Category Archives: Middle East

Obama has Synchronized Iran’s Nuclear Program

Posted on by

Consider the stated position of the Supreme leader of Iran:

Reuters and AFP – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated his country’s red lines for a nuclear deal with six world powers.

“Freezing Iran’s research and development for a long time like 10 or 12 years is not acceptable,” Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on June 23.

Khamenei, who has the final say for Iran on any deal, added that all financial and economic sanctions “should be lifted immediately” if an agreement is signed.

Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the United States want Tehran to commit to a verifiable halt of at least 10 years on sensitive nuclear development work as part of a deal they aim to reach by a June 30 deadline. In exchange, they are offering relief from economic sanctions.

Khamenei reiterated that Iran would not give international inspectors access to its military sites and accused the United States of wanting to destroy Iran’s nuclear industry.

The six powers want limits on Tehran’s programs that could have a military use.

Tehran denies it is pursuing nuclear weapons.

***

When the NYT finally prints an explosive fantasy piece on what the White House and John Kerry at the State Department are doing with Iran, one needs to take notice. The New York Times calls this Iran agreement a ‘fatal flaw’.

The Iran Deal’s Fatal Flaw

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S main pitch for the pending nuclear deal with Iran is that it would extend the “breakout time” necessary for Iran to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. In a recent interview with NPR, he said that the current breakout time is “about two to three months by our intelligence estimates.” By contrast, he claimed, the pending deal would shrink Iran’s nuclear program, so that if Iran later “decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.”

Unfortunately, that claim is false, as can be demonstrated with basic science and math.  Most important, in the event of an overt attempt by Iran to build a bomb, Mr. Obama’s argument assumes that Iran would employ only the 5,060 centrifuges that the deal would allow for uranium enrichment, not the roughly 14,000 additional centrifuges that Iran would be permitted to keep mainly for spare parts. Such an assumption is laughable. In a real-world breakout, Iran would race, not crawl, to the bomb.  Iran stands to gain enormously. The deal would lift nuclear-related sanctions, thereby infusing Iran’s economy with billions of dollars annually. In addition, the deal could release frozen Iranian assets, reportedly giving Tehran a $30 billion to $50 billion “signing bonus.”

Showering Iran with rewards for making illusory concessions poses grave risks. It would entrench the ruling mullahs, who could claim credit for Iran’s economic resurgence. The extra resources would also enable Iran to amplify the havoc it is fostering in neighboring countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Worst of all, lifting sanctions would facilitate a huge expansion of Iran’s nuclear program. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, says that he wants 190,000 centrifuges eventually, or 10 times the current amount, as would appear to be permissible under the deal after just 10 years. Such enormous enrichment capacity would shrink the breakout time to mere days, so that Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb before we even knew it was trying — thus eliminating any hope of our taking preventive action.

Nothing in the pending deal is worth such risks. Read the full article in context here.

*** But is getting worse as new documents demonstrate.

Reported by Fox News via Associated Press:

The United States and its allies are willing to offer Iran state-of-the-art nuclear equipment if Tehran agrees to pare down its atomic weapons program as part of a final nuclear agreement, a draft document has revealed.

The confidential paper, obtained by the Associated Press, has dozens of bracketed text where disagreements remain. Technical cooperation is the least controversial issue at the talks, and the number of brackets suggest the sides have a ways to go, not only on that topic but also more contentious disputes, with less than a week until the June 30 deadline for a deal.

However, the scope of the help now being offered in the draft may displease U.S. congressional critics who already argue that Washington has offered too many concessions at the negotiations.

The draft, titled “Civil Nuclear Cooperation,” promises to supply Iran with light-water nuclear reactors instead of its nearly completed heavy-water facility at Arak, which would produce enough plutonium for several bombs a year if completed as planned. The full details are here.

Civil Nuclear Cooperation platform is not new.

Chilling are the following facts:

Russia and Saudi Arabia have signed a nuclear cooperation agreement. The U.S. has done the same with Korea. Then comes Pakistan learning from U.S. and India where pacts could lead to even more proliferation globally.

For a more detailed summary of the Nuclear Cooperation agreements, take a look at a surface review on equipment, supply and banks in the matter of Korea.

 

Hillary’s Plan for Post Qaddafi Libya

Posted on by

Libya and Hillary’s team investment operation in post Qaddafi Libya

 

When Ambassador Cretz was expelled from Libya, he was later assigned to Ghana. As of this week, he is out of Ghana, allegedly retiring. I would suggest he is in the belly of the beast with the Hillary team, but I can’t prove anything other than a gut feeling.

 

The Blumenthal and Clinton emails explain that Qaddafi’s demise was imminent so the financial investment opportunities in the pipeline for Libya were about to gain traction that included Qatar, where Hillary fully collaborated with the dynasty there. 

 

Last month, I authored a piece on the little known agenda Hillary, Blumenthal and Drumheller along with the Qataris were working on, where Tripoli and Benghazi were to be the new Middle East version of New York’s 5th Avenue.

     

Before Qaddafi and just after Qaddafi, note there was a luxury project underway. The Libyan-Qatari Company declared recently the laying of the foundation stone of “The Waterfront” project, for the construction of a luxurious residential complex and resort near Tripoli, expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

Many interesting details are noted here.

 Pay to Play…literally…

This poses another question to bubble to the surface when the matter of Bill Clinton, the Foundation, Qatar and FIFA all come into the same sentence.

 

 

In 2014, more came to light when one pays attention to foreign press releases that speaks about the future of Libya at the hands of Qatar and other European investors.

 

Qatar in Libya, 2011-present

 

Qatar’s bold support for the 2011 Libyan revolution was a striking example of the small state’s assertiveness in the external realm. One of the most symbolic moments of this support came when rebels in Libya overran Qadhafi’s Tripoli headquarters in August 2011 and briefly raised the maroon and white Qatari flag over the compound. That day, Mahmoud Jibril, the head of Libya’s provisional governing authority, the National Transitional Council (NTC), publically thanked Qatar for its support of the Libyan revolution.

 

While Qatar’s role in Libya was critical in backing the revolution, the emirate had also dealt with the Qadhafi regime prior to 2011. Indeed, Qatari investments in Libya amounted to USD 10 billion before the start of the civil war. During that time, Qatari companies won construction contracts for the development of residential and entertainment complexes in and around Tripoli based on a joint venture between the Libyan Economic and Social Development Fund and the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company, a branch of the state-run Qatar Investment Authority.

 

Apparently seeing the inevitable demise of Qadhafi, in March 2011, Qatar nevertheless helped to rally support within the Arab League for the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing NATO intervention in Libya. It was the first Arab state to recognize the National Transition Council (NTC).viii Qatar went so far as to participate in the air war with its own military aircraft (six Mirage fighter jets), and elite Qatari troops participated in the liberation of Tripoli. By the end of the conflict, Qatar had contributed USD 400 million to the rebels (including an estimated twenty thousand tons of Qatari weapons and equipment), trained fighters, set up a TV station in Doha, helped Libya keep its oil exports flowing, and provided political and organizational support, especially to militias aligned with its vision and interests.

 Doing Business with Middle East Operations Blocked by Treasury

What is very interesting is in November of 2011, several of the investment groups were removed from the Treasury Department’s special designation list of Foreign Assets Control and one in particular was the Libyan Economic and Social Development Fund.

 

Then enter more on Qatar. Now there is a Tourism company in Libya?  The Qatar Diar a worldwide real estate developer has grand real estate operations.

 

What is planned now for Libya after the Arab Spring?   Back to the European investors and the collusion with Qatar. Then Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote a very good time line using names attached to the Foundation.

 

So how did or does this all work out? Not so well when ISIS has a growing footprint in Libya. Summary from The Fuse:

 ISIS in Libya map

 

 

 

 

Cyber Conflict, Chaos and Calamity

Posted on by

There have been several Congressional hearings on cyber-terrorism, yet with such an emergency and threat, no solution is forthcoming.

From AEI: “America’s intelligence leaders have made clear the biggest threat today is cyber and counterintelligence. Who are the largest perpetrators of these types of attacks? The intelligence report singles out Russia and China as first examples. These nations have “highly sophisticated cyber programs” and are regularly conducting “politically motivated” attacks. What are they up to exactly? Countries such as China are “reconnoitering and developing access to US critical infrastructure systems, which might be quickly exploited for disruption if an adversary’s intent became hostile.” Back in 2013, Verizon released a report detailing Chinese hackers lurking around inside American industrial control systems—the cyber equivalent to casing a robbery target. In 2014 alone, the FBI investigated a likely Russian hacking campaign against American banking backbone JP Morgan, while two cybersecurity firms blamed Iran for a major campaign against US critical infrastructure like major airliners, medical universities, and energy companies. As the year ended, the US government publicly accused North Korea of a devastating cyberattack against Sony.”

When of Office of National Intelligence produced a report, the first chapter is on cyber threats.

“Risk. Despite ever-improving network defenses, the diverse possibilities for remote hacking intrusions, supply chain operations to insert compromised hardware or software, and malevolent activities by human insiders will hold nearly all ICT systems at risk for years to come. In short, the cyber threat cannot be eliminated; rather, cyber risk must be managed. Moreover, the risk calculus employed by some private sector entities does not adequately account for foreign cyber threats or the systemic interdependencies between different critical infrastructure sectors.

Costs. During 2014, we saw an increase in the scale and scope of reporting on malevolent cyber activity that can be measured by the amount of corporate data stolen or deleted, personally identifiable information (PII) compromised, or remediation costs incurred by US victims. “

The stakes are higher than anyone will admit, most of all the White House. The Office of Personnel Management hack of personnel files now appears to exceed 18 million individuals. “FBI Director James Comey gave the 18 million estimate in a closed-door briefing to Senators in recent weeks, using the OPM’s own internal data, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. Those affected could include people who applied for government jobs, but never actually ended up working for the government.”

Just announced as a possible additional agency falling victim to hacking is the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). What is chilling about this probability is all government reports, records and communications are by law to be maintained by NARA., even classified material.

EXCLUSIVE: Signs of OPM Hack Turn Up at Another Federal Agency

The National Archives and Records Administration recently detected unauthorized activity on three desktops indicative of the same hack that extracted sensitive details on millions of current and former federal employees, government officials said Monday. The revelation suggests the breadth of one of the most damaging cyber assaults known is wider than officials have disclosed.

The National Archives’ own intrusion-prevention technology successfully spotted the so-called indicators of compromise during a scan this spring, said a source involved in the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident. The discovery was made soon after the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team published signs of the wider attack — which targeted the Office of Personnel Management — to look for at agencies, according to NARA.

It is unclear when NARA computers were breached. Suspected Chinese-sponsored cyberspies reportedly had been inside OPM’s networks for a year before the agency discovered what happened in April. Subsequently, the government uncovered a related attack against OPM that mined biographical information on individuals who have filed background investigation forms to access classified secrets.

The National Archives has found no evidence intruders obtained “administrative access,” or took control, of systems, but files were found in places they did not belong, the investigator said.

NARA “systems” and “applications” were not compromised, National Archives spokeswoman Laura Diachenko emphasized to Nextgov,  “but we detected IOCs,” indicators of compromise, “on three workstations, which were cleaned and re-imaged,” or reinstalled.

“Other files found seemed to be legitimate,” such as those from a Microsoft website, she said. “We have requested further guidance from US-CERT on how to deal with these” and are still awaiting guidance on how to proceed.

It will take additional forensics assessments to determine whether attackers ever “owned” the National Archives computers, the investigator said.

Diachenko said, “Continued analysis with our monitoring and forensic tools has not detected any activity associated with a hack,” including alerts from the latest version of a governmentwide network-monitoring tool called EINSTEIN 3A.

EINSTEIN, like NARA’s own intrusion-prevention tool, is now configured to detect the tell-tale signs of the OPM attack.

“OPM isn’t the only agency getting probed by this group,” said John Prisco, president of security provider Triumphant, the company that developed the National Archives’ tool. “It could be happening in lots of other agencies.”

Prisco said he learned of the incident at a security industry conference June 9, from an agency official the company has worked with for years.

“They told us that they were really happy because we stopped the OPM attack in their agency,” Prisco said.

The malicious operation tries to open up ports to the Internet, so it can excise information, Prisco said.

“It’s doing exploration work laterally throughout the network and then it’s looking for a way to communicate what it finds back to its server,” he added.

Homeland Security officials on Monday would not confirm or deny the situation at the National Archives. DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee referred to the department’s earlier statement about the OPM hack: “DHS has shared information regarding the potential incident with all federal chief information officers to ensure that all agencies have the knowledge they need to defend against this cybersecurity incident.”

The assault on OPM represents the seventh raid on national security-sensitive or federal personnel information over the past year.

Well-funded hackers penetrated systems at the State Department, the White House, U.S. Postal Service and, previously in March 2014, OPM. Intruders also broke into networks twice at KeyPoint Government Solutions, an OPM background check provider, and once at USIS, which conducted most of OPM’s employee investigations until last summer.

On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the OPM incident that, among other things, will examine the possibility that hackers got into the agency’s systems by using details taken from the contractors.

POTUS Approves U.S. Troops Sharing Base with Iran

Posted on by

Cant make this up…Iran has been an enemy of the United States for decades and now our uniformed personnel in Iraq are forced to share an air base, Taqqadum, in Anbar. This is not sitting well with one senator and frankly, we should be screaming about it. What is worse, is the Joint Chiefs are apparently cool with it unless there are chairs and tables being thrown about in the halls of the Pentagon?

Monday, June 22, 2015
Washington, D.C.— Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today released the following statement in response to reports that the United States is sharing a military base with Iranian forces in Iraq:
“When I was a soldier fighting in Iraq, Iran supplied the most advanced, most lethal roadside bombs used against coalition forces. Many American soldiers lost their lives to Iran’s proxies and Iranian-supplied bombs.  Further, Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism and has been attacking the United States for decades. It’s deeply troubling that the President now finds it acceptable to share a military base with this enemy, even while we are attempting to negotiate a deal to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“This report is a stark and nearly absurd demonstration of the Obama administration’s tacit accommodation of Iran’s strategic aim of extending its influence in Iraq.  It echoes the president’s tacit accommodation of Iran’s wish to maintain Bashar al-Assad in Syria and his explicit accommodation of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
For background in MILCOM in Iraq and this base, see page 33.

Iran’s Forces and U.S. Share a Base in Iraq

By &

The U.S. military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are getting closer and closer in Iraq, even sharing a base, while Iran uses those militias to expand its influence in Iraq and fight alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime in neighboring Syria.

Two senior administration officials confirmed to us that U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the Taqqadum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the base have killed American soldiers in the past.

Some inside the Obama administration fear that sharing the base puts U.S. soldiers at risk. The U.S. intelligence community has reported back to Washington that representatives of some of the more extreme militias have been spying on U.S. operations at Taqqadum, one senior administration official told us. That could be calamitous if the fragile relationship between the U.S. military and the Shiite militias comes apart and Iran-backed forces decide to again target U.S. troops.

American critics of this growing cooperation between the U.S. military and the Iranian-backed militias call it a betrayal of the U.S. personnel who fought against the militias during the 10-year U.S. occupation of Iraq.

“It’s an insult to the families of the American soldiers that were wounded and killed in battles in which the Shia militias were the enemy,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain told us. “Now, providing arms to them and supporting them, it’s very hard for those families to understand.”

The U.S. is not directly training Shiite units of what are known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, which include tens of thousands of Iraqis who have volunteered to fight against the Islamic Stateas well as thousands of hardened militants who ultimately answer to militia leaders loyal to Tehran. But the U.S. is flying close air support missions for those forces.

The U.S. gives weapons directly only to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Security Forces, but the lines between them and the militias are blurry. U.S. weapons often fall into the hands of militias like Iraqi Hezbollah. Sometimes the military cooperation is even more explicit. Commanders of some of the hardline militias sit in on U.S. military briefings on operations that were meant for the government-controlled Iraqi Security Forces, a senior administration official said.

This collaboration with terrorist groups that have killed Americans was seen as unavoidable as the U.S. marshaled Iraqis against the Islamic State, but could prove counterproductive to U.S. interests in the long term, this official said.

The militias comprise largely Shiite volunteers and are headed by the leader of the Iraqi Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Hewas sanctioned in 2009 by the Treasury Department for destabilizing Iraq. Al-Muhandis is a close associate of Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian Quds Force commander, who has snapped selfies with the militia leader at key battles.

Other militias that have participated in the fighting against the Islamic State include the League of the Righteous, which in 2007 carried out a brutal roadside execution of five U.S. soldiers near Karbala. The group to this day boasts of its killing of U.S. soldiers. In an interview in February, a spokesman for the militia defended the killings and said his militia had killed many more American soldiers.

Members of these groups have also been deployed by Iran to defend the Assad regime in neighboring Syria. James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, confirmed in a June 3 letter to seven Republican senators, which we obtained, that “Iran and Hezbollah have also leveraged allied Iraqi Shiia militant and terrorist groups — which receive training in Iran — to participate in pro-Assad operations.”

The Washington Institute in 2013 identified three militias — the League of the Righteous, Iraqi Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada — as sending elite fighters to Syria to fight for Assad.  All three help to lead the popular mobilization committees that fight the Islamic State in Iraq.

These militias also stand accused of gross human rights abuses and battlefield atrocities in Sunni areas where they have fought. The State Department heavily criticized Iran’s support for the Iraqi militias and those militias’ behavior in its annual report on worldwide terrorism, released late last week.

“Despite its pledge to support Iraq’s stabilization, Iran increased training and funding to Iraqi Shia militia groups in response to ISIL’s advance into Iraq. Many of these groups, such as Iraqi Hezbollah, have exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians,” the State Department reported. “Similar to Hezbollahfighters, many of these trained Shia militants have used these skills to fight for the Assad regime in Syria or against ISIL in Iraq.”

Accounts of the number of Iraqi Shiite fighters at Taqqadum vary. One senior administration official told us there are “only a few” militia representatives at the base, to coordinate with Iraqi Security Forces, while the bulk of the popular mobilization forces are deployed in the field, mostly around Ramadi, which is held by theIslamic State. A different senior administration official told us that there were hundreds of Shiite militia fighters at the base recently and that they flow in and out of the base for operations in the area.

The U.S. government has sought and received formal assurances from the government of Iraq that the Shiite militias on the base would not interfere with American military personnel. Butthere’s widespread skepticism that the politicians in Baghdad exertany real control over the hard-line militias. So far, in the 11 months since U.S. special operations forces have been in Iraq, Iranian supported militias in Iraq and U.S. personnel have not clashed while fighting a common enemy.

“There’s no real command and control from the central government,” one senior administration official said. “Even if these guys don’t attack us … Iran is ushering in a new Hezbollah era in Iraq, and we will have aided and abetted it.”

With the deadline approaching for a nuclear deal that would place up to $150 billion in the hands of Iran, the U.S. is now openly acknowledging in its annual report on international terrorism that Iran is supporting a foreign legion, comprising Afghans, Iraqis and Lebanese fighters, to defend Iranian interests throughout the Middle East.

But the U.S. response to this is inconsistent. In Iraq, America is fighting alongside Iranian-backed militias. In Syria, U.S.-supported forces are fighting against these same militias. The tragedy of this policy is that the Islamic State has been able to hold and expand its territory in Iraq and Syria, while Iran has been able to tighten its grip on Baghdad.

 

How Did Valerie Jarrett Pass a Background Check

Posted on by

Now this also begs the question, what did Obama know, did he approve and what is he going to do now?

The 73 page FBI file on Valerie Jarrett’s family is found here. The father is noted here.

From Judicial Watch:

FBI Files Document Communism in Valerie Jarrett’s Family

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that the dad, maternal grandpa and father-in-law of President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government.

Jarrett’s dad, pathologist and geneticist Dr. James Bowman, had extensive ties to Communist associations and individuals, his lengthy FBI file shows. In 1950 Bowman was in communication with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who fled to Prague after getting charged with espionage. Bowman was also a member of a Communist-sympathizing group called the Association of Internes and Medical Students. After his discharge from the Army Medical Corps in 1955, Bowman moved to Iran to work, the FBI records show.

According to Bowman’s government file the Association of Internes and Medical Students is an organization that “has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line” and engages in un-American activities. Bowman was born in Washington D.C. and had deep ties to Chicago, where he often collaborated with fellow Communists. JW also obtained documents on Bowman from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) showing that the FBI was brought into investigate him for his membership in a group that “follows the communist party line.” The Jarrett family Communist ties also include a business partnership between Jarrett’s maternal grandpa, Robert Rochon Taylor, and Stern, the Soviet agent associated with her dad.

Jarrett’s father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was also another big-time Chicago Communist, according to separate FBI files obtained by JW as part of a probe into the Jarrett family’s Communist ties. For a period of time Vernon Jarrett appeared on the FBI’s Security Index and was considered a potential Communist saboteur who was to be arrested in the event of a conflict with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). His FBI file reveals that he was assigned to write propaganda for a Communist Party front group in Chicago that would “disseminate the Communist Party line among…the middle class.”

It’s been well documented that Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago lawyer and longtime Obama confidant, is a liberal extremist who wields tremendous power in the White House. Faithful to her roots, she still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Jarrett and her family also had strong ties to Frank Marshal Davis, a big Obama mentor and Communist Party member with an extensive FBI file.

JW has exposed Valerie Jarrett’s many transgressions over the years, including her role in covering up a scandalous gun-running operation carried out by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Last fall JW obtained public records that show Jarrett was a key player in the effort to cover up that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about the Fast and Furious, a disastrous experiment in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

In 2008 JW got documents linking Valerie Jarrett, who also served as co-chairman of Obama’s presidential transition team, to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin “Tony” Rezko. According to the documents obtained from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago slum projects operated by Rezko.