In spite of pulling all U.S. forces out of Iraq in 2011, the United States did leave behind an unknown number of covert intelligence personnel that were tasked to work the ground in Iraq keeping a ear to actions in Iraq and Syria all with the knowledge of Maliki. Not withstanding, the U.S. also maintained a surveillance drone operation in Iraq since the exit of forces.

The drone operations and the intelligence operations were on-going for the last few years and Maliki approved. The information was selectively shared with Iraqi leadership knowing full well that Maliki was connected to the hip to Iran. A nasty conundrum for sure.

At the core of the ISIS conflict in Iraq is the same condition that occurred in Syria and the Obama regime knew full well what was brewing and chose to delay, ignore and actually dismiss, deferring all pro-active measures for the sake of the renewed talks and pending partnership with Iran over several objectives most of which was the re-tooling of the nuclear weapons program and lifting sanctions.

In the meantime, the Obama regime has chosen to not work diligently with Maliki since the U.S. departure from Iraq to ensure any acceptance of the Kurds and the Sunnis into a government coalition which would have prevented what we are seeing in Iraq today, frankly the Obama regime has been dismissive of the same for four years of Assad in Syria.

Iran has been driving the civil war in Syria with the help of Russia supplying weapons to Assad making Syria the incubation location for jihadis from 81 countries to gain fighting skills and a salary such that Western country leadership is deeply concerned over the threat that well trained fighters will return to home countries inciting more Islamists to join the network and widen the range of threats to individual national security.

Not one ally of the United States much less including the United States has chosen to target the core of the spreading Caliphate in the Middle East, Iran. This now begs the question, what are countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Israel and others to do with what has manifested at the hands of Iran?

The crystal ball tells us there is an epic war brewing between the Persians and the Arabs, between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Nothing in the history of the last 60-70 years will compare to what may come.

Drawing back the curtains to allow some sunlight on the matter of Syria and Iraq some key items must be noted.

1. Follow the money. The United States has many tools to track money movement globally and they do. Beyond watching the money movement, the United States also maintains the evidence of the powerful groups and individuals that are behind the funding of terror networks and even more the banks that are cooperating with the networks. In short our own Treasury system has the evidentiary trail and advises the same to the United Nations, the National Security Council and the International Monetary Fund, hence none of this is a secret. Two of the most complicit countries in supplying large, LARGE sums of funds to terror networks come out of Kuwait and Qatar and the individuals involved.

2. The intelligence community has been on top of the actions by Ansar al Sharia, the Army of Islam, ISIS, AQAP and others. Reports and proven evidence is provided daily and is collaborated several times a day with other allied intelligence organizations that includes Germany, Israel, Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland and more. The technology to track activity in the Middle East is augmented by journalists on the ground in the action as well as intel personnel integrated with factions on all sides of the fight. To date the will and interest to analyze, summarize activity and create an action plan has all been ignored.

3. The United States has been training for several years un-vetted individuals in countries such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey on anti-terrorism tactics as well as fighting skills. In the matter of being ‘un-vetted’ it should be noted that foreign leadership maintains full authority to choose who participates and the United States is not allowed any influence on the selection. This is an important condition due to the fact that many Islamists have no real loyalty to a cause, only a loyalty to having an income and a need to follow any faction where they feel safer under false promises. There have been many recorded conflicts of leadership within terror cells and mistrust is prevalent.

4. The United States has military personnel and intelligence people that perform forensic analysis after all operations. They gather any and all evidence left behind that includes hard-drives, thumb drives, hard copy documents, written war plans origination of the weapons used, cell phone tracing, terror network online chat forums and social media. Names, dates, actions, threats, operations, missions and more are collected and passed down range and up range for consideration. Not only are agencies such as the Department of Defense, the State Department, ODNI, Joint Chiefs, the National Security Council, Ambassadors and the United Nations provided assessments of conflicts, each agency has their own personnel that does all the same work. There is no lack of intelligence on the ground, on the internet or within the banking/monetary funding system.

In summary, no government especially the United States was caught flat-footed, it was caught with their compass pointing to indifference. As the Caliphate spreads and Iraq is all but lost, one must understand that we will see the same words in the next chapter as the United States exits Afghanistan.

Iran, China and Russia have moved up significantly in the global power ranking at that hands of ignorance of the West. While the core concern is oil and energy resources controlled by adversaries, these are necessary national security concerns for the West for survival of their economies and to date, no one leadership has had the stomach or the forward-thinking agenda for diplomatic objectives in the last six plus years. Get ready, the cost of transportation, economic output, labor costs and the cost of energy are all slated to rise such that new charts for measurement failure will need to be created.

Being flat footed was a choice and a costly choice for a dim future outlook.

Late Monday, Barack Obama had a White House meeting on Iraq that included John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Eric Holder, and national security advisor Susan Rice. Also attending were U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.

Many issues and deals appear to be afoot as the matter of Iraq and ISIS has many components which curiously there seems to be a lot of silence from other Gulf States like UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

In the meantime and I wrote several days ago, the meeting in Geneva of the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program had a real side-bar agenda and that was in fact allied countries colluding with Iran to gain at least cooperation on the Shiite vs. Sunni war in Iraq.

While we cannot estimate how far these discussions advanced, we must begin to look deeper such that Iran is being completely legitimized and accepted by the West surely putting other countries on alert, least of which is Israel.

It defies logic that while the United States does not have an embassy in Tehran, Hillary Clinton attempted to create a virtual embassy (an online version) and that failed, however the United Kingdom has announced their plan to re-open their embassy in Tehran.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague): In February, I updated the House on progress in our bilateral relationship with Iran, following the appointment of non-resident Chargés d’Affaires in November 2013 (Official Report 24 February 2014 col 26). I said then that our decision to end formal protecting power arrangements was a sign of our increasing confidence in conducting bilateral business directly rather than through our Swedish and Omani intermediaries.

Over the past four months, we have continued to expand our bilateral engagement. British and Iranian officials have paid regular visits to each other’s capitals. This has enabled us to resolve a range of practical matters concerning our embassies. And it has allowed us to discuss a broad range of issues, including areas where we and Iran have sharply differing views.

Our two primary concerns when considering whether to reopen our embassy in Tehran have been assurance that our staff would be safe and secure, and confidence that they would be able to carry out their functions without hindrance. There has never been any doubt in my mind that we should have an Embassy in Tehran if the circumstances allowed. Iran is an important country in a volatile region, and maintaining embassies around the world, even under difficult conditions, is a central pillar of the UK’s global diplomatic approach. On Saturday I telephoned Foreign Minister Zarif to discuss the progress we have made to date and our common interest in continuing to move forward in the UK-Iran bilateral relationship.

The U.S. State Department still formally considers Iran a State sponsor of terror as do allies, so what is the explanation of this new friendship?

A priority of Obama Administration policy has been to reduce the perceived threat posed by Iran to a broad range of U.S. interests. Rouhani’s election has also improved prospects for an end to the 34 years of U.S.-Iran estrangement. On September 27, 2013, President Obama and Rouhani spoke by phone—the first leadership level contacts since the 1979 Islamic revolution— Rouhani has not, to date, satisfied the aspirations of those Iranians who see his presidency as an opportunity to achieve an easing of repression and social restrictions.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. What can we now expect in the coming years from Barack Obama? The Islamic Jihad is at least 14 years ago, question is how much longer are we going to accept this war and defeat as the United State IS the only country historically that was proactive to maintain the equilibrium of the world?