WH Nuclear Summit Details

Posted on March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

3 countries by the way are ‘no-shows’ Iran, Russia and Pakistan.

The basis of the summit could and should begin with Western powers at UN seek meeting on Iranian missile tests

Washington, Paris, London and Berlin said as much in a letter dated Monday to the Spanish ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi, who is in charge of the issue within the council.

The same powers last July signed an historic nuclear accord with Tehran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions.

The letter obtained by AFP says the missile launches were “destabilizing and provocative” and defied a 2015 UN resolution, number 2231. Much more here.

FACT SHEET: The Nuclear Security Summits: Securing the World from Nuclear Terrorism

Progress Since Prague

The Obama Administration’s focus on nuclear security is part of a comprehensive nuclear policy presented by the President in Prague in 2009. In that speech, President Obama described a four-pronged agenda to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. He laid out new U.S. policies and initiatives towards nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear energy.

President Obama in his Prague remarks identified the risk of nuclear terrorism as the most immediate and extreme threat to global security, and he called for a worldwide effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years. He also highlighted the need to break up black markets, detect and intercept materials in transit, and use financial tools to disrupt illicit trade in nuclear materials.

The Nuclear Threat

It is almost impossible to quantify the likelihood of nuclear attack by extremist groups. But we know that roughly 2000 metric tons of nuclear weapons usable materials — highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium — are present in both civilian and military programs, and we know that terrorists have the intent and the capability to turn these raw materials into a nuclear device if they were to gain access to them. A terrorist attack with an improvised nuclear device would create political, economic, social, psychological, and environmental havoc around the world, no matter where the attack occurs. The threat is global, the impact of a nuclear terrorist attack would be global, and the solutions therefore must be global.

The President’s call-to-action in Prague was intended to reinvigorate existing bilateral and multilateral efforts and to challenge nations to re-examine their own commitments to nuclear security. Given the global repercussions of such an attack, all nations have a common interest in establishing the highest levels of security and protection over nuclear material and strengthening national and international efforts to prevent nuclear smuggling and detect and intercept nuclear materials in transit. World leaders have no greater responsibility than ensuring their people and neighboring countries are safe by securing nuclear materials and preventing nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear Security Summit Successes

The Nuclear Security Summit process has been the centerpiece of these efforts. Since the first Summit in April 2010 in Washington, DC, President Obama and more than 50 world leaders have been working together to prevent nuclear terrorism and counter nuclear smuggling. This Summit community has built an impressive track record in meaningful progress towards nuclear security, and on actions that back up our words. Collectively, Summit participants have made over 260 national security commitments in the first three Summits, and of these, nearly three-quarters have been implemented. These outcomes – nuclear material removed or eliminated, treaties ratified and implemented, reactors converted, regulations strengthened, “Centers of Excellence” launched, technologies upgraded, capabilities enhanced – are tangible, concrete evidence of improved nuclear security. The international community has made it harder than ever for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons, and that has made us all more secure.

In addition to national actions, Summits have provided opportunities for countries to step beyond the limitations of consensus to highlight steps they are actually taking as a group to reduce nuclear threats. These so-called “gift baskets” have reflected joint commitments related to countering nuclear smuggling, radioactive source security, information security, transportation security, and many other topics. It would be an overstatement to suggest that these national and collective commitments have come about exclusively as a result of the Nuclear Security Summits, but it is fair to say that they would almost certainly not all have transpired in the absence of the kind of high-level forcing effect that summits can have.

Across the four Nuclear Security Summits, we have maintained the momentum of tangible actions to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism and to make progress towards strengthened international norms and standards for nuclear security.

The number of facilities with nuclear material continues to decline: We successfully completed removals or confirmed the downblending of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium from more than 50 facilities in 30 countries — in total, enough material for 130 nuclear weapons.
- In 2010, Ukraine committed to remove four bombs’ worth of HEU and completed that removal in 2012, fully eliminating all HEU from its territory – a particularly vital step in light of Russia’s subsequent breaches of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- Japan is on track to remove over 500 kilograms of HEU and separated plutonium from its Fast Critical Assembly. This is the largest-ever project by a country to remove nuclear material from its territory and we look forward to continued work with Japan on additional removals.
Fourteen countries and Taiwan highlighted the elimination of all nuclear materials from their territory; as a result, wide swaths of Central and Eastern Europe and all of South America can be considered free of HEU and therefore no longer targets for those seeking nuclear materials.
Security at sites and on borders is increasing: All Summit countries reported progress in enhancing nuclear security practices, including 20 countries committing to increase cooperation to counter nuclear smuggling efforts, and 13 countries pledging to improve nuclear detection practices at ports;
A majority of Summit states will implement stronger security practices: 36 countries pledged to implement stronger nuclear security practices in their countries by – among other things – incorporating international guidelines into national laws, inviting international peer reviews of their nuclear material, and committing to continuous review and improvement of their nuclear security systems.
The legal basis for nuclear security continues to be strengthened: additional countries are adopting binding legal commitments, such as the Amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which will soon achieve entry into force with over 80 new ratifications since 2009, and the International Convention on Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.
Nuclear Security Training and Support Centers and other nuclear security Centers of Excellence have increased and become more connected: 15 states have opened centers since 2009 in support of national nuclear workforce training requirements, as well as international capacity building and research and development on nuclear security technologies.
Radioactive source security has been enhanced: 23 countries agreed to secure their most dangerous radioactive sources to levels established in international guidelines by 2016.

Strengthening the Architecture

Key aspects of the Summits’ success have included the personal attention of national leaders; a focus on tangible, meaningful outcomes; a regular event that elicits deliverables and announcements; and a forum that builds relationships that can help advance joint efforts. We need to find ways to capture some of these attributes in more lasting vehicles to promote nuclear security progress.

The IAEA’s first-ever nuclear security ministerial held in 2013 is an important step towards strengthening the Agency’s role in promoting nuclear security, and we look forward to regularizing those high-level meetings, with the next one being held in December 2016. The 2012 special session at the UN on nuclear terrorism reflects the unique convening power of the United Nations in this arena. INTERPOL plays a unique role in bringing together law enforcement officials, as seen through its recent convening of the recent Global Conference to combat nuclear smuggling. Other fora for collective action – the Global Partnership, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), the Nuclear Suppliers Group – have all been invigorated in recent years. The United States hosted the first Nuclear Security Regulators Conference in 2012, and Spain will host the second such meeting in May 2016. The World Institute for Nuclear Security, professional societies and nongovernmental expert communities are also key components of this architecture and must continue to contribute to this mission as we move beyond Summits to nurture new concepts, build professional skills, and develop global connections.

The Summits were designed to enhance, elevate, expand and empower this architecture of treaties, institutions, norms and practices to effectively address the threats we face today and in the future. As the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit represents the last summit in this format, we will issue five Action Plans in support of the key enduring institutions and initiatives related to nuclear security: the UN, the IAEA, INTERPOL, the GICNT and the Global Partnership. These Action Plans represent steps the Summit participants will take as members of these organizations to support their enhanced role in nuclear security.

Another key component of the Summit’s success has been the effective network of “Sherpas” – the senior expert officials in each Summit country responsible for developing the outcomes of the Summits and for preparing their respective leaders. These Sherpas cut across multiple agencies to form a tight-knit community of action. This community will be carried forward after the 2016 Summit as a “Nuclear Security Contact Group” that will meet regularly to synchronize efforts to implement commitments made in the four Summit Communiqués, national statements, gift baskets, and Action Plans. Recognizing the interest from those who have not been part of the Summit process, this Contact Group will be open to countries that wish to promote the Summit agenda.

Looking Ahead

As much as we have accomplished through the Summit process, more work remains. We will continue to seek additional tangible results in nuclear material reductions and better overall nuclear and radiological security practices; we will look for ways to enhance the global nuclear security architecture; and, we will continue to promote an architecture that – over time – is comprehensive in its scope (including civilian and military material), is based on international standards, incorporates measures to build confidence that states are applying security responsibly in their countries, and promotes declining stocks of directly useable fissile material.

We all need to do more together to enhance nuclear security performance, to dissuade and apprehend nuclear traffickers, to eliminate excess nuclear weapons and material, to avoid production of materials we cannot use, to make sure our facilities can repel the full range of threats we have already seen in our neighborhoods, to share experiences and best practices, and to do so in ways that are visible to friends, neighbors, and rivals – and thereby provide assurance that we are effectively executing our sovereign responsibility. We also need to reflect the principle of continuous improvement, because nuclear security is never “done”. As long as materials exist, they require our utmost commitment to their protection—we continue the march toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

Only 5 Years?

Posted on March 28, 2016March 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Prison for smuggler who guided people into U.S.

Efrain Delgado Rosales had been caught with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 18 years

UnionTribune: San Diego— An apparent career smuggler nabbed while guiding four undocumented immigrants through the Otay Mountains last year was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.

U.S. Border Patrol agents had caught Efrain Delgado Rosales with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 17 years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

His latest encounter came in November, when agents spotted the 35-year-old guiding the foursome through rugged East County terrain.

The four men told authorities that Delgado had picked them up at a stash house in Mexico, led them to the border then left them for several hours. As they waited, thieves turned up and robbed them of all of their cash — thousands of dollars.

Related: See the case backlog through February 2016

Delgado returned and — indifferent to the robbery — guided them over the border and through the mountains. While hiking, he left behind three men who could not keep his pace.

At the begging of the fourth man, he eventually returned to collect the distressed trio, each of whom had paid $5,000 to be smuggled into the country.

The details they gave investigators about their experience with Delgado were strikingly similar to an instance in 2014, when a man smuggled into the country died while hiking in a rugged stretch of the Otay Mountains. One of his companions later identified Delgado as their guide.

Federal prosecutors said agents have apprehended Delgado 24 times since 1999, and in all but one instance, he was found with at least two and up to 46 undocumented immigrants.

*****

Brandon Judd, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council

March 21, 2016:

Obama Administration Official Confirms “Catch and Release” Policy

Border Patrol union chief tells the Judiciary Committee explosive information about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into U.S.

Washington, D.C.– Following the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee’s hearing on the ongoing surge at the southwest border, the House Judiciary Committee received information from the head of the Border Patrol union showing that a high-ranking Obama Administration official confirmed to Border Patrol agents the Administration’s policy of releasing recent border crossers with no intention of ever removing them.

In his responses to questions submitted for the record to the Committee, Brandon Judd, President of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council, stated that on August 26, 2015 he and two other Border Patrol agents met with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss concerns about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into the United States. During the meeting, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas confirmed to the agents that the Administration has no intention of removing unlawful immigrants coming to the border as part of the ongoing surge. Specifically, he stated:

“Why would we [issue a Notice to Appear to] those we have no intention of deporting? We should not place someone in deportation proceedings, when the courts already have a 3-6 year backlog.”

This de facto policy contradicts the Obama Administration’s so-called enforcement priorities issued on November 20, 2014 by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Under the guidelines, unlawful immigrants who came to the United States after January 1, 2014 and recent border crossers are deemed a priority for removal and are to be placed in deportation proceedings. However, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas’ comments to Border Patrol agents contradict the Administration’s own policies put forth by Secretary Johnson.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued the following statement on this information provided to the Committee:

“Not only has President Obama sought to undermine our immigration laws at every opportunity possible, now his political appointees have implemented a ‘catch and release’ policy that contradicts the Administration’s already weak enforcement priorities. Rather than take the steps necessary to end the border surge, the Obama Administration is encouraging more to come by forcing Border Patrol agents to release unlawful immigrants into the United States with no intention of ever removing them.

“The ongoing lack of enforcement and dismantling of our immigration laws undermines both our nation’s immigration system and the American people’s faith in their government.”

What about King Midas?

El Chapo’s money man arrested in Oaxaca

OAXACA, Mexico, March 28 (UPI) — A man reported to be one of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán top money launderers has been arrested, Mexican Federal Police said Sunday.

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, one of the top money launderers for Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was captured while vacationing in Oaxaca, Mexico by Mexican Federal Police and the Mexican Army. He is alleged to have laundered about $4 billion over the last ten years. Photo by Mexican Federal Police

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, alleged to have laundered about $4 billion in the last ten years, was arrested while vacationing in the southern state of Oaxaca, police tweeted.

Police said IInzunza, nicknamed “El Rey Midas” or “King Midas”, laundered about $300 million to $400 million dollars a year from the Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel through a network of companies and currency exchange centers in Mexico, the United States, Columbia and Panama, MSN reported.

IInzunza was arrested on a provisional extradition warrant from the U.S., where he is wanted for money laundering.

Guzmán was one of the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered Mexico’s most profitable drug gang. His escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico drew world-wide attention in 2015. He was recaptured after a shootout on Jan. 8.

Obamacare: Cadillac Tax

Posted on March 28, 2016March 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Full Measure | Obamacare: Cadillac Tax

It was an investment advisor from Philadelphia who stumbled onto one of the biggest stories about the Affordable Care Act to date. His name is Rich Weinstein and he helped expose a startling set of videos that changed how many Americans view Obamacare. Though publicly available, these remarkable videos have only been rarely seen, getting just a few hundred clicks. On them, a key Obamacare adviser admits they intentionally misled voters, whom he called stupid. Weinstein tells Full Measure how he dug up the videos as a citizen journalist and warns of more trouble ahead.

Rich Weinstein: Back in 2013, I was a victim of ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan’. So late in 2013, we got the email notice from the insurance company saying that our plan was no longer ACA compliant. I had believed at that point that I wouldn’t lose my plan based on what the administration, everybody was saying about the Affordable Care Act. At that point, I kind of decided to get involved and figure out what really was going on.

So Weinstein got on the Internet and started digging. What he found was a group of Obamacare advisers referred to as “architects”.

Weinstein: I started noticing more in the news that these people called ‘architects’ were out there basically trying to influence public opinion. And I figured these architect people were, they were mostly academics, and I thought maybe they would leave a trail of breadcrumbs for me to figure out what was going on.

The breadcrumbs led to revealing videos in the public record, but largely unknown to the average American. One star in these videos was Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jonathan Gruber: Look, I wish Mark was right. We could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

In a series of remarkable policy talks at conferences and in academic settings, Gruber seems to brag that Obamacare only passed through its lack of transparency and the stupidity of voters. For example, Gruber says he and other backers of Obamacare hid the fact that it would be costly to healthy Americans.

Gruber: If you had a law which said healthy people are gonna pay in, you made [it] explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.

But it’s another Gruber video that Weinstein says made him shiver. A video that foreshadows a little known sea change in U.S. tax structure mandated under Obamacare.

Weinstein: When I realized they were going after that, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Like, why haven’t I heard this before?

Gruber: It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.

Weinstein: When he’s talking about the lack of basic economic understanding of the American people, when he’s talking about the American people being stupid, he’s pretty much talking about the ‘Cadillac tax’.

Weinstein wondered, what is the Cadillac tax? That was explained in another video he discovered, this one featuring Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel in 2014. Emanuel said the Cadillac tax would go after a little known tax break millions of Americans get on their work insurance.

Ezekiel Emanuel: It is the single biggest tax break in the American tax code. It’s worth $250 billion dollars. To compare, for those of you who want to keep track, the mortgage deduction, sacrosanct, $70 billion dollars.

Weinstein: And it took me some time to figure it out, but I realized that they were going after that tax break and people are going to lose their tax break without knowing they were losing their tax break. That’s incredible.

Weinstein learned that since World War II, Americans’ health insurance benefits from work haven’t been taxed as income. The Obamacare Cadillac tax will change that.

It slaps a 40% tax on work-provided insurance policies valued above $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family. For example, say your individual plan costs $15,200. You’ll pay 40% of the amount over $10,200that’s 40% of $5,000, which means an extra $2,000 to the IRS at the end of the year.

In another video Weinstein found, Emanuel describes how he had to convince President Obama and his political team to support the tax.

Emanuel: The other side, inside the White House, that other part of the health team and especially the political team, which David Axelrod headed up, hated this idea.

One reason they hated it, Emanuel explains, is because in 2008, Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, proposed eliminating the tax benefit, in effect imposing a giant new tax and at that time, Obama was against it.

Barack Obama, October, 2008 campaign speech: John McCain calls these plans ‘Cadillac’ plans. And in some cases it may be that a corporate CEO may be getting too good of a deal. But what if you are a line worker, making a good American car like the Cadillac? What if you are one of the steel workers, who are working right here in Newport News? And you have given up wage increases in exchange for better healthcare? Well, Senator McCain believes you should pay higher taxes too. The bottom line, the better your healthcare plan, the harder you fought for your good benefits, the higher the taxes you’ll pay under John McCain’s plan.

But now, under Obamacare, he’d be imposing exactly what he criticized McCain for proposing: a massive tax hike on American workers’ health insurance. Emanuel would later reveal how it took some convincing to get the President to go along.

Emanuel: The President campaigned against John McCain, who wanted to get rid of the tax exclusion entirely with over $100 million dollars’ worth of ads saying, you know,’Republicans are gonna tax your health benefits for the first time ever’. This was an enigma. The President was going to go back on his word.

Weinstein: They wanted to get at your tax break and they couldn’t do it overtly, because Senator Obama in 2008 spent $100 million destroying John McCain.

Emanuel goes on to say in the video that he helped convince President Obama to impose the Cadillac tax on American workers with the idea that it would reduce health care costs. But how to convince the public to accept a huge new tax?

Gruber says they decided to use wordplay: the public would be told it was a tax on insurance plans rather than consumers.

Gruber: Calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we all know it’s really a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.

Gruber: You say,’Well, that’s pretty much the same thing. Why does it matter?’ You’ll see and they were both in and that passed, because the American voter is too stupid to understand the difference.

Gruber: We just tax the insurance companies. They pass it on in higher prices that offsets the tax break we get. It ends up being the same thing.

Sharyl: They were going to be able to tax the American public, but not call it a tax on the American public?

Weinstein: Well, they were going to tax the American public without the American public knowing it was a tax on the American public, because they were going to put the tax on the insurance plan, which would then be passed through to the American public through premium increases.

After some of Weinstein’s stunning video discoveries were reported on the news in 2014, Gruber apologized and called his remarks “inexcusably arrogant”.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Dec. 9, 2014 Hearing:

Gruber: In excerpts of these videos, I am shown making a series of glib, thoughtless and sometimes downright insulting commentsI know better. I am embarrassed and I am sorry.

Both Gruber and Emanuel declined comment for this report. President Obama has said he does not agree with Gruber’s assessment of the American public’s intellect, and that the former adviser’s views do not reflect the process. The White House wouldn’t offer further comment.

As for Weinstein: he sees the future. Not because he’s clairvoyant, but because the Obamacare architects laid it all out in those videos. He says the looming Cadillac tax will cause employers to drop insurance plans. More Americans will be forced to buy policies on the Obamacare exchange, where premiums and deductibles are quickly rising.

Weinstein: And the high-wage employees will not have the benefit of a subsidy. The lower-wage employees will, which turns a regressive policy into a progressive policy. I kind of jokingly refer to it as the Super Bowl of progressive politics, because you’re gonna go from regressive to progressive and people aren’t even gonna know what hit ’em. Everything I know about this came from people on the left. It came from Jonathan Gruber. It came from Zeke Emanuel. It came from other architects or other academics. It’s their words and that’s kind of the strength of what I’ve been able to find. My words really aren’t important. It’s their words. It’s all there on video.

Gruber: Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.

Why is it called the Cadillac tax? It’s on the most generous, high-end plans. The Cadillac tax was supposed to start in 2018. As word of it sunk in, the tax has become so unpopular among Democrats, Republicans, corporations and unions that Congress voted to postpone it until 2020. The problem is: employers are already anticipating it and adjusting by downgrading or even cancelling policies they offer at work.

Obama, More Iran Concessions Coming

Posted on March 25, 2016March 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

If you thought Obama was done making concessions to Iran — think again

WashingtonExaminer: One of the arguments critics of the Iran deal made during last year’s debate was that beyond the staggering immediate concessions to Iran, the deal paves the way for ongoing and future concessions. The reason is that the reality of the agreement leaves the U.S. hamstrung by fear that Iran can use anything as a pretext to pull out of the deal. We’re now starting to see this play out, as Obama administration officials are signaling that they may provide additional sanctions relief to address Iranian complaints, even though they promised Congress no such relief would ever be provided.

Specifically, the Associated Press reports that the U.S. government could be on the verge of a major capitulation: “The Obama administration is leaving the door open to new sanctions relief for Iran, including possibly long-forbidden access to the U.S. financial market.”

Last summer, as the deal was being debated, administration officials told Congress that this would never happen as a way of reassuring skeptics who feared that the entire sanctions regime against Iran was being unraveled. Plenty of layers of sanctions still remained to pressure Iran, the administration argued.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew insisted to Congress that under the deal Iran would “be denied access to the world’s largest financial and commercial market.”

Additionally, the head of Treasury’s sanctions division said, “Iran will not be able to open bank accounts with U.S. banks, nor will Iran be able to access the U.S. banking sector.”

When asked if this was still the case, Lew said the U.S. may take future action to “make sure Iran gets relief.” The Treasury Department told the AP, “We will continue to analyze the sanctions lifting and its effects.”

To recap, in addition to $150 billion in sanctions relief, through the nuclear agreement, the administration caved into Iran on uranium enrichment, ballistic missiles, inspections, the duration of the deal’s restrictions and the maintenance of a facility under a bunker.

When the U.S. received nothing from Iran in terms of ending its sponsorship of terrorism or its human rights violations, the excuse from administration officials was always that there was a concerted effort to limit the negotiations to the Iranian nuclear program.

But the latest concession evidently under consideration by the administration would blow a hole in the entire sanctions regime. So it seems that in reality, it was only Iran’s concessions to the U.S. that were limited to the nuclear program — and even those were paltry. In reality, the U.S. will continue to make concessions that will make it easier for Iran to sponsor terrorism and make them a stronger bad actor throughout the Middle East.

As it is, since the deal was signed, the administration has been weak in responding to Iranian ballistic missile tests and it has accepted a prominent role for the radical regime in the Syrian peace process, even though Iran shares a lot of the blame for the situation in Syria.

In other words, the Obama administration’s concessions to Iran did not end in Vienna last summer. They merely started there.

*****

In part AP: Rep. Ed Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, expressed alarm in a letter this week to the president that the U.S. could grant Iranian businesses the ability to conduct transactions in dollars within the United States or through offshore banks. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he is “deeply troubled” by the possibility.

The concession would go a long way to meet Iran’s complaints that it hasn’t been sufficiently rewarded by the West for taking thousands of uranium-spinning centrifuges offline, exporting its stockpile of the bomb-making material and disabling a facility that would have been able to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Asked if such a move was being considered, the Treasury Department told The Associated Press in an emailed statement: “We will continue to analyze the sanctions lifting and its effects.”

The State Department wouldn’t comment.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress after the July accord that Iran would still be “denied access to the world’s largest financial and commercial market.”

“Iran will not be able to open bank accounts with U.S. banks, nor will Iran be able to access the U.S. banking sector,” Adam Szubin, the department’s sanctions chief, told a House panel at the time. He said that would hold true even for simple transactions to “dollarize” a foreign payment.

But asked specifically about that commitment earlier this week, Lew allowed for future U.S. action to “make sure Iran gets relief.” More here.

Operation Hemorrhage

Posted on March 24, 2016March 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

It has been said often, either fight the enemy in a true war theater on the battlefield with real war tactics or fight them at home. Brussels and Paris and in the United States in Boston and San Bernardino to mention a few, the hybrid war gets real expensive. These costs are rarely measured or questioned. We are also not measuring the cost of freedoms are giving up. Add in the cost of the cyber war…..well….going back much earlier than 9-11-01 the costs cannot be calculated.

Operation Hemorrhage: The Terror Plans to Wreck the West’s Economy

The Western economy is a key underlying target in attacks like the one that the Islamic State perpetrated in Brussels.

DailyBeast: Every European who flies frequently knows the airport in Zaventem, has spent time in the ticketing area that was strewn with blood, limbs, broken glass, battered luggage and other wreckage.

It was another attack on aviation that pulled the United States into the conflict sometimes known as the “global war on terror” in the first place. Since then, airports and airplanes have remained a constant target for Islamic militants, with travelers being encumbered by new batches of security measures after each new attack or attempt.

After the ex-con Richard Reid managed to sneak a bomb aboard a transatlantic flight in December 2001, but failed to detonate the explosives, American passengers were forced to start removing their shoes on their way through security. After British authorities foiled a 2006 plot in which terrorists planned to bring liquid explosives hidden in sport drink bottles aboard multiple transatlantic flights, authorities strictly limited the quantity of liquids passengers were allowed to carry. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab snuck explosives hidden in his underwear onto a flight on Christmas Day 2009, he ushered in full-body scans and intrusive pat-downs.

Those are the misses. There have been hits, too. In August 2004, two female Chechen suicide bombers, so-called “black widows,” destroyed two domestic Russian flights. In January 2011, a suicide bomber struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in an attack that looked almost identical to the one that rocked the airport in Brussels: the bomber struck just outside the security cordon, where the airport is transformed from a “soft” target to a “hard” one. Just months ago, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS)—the perpetrator of the Brussels attacks—destroyed a Russian passenger jet flying out of Egypt’s Sinai, killing 224 people.

The targeting of airports and airplanes has been so frequent that in lighter times—back when the terrorists seemed so much worse at what they do—some pundits openly mocked their continuing return to airplanes and airports. In one representative discussion from early 2010, a well-known commentator described jihadists as having a “sort of schoolboy fixation” with aviation.

But the reason for this targeting, of course, is neither mysterious nor quixotic, and it’s one the jihadists have explained for themselves. Following the November Paris attacks, ISIS released an infographic boasting that its slaughter on the streets of Paris would force Belgium “to strengthen its security measures … which will cost them tens of millions of dollars.” Moreover, the group claimed, “the intensified security measures and the general state of unease will cost Europe in general and France in specific tends of billions of dollars due to the resulting decrease in tourism, delayed flights, and restrictions on freedom of movement and travel between European countries.”

And that was before the group successfully attacked the Brussels airport, despite those costly new security measures.

Even before 9/11, jihadists saw bleeding the American economy as the surest path to defeating their “far enemy.” When Osama bin Laden declared war against the “Jews and crusaders” in 1996, he emphasized that jihadist strikes should be coupled with an economic boycott by Saudi women. Otherwise, the Muslims would be sending their enemy money, “which is the foundation of wars and armies.”

Indeed, when bin Laden first had the opportunity to publicly explain what the 9/11 attacks had accomplished, in an October 2001 interview with Al Jazeera journalist Taysir Allouni, he emphasized the costs that the attacks imposed on the United States. “According to their own admissions, the share of the losses on the Wall Street market reached 16 percent,” he said. “The gross amount that is traded in that market reaches $4 trillion. So if we multiply 16 percent with $4 trillion to find out the loss that affected the stocks, it reaches $640 billion of losses.” He told Allouni that the economic effect was even greater due to building and construction losses and missed work, so that the damage inflicted was “no less than $1 trillion by the lowest estimate.”

In his October 2004 address to the American people, dramatically delivered just before that year’s elections, bin Laden noted that the 9/11 attacks cost Al Qaeda only a fraction of the damage inflicted upon the United States. “Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event,” he said, “while America in the incident and its aftermath lost—according to the lowest estimates—more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of Al Qaeda defeated a million dollars.”

Al Qaeda fit the wars the United States had become embroiled in after 9/11 into its economic schema. In that same video, bin Laden explained how his movement sought to suck the United States and its allies into draining wars in the Muslim world. The mujahedin “bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt,” bin Laden said, and they would now do the same to the United States.

Just prior to 2011, there was a brief period when jihadism appeared to be in decline. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that later became ISIS, had all but met with defeat at the hands of the United States and local Sunni uprisings. Successful attacks were few and far between.

Valentin Bianchi/AP

Representative of those dark times for jihadists, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a special issue of its online magazine Inspire celebrating a terrorist attack that claimed no victims. In October 2010, jihadists were able to sneak bombs hidden in printer cartridges onto two cargo planes. Due to strong intelligence efforts, authorities disabled both bombs before they were set to explode, but the group drew satisfaction from merely getting them aboard the planes.

“Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us,” the lead article in that special issue of Inspire boasted. “On the other hand this supposedly ‘foiled plot’, as some of our enemies would like to call [it], will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.” The magazine warned that future attacks will be “smaller, but more frequent”—an approach that “some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts.”

The radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki, writing in Inspire, explained the dilemma that he saw gripping Al Qaeda’s foes. “You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world,” he wrote, “or you do nothing and we keep trying again.”

Even in those days when the terrorist threat loomed so much smaller, the point was not a bad one. Security is expensive, and driving up costs is one way jihadists aim to wear down Western economies.

Unfortunately, Al Qaeda’s envisioned world of smaller but more frequent attacks proved unnecessary for the jihadists. Less than two months after the special issue of Inspire appeared that celebrated an at best half-successful attack, the revolutionary events that we then knew as the “Arab Spring” sent shockwaves through the Middle East and North Africa.

This instability would help jihadism reach the current heights to which it has ascended, where the attacks are not only more frequent but larger. Unfortunately, the United States—blinded at the time by the misguided belief that revolutions in the Arab world would devastate the jihadist movement—pursued policies that hastened the region’s instability. The damages wrought by these policies are still not fully appreciated.

The silver lining to the jihadist economic strategy is that they, too, are economically vulnerable. The damage inflicted on ISIS’s “state” by coalition bombings and other pressures forced the group to slice its fighters’ salaries at the beginning of this year. But as Al Qaeda watches its flashier jihadist rival carry out gruesome attacks on Western targets and get bombarded in return, it discerns further proof of the wisdom of its strategy of attrition.

As it watches these two sets of foes exhaust each other, Al Qaeda believes that its comparative patience will pay off. It believes that its own time will come.