists the White House says helped it sell the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 actually began to campaign for such an accord four years earlier, before the real negotiations started.

Last week I was leaked e-mails and documents from an internal listserv operated by the arms control nonprofit Ploughshares Fund. That foundation has come under scrutiny after the New York Times Magazine quoted top White House foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes boasting how the foundation amplified the White House message in 2015 on the Iran deal. Rhodes told the magazine that supporters of the deal comprised an “echo chamber,” suggesting the independent experts were tools of a White House media campaign.

But the messaging work from Ploughshares on Iran began long before there was any Iran deal and long before Rhodes convened his regular meetings with progressive groups on shaping the Iran narrative.

Beginning in August 2011, Ploughshares and its grantees formed the Iran Strategy Group. Over time this group created a sophisticated campaign to reshape the national narrative on Iran. That campaign sought to portray skeptics of diplomacy as “pro-war,” and to play down the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program before formal negotiations started in 2013 only to emphasize those dangers after there was an agreement in 2015.

The strategy group, which included representatives of the Arms Control Association, the National Security Network, the National Iranian American Council, the Federation of American Scientists, the Atlantic Council and others, sought to “develop process and mechanism to implement Iran campaign strategies, tactics and narrative,” according to an agenda for the first meeting of the group on Aug. 17, 2011.

 Related: WHICH PATH TO PERSIA? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran

As a nonprofit, Ploughshares discloses annually the organizations that receive its grants. But until now, the way this network of nonprofits, advocacy organizations and policy experts coordinated its media campaign has been shrouded from the public.

The members of that network had two things in common. They all received substantial grants from Ploughshares and they all sought to prevent a war with Iran. But at the time, the progressives assessed the situation was bleak. An August 2, 2011 memo from Heather Hurlburt, then executive director of the National Security Network, and Peter Ferenbach, a co-founder of ReThink Media, shared with the group an assessment of the “media environment” on Iran and concluded it was “extremely difficult.”

The problem, according to Hurlburt and Ferenbach, was that in 2011 a succession of news stories on Iran, ranging from reports of progress on the country’s nuclear program to the Treasury Department’s designations that accused Iran of colluding with al Qaeda, had put progressives on defense. “We are left in the position of responding to the news headlines and parrying the negative commentary that follows,” they wrote.

Among the authors’ recommendations was that the Iran Strategy Group attack conservatives who advocated military strikes. “On a messaging note, it would be best to describe them as ‘pro-war,’ and leave it to them to back off that characterization of their position,” they wrote.

This approach became a centerpiece of the White House’s own message four years later when Obama was selling his deal to Congress. In a speech at American University that summer he said, “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.”

And yet while the Iran Strategy Group’s message about critics of the deal was echoed by the White House, the group’s initial messaging on Iran itself was much different between 2011 and 2013 than what Ploughshares and its grantees ending up saying in 2015. When the White House and its surrogates were campaigning for the deal in 2015, they emphasized how close Iran was to producing the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon. Joe Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares, made this point in a piece for Slate after the deal was announced when he wrote, “without the deal, Iran could use its centrifuges to purify enough uranium for one or more bombs within weeks.”

 

This is not an accident. As I reported last year the White House declassified its estimate that Iran was three months away from producing enough fuel for a weapon in April 2015, after a framework for the Iran deal was agreed in Vienna, even though the intelligence community had assessed for more than two years that Iran was three months away from weapons-grade fuel.

Back in 2011, the Iran Strategy Group drafted a set of talking points called “Key Points on Iran and Nuclear Weapons.” Joel Rubin, the director of policy and government affairs for Ploughshares between 2011 and 2014, wrote in an e-mail to the strategy group, “We believe that this paper will help each of you to clearly enunciate, with confidence, a consensus view on how to argue for a sound U.S. policy towards Iran.”

The talking points — drafted by Paul Pillar, the intelligence analyst who was the lead author on the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate shared with Congress before the Iraq war — stressed that diplomacy was the best way to decrease the likelihood Iran went nuclear and that bombing Iran’s facilities would be counterproductive. But the talking points also included “An Iranian nuclear program is not imminent”; “An Iranian nuclear weapon is not inevitable”; and most controversial “If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, the United States and the West could live with it, without important compromise to U.S. interests.” Obama himself has contradicted that last line for years, arguing that he would be prepared to use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear program if diplomacy did not work.

The Iran Strategy Group sought to play down Iran’s nuclear program as late as 2013. E-mails between strategy group members in August of that year in anticipation of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report on Iran’s nuclear program that was released at the end of that month show that the network was already in campaign mode.  In an Aug. 20, 2013, e-mail to the Iran Strategy Group, Cirincione encouraged the Ploughshares grantees to “create a social media, web, expert push that carries our main points into the media and policy discussions in the first 12-24 hours.” He recommended that the points the group pushed in the media should include the argument that making enough highly enriched uranium for a single bomb “is just one step in a long weaponization process,” and that while Iran’s decision to start the Arak plutonium reactor was not good, it was “also just one step in a long alternative path to nuclear material for a weapon.”

The timing here is important. In September 2013, Iran and six other great powers including the U.S. announced the beginning of nuclear talks that ultimately produced the agreement in 2015.

Rubin, who is now president of the Washington Strategy Group, told me that the difference in talking points for the Ploughshares network between 2011 and 2013 and then in 2015 reflected the state of diplomacy with Iran and the real concern for progressives that Israel or the U.S. would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. “The difference between 2011 and 2015 was that there was a different reality of what was taking place on the ground in terms of the negotiations and the process,” he said. “Ahmadinejad was the president in Iran, there was no negotiation process, and much of the chattering class was talking about when will Israel or the U.S. drop the bomb on Iran in 2011.”

When asked for comment on the story, Ploughshares communications director Jennifer Abrahamson said, “As a nonpartisan public foundation dedicated to reducing nuclear threats, Ploughshares Fund is proud to have supported a network of longstanding experts that helped stop Iran from building a bomb without starting another war in the Middle East.”

That pride is apparent. After a critical story from the AP last week on Ploughshares grants to National Public Radio, Cirincione went on the attack. In a column for Huffington Post suggesting the AP story was part of a campaign from opponents of the Iran deal to discredit him and his organization, he wrote, “Neoconservatives are furious that their efforts to trick the country into another unnecessary war in the Middle East failed.”

Don’t be surprised if you hear Ploughshares grantees repeating that. It sounds like a talking point.

WH Coordinated Propaganda with Think Tanks on Iran Deal

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White House paid and coordinated for pay to play, pay to write, pay to exploit, paid for loyalty, paid for messaging and all paid to lie. By the way, this is against the law.

See a short summary of the Smith Mundt Act here.

There is also NIAC and Trita Parsi.  There is also Laura Rozen, another anti-Semite.

Group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group’s annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.

The Ploughshares Fund’s mission is to “build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles,” one that dovetails with President Barack Obama’s arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more attention this month after a candid profile of Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s top foreign policy aides.

In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.

“We created an echo chamber,” said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that “outside groups like Ploughshares” helped carry out the administration’s message effectively.

The magazine piece revived Republican criticism of the Iran agreement as they suggested it was evidence of a White House spin machine misleading the American people. The administration accused opponents of trying to re-litigate the deal after failing to defeat it in congressional votes last year.

Outside groups of all stripes are increasingly giving money to news organizations for special projects or general news coverage. Most news organizations, including The Associated Press, have strict rules governing whom they can accept money from and how to protect journalistic independence.

Ploughshares’ backing is more unusual, given its prominent role in the rancorous, partisan debate over the Iran deal.

The Ploughshares grant to NPR supported “national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran’s nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security,” according to Ploughshares’ 2015 annual report, recently published online.

“It is common practice for foundations to fund media coverage of underreported stories,” Ploughshares spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson said. Funding “does not influence the editorial content of their coverage in any way, nor would we want it to.”

Ploughshares has funded NPR’s coverage of national security since 2005, the radio network said. Ploughshares reports show at least $700,000 in funding over that time. All grant descriptions since 2010 specifically mention Iran.

“It’s a valued partnership, without any conditions from Ploughshares on our specific reporting, beyond the broad issues of national and nuclear security, nuclear policy, and nonproliferation,” NPR said in an emailed statement. “As with all support received, we have a rigorous editorial firewall process in place to ensure our coverage is independent and is not influenced by funders or special interests.”

Republican lawmakers will have concerns nonetheless, especially as Congress supplies NPR with a small portion of its funding. Just this week, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee tried to summon Rhodes to a hearing entitled “White House Narratives on the Iran Nuclear Deal,” but he refused.

Ploughshares’ links to media are “tremendously troubling,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, an Iran-deal critic.

Pompeo told the AP he repeatedly asked NPR to be interviewed last year as a counterweight to a Democratic supporter of the agreement, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who he said regularly appeared on the station. But NPR refused to put Pompeo on the air, he said. The station said it had no record of Pompeo’s requests, and listed several prominent Republicans who were featured speaking about the deal or economic sanctions on Iran.

Another who appeared on NPR is Joseph Cirincione, Ploughshares’ president. He spoke about the negotiations on air at least twice last year. The station identified Ploughshares as an NPR funder one of those times; the other time, it didn’t.

Ploughshares boasts of helping to secure the deal. While success was “driven by the fearless leadership of the Obama administration and supporters in Congress,” board chairwoman Mary Lloyd Estrin wrote in the annual report, “less known is the absolutely critical role that civil society played in tipping the scales towards this extraordinary policy victory.”

The 33-page document lists the groups that Ploughshares funded last year to advance its nonproliferation agenda.

The Arms Control Association got $282,500; the Brookings Institution, $225,000; and the Atlantic Council, $182,500. They received money for Iran-related analysis, briefings and media outreach, and non-Iran nuclear work.

Other groups, less directly defined by their independent nuclear expertise, also secured grants.

J-Street, the liberal Jewish political action group, received $576,500 to advocate for the deal. More than $281,000 went to the National Iranian American Council.

Princeton University got $70,000 to support former Iranian ambassador and nuclear spokesman Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s “analysis, publications and policymaker engagement on the range of elements involved with the negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Ploughshares has set its sights on other media organizations, too.

In a “Cultural Strategy Report” on its website, the group outlined a broader objective of “ensuring regular and accurate coverage of nuclear issues in reputable and strategic media outlets” such as The Guardian, Salon, the Huffington Post or Pro Publica.

Previous efforts failed to generate enough coverage, it noted. These included “funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with The Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk.” It suggested using “web videos, podcasts, photo-based stories” and other “attention-grabbing formats” for “creatively reframing the issue.”

The Center for Public Integrity’s CEO, Peter Bale, confirmed the grant.

“None of the funding received by Ploughshares was for coverage of the Iran deal,” said Bale, whose company received $70,000. “In general, we avoided that subject because the topic did not lend itself to the type of investigative reporting the Center does.”

Caitlin Graf, a spokeswoman at The Nation, said her outlet had no partnership with Ploughshares. She referred queries to The Nation Institute, a nonprofit associated with the magazine that seeks to strengthen the independent press and advance social justice. Taya Kitman, the institute’s director, said Ploughshares’ one-year grant supported reporting on U.S.-Iran policy, but strict editorial control was maintained.

Mother Jones’ media department didn’t respond to several messages seeking comment.

The AP has taken grants from nonpolitical groups and journalism foundations such as the Knight Foundation. As with all grants, “AP retains complete editorial control of the final news product, which must fully meet AP standards for independence and integrity,” Standards Editor Thomas Kent said.

Contentious House Hearing on Iran Deal/Ben Rhodes

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The disdain the White House has for Republicans in Congress has a long history, but his week concerning the NYT’s interview with White House deputy security council advisor Ben Rhodes, Josh Earnest took the nastiness to a new level.

Must watch Gowdy above.

So, the hearing was held without Ben Rhodes as the White House lawyer gave Rhodes executive privilege.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in the hearing based their rhetoric and questions not on the subject at hand and the reason for the hearing but rather they all went on the collective attack of the witnesses over why the United States went into a war over a false claim on WMD.

Democrats turn Iran hearing into debate over Iraq invasion
The Iran-Iraq showdown in the House Oversight Committee probably wasn’t what GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz intended when he arranged the session. And while Republicans made several attempts to turn the focus to the current presidential administration, not the previous one, Democrats weren’t dissuaded and the hearing degenerated into a back-and-forth. More details here from Politico.

For access to the full hearing, click here. The introduction testimony of one panelist, Mr. Hannah, go here.

FNC: Republican condemnation of a top White House aide who boasted about the administration’s success selling the Iran deal to the public reached new levels on Tuesday, as several senators urged President Obama to fire him and a House committee looking into his claims went forward with its hearing – even though he didn’t show up to testify.

The House Oversight Committee hearing was called to examine White House “narratives” on the Iran deal, after top adviser Ben Rhodes was featured in a New York Times Magazine profile claiming they built an “echo chamber” to sell the plan. Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, had called Rhodes to testify, but the White House shielded him from the appearance.

Chaffetz, at the top of the hearing Tuesday, said “there’s still a shroud of secrecy” surrounding the Iran deal and he wanted to hear from Rhodes to seek “clarity.”

“I do not doubt his talents and his knowledge,” Chaffetz said. “But the deal that had been spun up and sold to the American public, I’m not sure it was as clear as it should have been.”

He said Rhodes, in the profile, showed “disdain” for the media and foreign policy circles.

Just hours earlier, the White House officially informed Chaffetz it would not make Rhodes available to testify, citing an executive privilege-related claim. Chaffetz did not go forward with plans to keep a seat open Tuesday for Rhodes, and instead called foreign policy analysts and scholars to testify on the deal. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin, accused Rhodes of creating a “propaganda operation.”

The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., slammed Republicans for the hearing, criticizing the analysts they called while noting they didn’t invite military generals who support the agreement. He said Republicans rushed to hold the hearing “without even one week’s notice.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said at least Cummings would be able to question the witnesses present. Rhodes, he said, “didn’t bother to show up.”

Meanwhile, several GOP senators have written to Obama urging him to “dismiss” Rhodes “before he further tarnishes the Office of President.”

They wrote: “While members of the Executive and Legislative branches may sometimes deeply disagree on issues of vital importance to our nation’s security and prosperity, we should all agree, for the greater good of our Republic and the citizens whom we represent, to engage in our debates in a respectful, honest, and constructive manner. Mr. Rhodes’s disrespectful, deceptive, and destructive conduct has fallen appallingly short of this standard, however. Indeed, if he had conducted himself this way in a typical place of business outside Washington, where American taxpayers work, he surely would have been already fired or asked to resign.”

The Washington Free Beacon, which first reported on the letter, said it was signed by Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.; John Cornyn, R-Texas; John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; and David Perdue, R-Ga.

Sources tell Fox News that the House committee was keen for Rhodes to appear voluntarily Tuesday so they avoid the territory of a possible subpoena.

The magazine article that touched off the controversy outlined how Rhodes created a narrative of the deal coming out of the 2013 election of “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Iran’s subsequent “openness” and willingness to negotiate.

In fact, the story stated, the majority of the deal was hammered out in 2012, well before Rouhani’s election. However, the Rhodes narrative was politically useful to the administration as it presented them as reaching out to the moderates who wanted peace.

ODNI Clapper: We Can’t Leave Town

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We can’t fix this. A couple of additional points to add:

  1. Iran was pretty much controlled until the Obama regime decided to formal a rogue country to be accepted around the globe and terminate sanctions giving Iran more money to behave with wild abandon. Now John Kerry is working personally to help the entire economy of Iran.
  2. We have arrived at a malfunction junction where the intersection between intelligence and politics crash and politics wins over the defeat of global jihad.

And then there is Russia.

‘The U.S. can’t fix it’: James Clapper on America’s role in the Middle East

WaPo: Early in his tenure as director of national intelligence, James Clapper could sometimes be heard complaining, “I’m too old for this [expletive]!” He has now served almost six years as America’s top intelligence official, and when I asked him this week how much longer he would be in harness, he consulted his calendar and answered with relief, “Two hundred sixty-five days!”

Clapper, 75, has worked in intelligence for 53 years, starting when he joined the Air Force in 1963. He’s a crusty, sometimes cranky veteran of the ingrown spy world, and he has a perspective that’s probably unmatched in Washington. He offered some surprisingly candid comments — starting with a frank endorsement of President Obama’s view that the United States can’t unilaterally fix the Middle East.

Given Clapper’s view that intelligence services must cooperate against terrorism, a small breakthrough seems to have taken place in mid-April when Clapper met with some European intelligence chiefs near Ramstein Air Base in Germany to discuss better sharing of intelligence. The meeting was requested by the White House, but it hasn’t been publicized.

“We are on the same page, and we should do everything we can to improve intelligence coordination and information sharing, within the limits of our legal framework,” said Peter Wittig, German ambassador to Washington, confirming the meeting.

The terrorist threat has shadowed Clapper’s tenure. He admitted in a September 2014 interview that the United States had “underestimated” the Islamic State. He isn’t making that mistake now. He says the United States is slowly “degrading” the extremists but probably won’t capture the Islamic State’s key Iraqi stronghold this year and faces a long-term struggle that will last “decades.”

“They’ve lost a lot of territory,” he told me Monday. “We’re killing a lot of their fighters. We will retake Mosul, but it will take a long time and be very messy. I don’t see that happening in this administration.”

Even after the extremists are defeated in Iraq and Syria, the problem will persist. “We’ll be in a perpetual state of suppression for a long time,” he warned.

“I don’t have an answer,” Clapper said frankly. “The U.S. can’t fix it. The fundamental issues they have — the large population bulge of disaffected young males, ungoverned spaces, economic challenges and the availability of weapons — won’t go away for a long time.” He said at another point: “Somehow the expectation is that we can find the silver needle, and we’ll create ‘the city on a hill.’” That’s not realistic, he cautioned, because the problem is so complex.

I asked Clapper whether he shared Obama’s view, as expressed in Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic, that America doesn’t need the Middle East economically as it once did, that it can’t solve the region’s problems and that, in trying, the United States would harm its interests elsewhere. “I’m there,” said Clapper, endorsing Obama’s basic pessimism. But he explained: “I don’t think the U.S. can just leave town. Things happen around the world when U.S. leadership is absent. We have to be present — to facilitate, broker and sometimes provide the force.”

Clapper said the United States still can’t be certain how much harm was done to intelligence collection by the revelations of disaffected National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. “We’ve been very conservative in the damage assessment. Overall, there’s a lot,” Clapper said, noting that the Snowden disclosures made terrorist groups “very security-conscious” and speeded the move to unbreakable encryption of data. And he said the Snowden revelations may not have ended: “The assumption is that there are a lot more documents out there in escrow [to be revealed] at a time of his choosing.”

Clapper had just returned from a trip to Asia, where he said he’s had “tense exchanges” with Chinese officials about their militarization of the South China Sea. He predicted that China would declare an “air defense identification zone” soon in that area, and said “they’re already moving in that direction.”

 

Asked what he had achieved in his nearly six years as director of national intelligence, Clapper cited his basic mission of coordinating the 17 agencies that work under him. “The reason this position was created was to provide integration in the intelligence community. We’re better than we were.”

After a career in the spy world, Clapper argues that intelligence issues are basically simple; it’s the politics surrounding them that are complicated. “I can’t wait to get back to simplicity,” he said, his eye on that calendar.

**** Sampling of how bad things are:

  1. Al Qaeda issued a call for Muslims to mobilize to fight in al Sham. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri urged Muslims to fight in Syria and for the factions in Syria to unify. Zawahiri described the Syrian uprising as the only one from the Arab Spring to have continued along the right path. He sought for Muslims to defend the gains made in Syria against other actors like Russia, Iran, and the West, and stated the objective of a governing entity establishing itself in the territory. Hamza bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s son, echoed the call for mobilization. He also called on Muslims to unify in Iraq and Syria and for those who cannot travel to conduct lone-wolf attacks.
  2.  A pro-Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) cell attempted to weaponize anthrax and plan a mass-casualty attack similar to the 2013 Westgate Mall attack, according to Kenyan and Ugandan authorities. The cell’s ringleader may have communicated with ISIS militants in Libya and Syria, indicating an expansion of ISIS’s influence in East Africa.  Governments seeking counterterrorism funding may also exaggerate ISIS’s presence, however.
  3. ISIS resumed a territorial growth strategy in Libya after planned offensives on its stronghold in Sirte stalled. ISIS militants seized strategically located towns from Misratan militias to the west of Sirte as part of efforts to expand its contiguous zone of control in central Libya. ISIS is also bolstered by the support of tribal leaders and elders, representing factions of a large tribal federation that has suffered since the fall of Qaddafi. These tribal leaders are aligning with ISIS against opponents in both the Libyan National Army bloc in the east and the Misratan bloc in the west in order to protect their political and economic interests. [See CTP’s backgrounder on forces in Libya and a forecast of ISIS’s courses of actions in Libya.] (From: The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project )  Add in Russia’s building war on NATO….