How Obama Won Iran Deal and the Money Flows

Obama has officially won on the Iran deal. How?

In part from the Hill:

The White House —which has a reputation for keeping an arms-length relationship with Capitol Hill —mounted an all hands on deck effort in the three weeks after the deal was signed and before lawmakers left town for the August recess.

Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and other top officials became fixtures on Capitol Hill and sought to answer every lawmaker’s questions in person before they fanned out across the country.

Moniz was the ringer, offering a detailed yet affable performance that contrasted with Kerry’s more pedantic style, and earned him the affection of even the deal’s most bitter critics.

The president, too, got personally involved, and refused to relent once Congress left town.

Obama spoke to more than 100 lawmakers in individual or small-group settings, according to a White House official, including 30 calls during his two-week August vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials made the case directly to over 200 House members and senators after the deal was reached.

Supporters were up against heavy artillery. At home, lawmakers were bombarded with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of TV ads from opponents of the agreement such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

To counteract that firepower, organizations such as J Street spent millions of their own to run advertisements in key markets.

Obama also made an open plea for liberal groups to lend him a hand.

“As big of a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough,” Obama told thousands of activists in July. “I can’t carry it by myself.”

But what do the Republicans know that the Democrats also know but are ignoring because of the covert Iran money deals to the Democrats?

Iran spending billions on terrorists’ salaries: report

 Iran has been sending billions of dollars to fill the pockets of terrorist fighters across the Middle East, including in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, according to a private U.S. government report ordered by Sen. Mark Kirk.

Iran’s defense budget ranges anywhere between $14 billion to $30 billion a year and much of that money goes to fund terrorist groups and rebel fighters throughout the region, according to the Congressional Research Service report conducted at the request of Mr. Kirk, an Illinois Republican.
The report, first viewed by The Washington Free Beacon, discloses that funding for these terrorist groups could be much higher than originally estimated, as Iran often hides public records about its defense spending.

“Some regional experts claim that Iran’s defense budget excludes much of its spending on intelligence activities and support of foreign non-state actors,” the report states, stressing that actual military spending could far exceed the $30 billion that Iran discloses annually, The Free Beacon reported.

“Similarly, another study claims that actual funding for the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force’s Al Quds Force] is ‘much greater’ ” than the amount allocated in the state budget, as the group’s funds are supplemented by its own economic activities,” the report said.

The report gives “low-ball” estimates for each of the groups supported by Iranian funding. Researchers estimate Iran spends between $100 million and $200 million per year on Hezbollah, $3.5 billion to $15 billion per year in support of Syria’s Asad Regime, $12 million to $26 million per year on Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, $10 million to $20 million per year to support Houthi rebels in Yemen and tens of millions per year to support Hamas terrorists in Israel.

In Syria, for example, Iranian-backed fighters are paid between $500 to $1,000 a month to fight in support of Bashar Assad’s regime, according to the report.

Afghan fighters in Syria have disclosed that they “had recently returned from training in Iran and planned to fight in Syria,” the report notes. These militants “expected to receive salaries from Iran ranging from $500 to $1000 a month.”

The report comes as the Obama administration gained the final critical vote needed to suppress a resolution to disapprove a nuclear deal with Iran. Under the deal, the U.S. and other world powers will gradually lift economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

Similar reports from watchdog groups have revealed that releasing Iranian assets sanctions could allow Tehran to spend more money on its terrorist-link Quds force, as well as beef up its own military in general.

“The administration is celebrating support from a partisan minority of senators for a nuclear deal that threatens the security of the United States and our allies,” Mr. Kirk said, The Free Beacon reported. “This deeply flawed agreement will transfer over $100 billion to a regime that U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper calls the ‘foremost state sponsor of terrorism,’ and pave Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.

“Like North Korea before it, Iran will cheat on this flawed deal in order to get nuclear weapons. Congress must hold accountable the Iranian regime and ensure that our children never wake up to a nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East.”

20150800-INFOGRAPHIC-Kirk-CRS Estimates of Iranian Financial Support to Terrorists Militants

The report is located here and everyone in Congress has access.

CSMonitor: One of the beneficiaries will be Iran’s primary tool for projecting power – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and especially its elite Qods Force, which handles operations abroad.

But are Iran’s wizened generals, who mostly cut their military teeth in the 1980s as teenage volunteers during the brutal Iran-Iraq War, already in danger of overreach?

For decades, American military planners aimed to be capable of simultaneously fighting – and winning – two full-blown wars in different regions. It was a challenge, even for a superpower. Today, on a much smaller scale and with a sliver of the military means, Iran is attempting the same thing in the Middle East: It is deeply engaged in Syria and Iraq; waving the flag in Yemen; and very influential in Lebanon.

Never before has the Revolutionary Guard, whose 120,000-strong force is much smaller than Iran’s regular 425,000-strong armed forces, been engaged so deeply and widely abroad – yet with increasingly mixed and entangling results.

There is no shortage of commitment: at least seven IRGC generals have died on the frontlines, primarily in Syria but also in Iraq, taken down by snipers’ bullets, bombs, and even an Israeli airstrike. The Guards are relatively top heavy with generals due to their origins as an ideological militia. Still, such high-ranking losses are highly uncommon in modern warfare.

In Syria, the IRGC and its Lebanese Shiite ally Hezbollah are bolstering the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against an array of rebels and jihadists. In Iraq, Iran has mobilized Shiite militias to take on the self-described Islamic State, but at a cost of stoking more sectarian strife. While in Yemen, Iran has played a much lesser role in aiding Houthi militiamen against Saudi-backed forces.

Each conflict has now devolved largely along sectarian lines that pit Shiite Iran against its regional Sunni rivals, Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states allied with the US and Israel.

The IRGC “exceeded their reach long ago.… They are at the end of their tricks [in Syria], and Hezbollah lost a lot,” says Walter Posch, a specialist on Iranian military forces at the Austrian National Defense Academy in Vienna.

“It worked well when it was low cost, but now it is high cost.… There is no Saddam Hussein who insulted the Iranian nation as a whole” as a national motivating factor, as in the 1980s, says Mr. Posch. “This is a war of their own liking, for the purpose of power projection. But they’ve been too ignorant of the fear of the small Gulf countries; too ignorant about the fears of the Saudis.”

 

Ideological origins

The IRGC was formed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wanted a more trusted and ideologically pure force than the regular Army. The grim years of the Iran-Iraq war consolidated its role – and its anything-is-possible reputation.

Embracing the religious Shiite aspects of resistance in the image of Imam Hossein, the 7th-century Shiite saint venerated as “lord of the martyrs,” the IRGC has since become an economic and political powerhouse. It runs a multi-billion dollar business empire that handles everything from oil and infrastructure projects to weapons production. In politics, active-duty guardsman play no formal role, but its generals are close to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and veterans have held cabinet and other government posts.

“I don’t see signs of overreach; I think they’ve got leadership in depth,” says Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran now at the Chatham House think tank in London. “They are tested in difficult situations. They’ve been involved, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan, for a very long period.”

“It comes back to, ‘Who wins wars?’ People who win wars and are the most effective are the ones with the greatest conviction, and the Iranians have got it,” says Amb. Dalton.

That certainly applies to Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who has often been photographed along frontlines in Iraq and elsewhere. He claimed this week that Iran’s efforts prompted the “collapse of American power in the region,” according to details of a high-level briefing published in Iran’s conservative media.

 

‘Gobbling’ or choking?

Some argue that Iran’s regional expansion is unprecedented. Addressing Congress in March, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was “gobbling up” Mideast capitals. Yet the tide now isn’t all going Iran’s way.

In Syria, for example, Iran has been fighting to defend Mr. Assad’s regime for more than 4-½ years, spending an estimated $6 billion to $15 billion a year in a war that has claimed more than 240,000 lives. But pro-Assad forces have lost ground in recent months to rebels backed by the US, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well as to the self-described Islamic State.

President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to back the Syrian government “until the end of the road.” While Assad is running short of loyalist troops, the IRGC reportedly has tried to fill the gap by finding several thousand Afghans to fight, and die, in exchange for cash, Iranian residency or passports, and sometimes for commuted jail terms, according to Germany’s Spiegel and Agence France-Presse.

In May, a special event held in Tehran commemorated Afghan martyrs killed in Syria, and 65 corpses were returned in a single exchange, according to Iranian media reports. Many are buried in Iran. Officially, Iran denies enlisting Afghans to fight in Syria.

In Iraq, Soleimani was instrumental in reviving tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen to push back IS for more than a year – in concert with American airstrikes, and ironically with a similar mission as US military advisers now in Iraq. But those militias are accused of atrocities against Sunnis, and efforts to bolster the regular Iraqi military – decisive at first – have begun to stumble.

And in Yemen, Iran has been marginally involved on the side of Houthi rebels as they advanced across the country earlier this year. In July, the critical port city of Aden was recaptured by Saudi-backed forces and troops of the United Arab Emirates. Months of Saudi-led airstrikes are imperiling the population, in a campaign explicitly aimed at rolling back Iranian influence.

“There is support for Soleimani but also high expectations,” says Posch, of the IRGC’s Qods Force chief. “He has to deliver now. I don’t know how he deals with all these crises individually. He can’t go to all these battlefields in person.”

 

Russia vs. United States in Syria: Tensions Escalate

In 2013, the Greeks and the Russians signed an agreement on military cooperation.

“We signed an agreement that opens new frameworks and new boundaries for our further work in the sphere of military-technical cooperation,” Sergei Shoigu told journalists after talks with his Greek counterpart Dimitrios Avramopoulos in Athens.
The deal concerns armaments supplied previously as well as military hardware, maintenance and new hardware supplies, Shoigu said.
A Russian deputy defense minister, Anatoly Antonov, said after the talks that Shoigu had proposed that Avramopoulos consider working out an agreement to streamline the procedure for Russian navy vessels calling at Greek ports.
Antonov said the two defense ministers had also discussed the possibility of holding personnel training events and exchanging experience in the fight against terrorism and piracy, as well as other areas of cooperation.
This new agreement will make it easier for Russian ships to dock at Greek port during their deployment in the Mediterranean thus making Greece a reliable alternative to the Syrian port Tartus.
According to Greek blog SManalysis, Russia will help Greek Navy to support the Zubr class hovercraft. Greek Navy has procured 4 of these air-cushioned landing craft. Three of them joined the Greek Navy in 2001 and the last one in 2005. They have a displacement of 550 tons and can carry up to 130 tons military material: 3 main battle tanks or 10 armored personnel carriers or 230 troops.

More here. It must also be noted that the Russians are also using Basel International Airport in Switzerland and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea in Greece for a staging Russian military hub.

U.S. launches secret drone campaign to hunt Islamic State leaders in Syria

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’ | Part of an occasional series

(Not so secret if the Washington Post is reporting it)

In part from WaPo: The CIA and U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria as part of a targeted killing program that is run separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, U.S. officials said.

The CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are flying drones over Syria in a collaboration responsible for several recent strikes against senior Islamic State operatives, the officials said. Among those killed was a British militant thought to be an architect of the terrorist group’s effort to use social media to incite attacks in the United States, the officials said.

The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria, enlisting the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) against a militant group that many officials believe has eclipsed al-Qaeda as a threat.

Although the CTC has been given an expanded role in identifying and locating senior Islamic State figures, U.S. officials said the strikes are being carried out exclusively by JSOC. The officials said the program is aimed at terrorism suspects deemed “high-value targets.” More here.

US Concern Over Russian Military Buildup In Syria

WASHINGTON — The United States expressed concern to Moscow on Saturday about what it called reports of an imminent and enhanced Russian military buildup in war-torn Syria.

Washington made its views known in a telephone call from Secretary of State John Kerry to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the State Department said.

“The secretary made clear that if such reports were accurate, these actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL coalition operating in Syria,” the State Department said.

In his call with Lavrov, Kerry discussed “US concerns about reports suggesting an imminent enhanced Russian buildup there,” the department said.

“The two agreed that discussions on the Syrian conflict would continue in New York later this month,” it said.

The New York Times reported that Russia has sent a military advance team to ally Syria and was taking other steps that Washington fears may signal plans to vastly expand its military support for President Bashar al-Assad.

The Times said the moves included the recent transport of prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield and the delivery of a portable air traffic control station there.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was asked Friday whether Russia was taking part in military operations against the Islamic State group in Syria.

“We are looking at various options but so far what you are talking about is not on the agenda,” he said.

“To say we’re ready to do this today — so far it’s premature to talk about this. But we are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” RIA Novosti state news agency quoted Putin as saying.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday’s telephone call was made at Kerry’s initiative.

It made no mention of US concerns about a possible Russian military buildup, but said the two men discussed “different aspects of the situation in Syria and its environs, as well as the objectives of the fight against IS and other terrorist groups.”

The foreign ministry said they spoke of “cooperation” between Moscow and Washington to “support UN efforts aimed at launching a political process in Syria.”

Lavrov and Kerry agreed to remain in close contact in pursuing a settlement of the Syrian conflict, which has claimed more than 240,000 lives since March 2011 and driven millions more from their homes.

Flurry of Diplomacy

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of diplomatic consultations to try to find a way out of the crisis, including an unprecedented meeting in Doha on Aug. 3 between the top US, Russian and Saudi diplomats.

The Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers were later received separately in Moscow, as were representatives of various more moderate Syrian opposition groups.

Moscow, which has been a bulwark of military and diplomatic support to the Assad regime, is promoting an expanded coalition against IS that includes countries of the region as well as the regular Syrian army.

President Barack Obama for his part received Saudi King Salman on Friday for talks dominated by Syria. They advocate a political solution that would include Assad’s departure from power.

Exposing Russia’s Secret Army in Syria

by Weiss: Some wear uniforms, some don’t, but from highway checkpoints to jet fighters, Russians are being spotted all over the Assad dictatorship’s heartland.
Russian military officers are now in Damascus and meeting regularly with Iranian and Syrian counterparts, according to a source with close contacts in the Bashar al-Assad regime. “They’re out in restaurants and cafes with other high officials in the Syrian Army,” the source told The Daily Beast, “mainly concentrated in Yaafour and Sabboura, areas that are close to each other, and in west Mezze,” referring to a district in the capital where Assad’s praetorian Fourth Armored Division keeps an important airbase. “The Russians aren’t in uniform, but they’re constantly hanging out with officers from the Syrian Army’s central command.”  

Other Syrians claim to have seen Russians in uniform. 

One family that recently traveled from Aleppo to Damascus by taxi before emigrating by plane to Turkey says it saw a small contingent of Russian troops embedded with Syrians at a military checkpoint in the capital. “We were near the Shaghour district when we noticed two soldiers who were not Syrian,” a family representative said. “They were tall, blond and blue-eyed and wore different fatigues from the Syrians and carried weapons. I’m telling you, they were Russian.” 

The opposition-linked website All4Syria seems to corroborate such eyewitness accounts. Many residents of Damascus, it claimed, have “observed in the first three days of September a noticeable deployment of Iranian and Russian elements in the neighborhoods of Baramkeh, al-Bahsa, and Tanzim Kfarsouseh.” The Venezia Hotel in al-Bahsa “has been turned into a military barracks for the Iranians.”

Such news comes amid a flurry of reports that Russia has made plans for a direct military intervention in Syria’s four-year civil war and may actually have started one already. The New York Times reported Saturday that Russia has sent prefabricated housing units, capable of sheltering as many as 1,000 military personnel, and a portable air traffic control station to another Syrian airbase in Latakia. That coastal province, the Assad family’s ancestral home, has already seen Russian troops caught on video operating BTR-82 infantry fighting vehicles against anti-Assad rebels, atop rumors that Moscow may be deploying an “expeditionary force,” including Russian pilots who would fly combat missions.

They may already be doing so. A social media account affiliated with the al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra posted images of what appeared to be Russian Air Force jets and drones flying in the skies of Syria’s northwest Idlib province. They were, specifically, the Mig-29 Fulcrum, the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, the Su-34 Fullback, and the Pchela-1T drone. These images were analyzed as credible by the specialist website The Aviationist, which also noted that “during the past days, Flightradar24.com has exposed several flights of a Russian Air Force… Il-76 airlifter (caught by means of its Mode-S transponder) flying to and from Damascus using radio call sign ‘Manny 6,’ most probably supporting the deployment of a Russian expeditionary force.

ISIS isn’t in Idlib; the terror army that calls itself the Islamic State was driven out of the province completely. As one U.S. intelligence official put it to The Daily Beast, “The question is, what are Russia’s underlying motivations? Are they really there to fight [ISIS], or just to prop up Assad?” 

The concern is that Russia could use military strikes against ISIS as a kind of cover or feint for attacking rebel forces as well, including non-Islamist groups. The U.S. sees these forces as a potential bulwark against ISIS. But they also have as one of their primary goals overthrowing Assad—an effort that Washington has been unwilling to support. 

The White House has fallen back on its customary posture of wait-and-see as proof mounts that the Russians are coming. Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters this week: ”We are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely. Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilizing and counterproductive.” Another unnamed U.S. official told Britain’s Daily Telegraph, ”Russia has asked for clearances for military flights to Syria, [but] we don’t know what their goals are.”

Actually, their goals aren’t terribly hard to discern, nor do they necessarily contradict implicit White House policy, whatever Josh Earnest says. 

Photographs circulated on social media showing what appeared to be Russian soldiers in Zabadani, a city 45 kilometers north of Damascus, which has changed hands several times during the civil war. For months rebels have been fending off a scorched-earth assault by the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which the U.N. assesses to have led to “unprecedented levels of destruction.” So the injection of Russian legionnaires into a multinational cocktail of combatants duking it out in Zabadani would make perfect sense. The city is considered the sine qua non of Iran’s “strategic corridor” in Syria, which runs from the capital to Lebanon and up along the Mediterranean coastline. The formidable Islamist rebel brigade Ahrar al-Sham knows who’s in charge here—it has even negotiated an ultimately unsuccessful ceasefire directly with the Islamic Republic rather than with Assad.

“The Russians are clearly setting themselves on the ground in regime areas, planting the flag in ‘Alawistan,’ as it were,” says Tony Badran, a Syria expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, referring to the Alawites, the schismatic Shia sect to which the Assad clan and the more powerful Syrian regime elites belong. “This, ironically, reinforces the Obama administration’s position, which has drawn a clear line around the regime enclave: The opposition is not to enter Damascus and the coastal cities. So the Russian deployment actually fits well with the administration’s approach.”

Right on cue, then, came Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement Friday that Syria would soon hold new parliamentary elections and inaugurate a power-sharing government with what he deemed a “healthy” opposition. He did not specify what he considered the diseased opposition, although this would almost certainly include Free Syrian Army fighters the CIA and Pentagon has been recruiting as U.S. proxies.  

While Putin dismissed the existence of any Russian combat forces in Syria as “premature,” he did allow that he was “looking at various options” for militarily involving himself in the war.  Coming from someone who only admits to Russian invasions after the fact, such a signposting of motive should not be ignored.

Moscow’s close coordination with Tehran, both in Damascus and internationally, is also no coincidence. Iran is now busy shopping a new international “peace plan” for Syria, one that goes beyond the parameters of the previously inked Geneva II protocol.  

Intriguingly, just weeks after Iran agreed to a deal to control its nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief, Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of its own expeditionary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, flew to Moscow for talks with Russian officials, violating the international travel ban related to his terrorist activity. No doubt solidifying Russian backing for whatever he has planned for Syria was high up on Soleimani’s agenda.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time since the Syrian war broke out that there’s been chatter about Russian troops in Damascus.

In May 2013, sources close to the Kremlin suggested that Putin had dispatched the Zaslon special forces detachment to the Syrian capital. Formed in 1998, and conceived as a clandestine unit combining the purviews of America’s Delta Force and Secret Service, Zaslon consists of a mere 280 highly trained operatives. It answers to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and is tasked with protecting high-value Russian officials in uncertain conditions and sometimes even conducting assassinations. It was rumored to have killed Iraqi insurgents in 2006 after the latter had captured and executed Russian diplomats. 

As Mark Galeotti, a New York University-based specialist on Russia’s military and security forces, observed two years ago: “According to one Russian report, two Zaslon elements were also deployed to Baghdad in the dying days of the [Saddam] Hussein regime. Their mission was to seize or destroy documents which Moscow would have found embarrassing had they ended up in U.S. hands. Given the scale and depth of Russian support for Assad, it could similarly be that they are also in Syria to cover Moscow’s tracks or else ensure that sensitive military technology—including new surface-to-air systems—does not end up in foreign hands.”

Under the present circumstances, it is now likely that any Russian soldiers in Damascus are there to fortify and ring-fence another spent Baathist regime, if not to join in a war that is fought increasingly by “foreign hands.”

 

Caution: Pope’s Visit and New Immigrant Quotas

Pope Francis will be visiting the United States after He completes his trip to Cuba on September 22. Pope Francis will include Washington D.C., New York (Madison Square Garden and Central Park) and Philadelphia on His agenda. During his time in New York, He will address the United Nations, make an appears at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and Our Lady of Queen of Angels School in East Harlem.

At the core of His presentations, you can bet it will include refugees and immigration.

The back story and what you need to know.

President to decide on refugee quota for FY2016 NOW! Will Congress lift a finger to protect America?

Posted by Ann Corcoran

It is September and as we speak, the Obama Administration (US State Department) is putting its final touches on their annual Determination Letter and accompanying report to Congress.

Obama shushing

The new fiscal year begins on October 1 and by the 30th of this month Obama will send to Congress for “consultation” a document which states how many refugees and from what regions of the world we will be “welcoming” refugees to America.

This so-called “consultation” with Congress is a legal requirement. However, it is common knowledge that the House and Senate Committees responsible for analyzing this information have in the past been silent.

In fact, Ken Tota (who recently served as the interim director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement) was overheard saying that “in his entire almost 30-year career, Congress has never questioned the numbers.”

State Department scoping meetings

For our many new readers, this year there was no US State Department hearing on the “size and scope” of the refugee program (or, LOL! they kept it very secret!).  We can only assume that was because in the three previous years they heard testimony that they didn’t like from citizens that were concerned about the program.  Here is one post of dozens on the topic.  Readers of RRW had flooded the State Department with negative testimony about the program.  In fact, we testified that there should be a moratorium on the program.  See my 2014 testimony here.

I mention this because the Presidential Determination being prepared now is the culmination of the annual process that began with those late spring ‘hearings’ (and again there was no public opportunity to comment this year that we were aware of).

Also, regular readers know that we have been discussing, and attempting to obtain, R & P abstracts the subcontractors located around the country prepare for Washington—those are part of the process as well. Just as taxpaying citizens had no opportunity to testify to the State Department this year, taxpaying citizens have no input in the abstract preparation process either.

Presumably one final check in the system to protect America is the “consultation” with Congress in September of each year.

However, if this year is like all others, our elected representatives in Washington will not lift a finger to question the size and scope of this year’s proposed refugee quota!

And, this could be the year that plans to resettle tens of thousands of Syrians will be announced!

Click here for last year’s Presidential Determination, and here for the lengthy report which was sent to Congress on September 18th last year.  The report begins:

This Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2015: Report to the Congress is submitted in compliance with Sections 207(d)(1) and (e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Act requires that before the start of the fiscal year and, to the extent possible, at least two weeks prior to consultations on refugee admissions, members of the Committees on the Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives be provided with the following information….

Note that the report goes to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.  Chairmen of the full committees are Bob Goodlatte and Chuck Grassley respectively.  Subcommittee Chairmen responsible for Refugee Resettlement are Trey Gowdy and Jeff Sessions.

Will those chairmen help protect America this year by holding hearings when the Presidential Determination for FY2016 arrives on the Hill which by law should be in about two weeks!  Or, will they (yet again!) simply rubber stamp what Obama wants?

 

Congress: Islamist Terror Threat Matrix

U.S. Terror Matrix

 

 

 

The full House of Representatives 8 page report is here.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year. There have been more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11. The number of U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists has gone from 38 in July 2010 to 124 today—more than a three-fold increase in just five years.

ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed. As of the end of August, the group has inspired or directed 57 terror attack plots against Western targets, including 15 in the United States. A recent train attack in France would have been a mass-casualty attack had it not been for an alert group of Americans. There have now been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked attack plots against the West this year (37) as there were in all of 2014 (20).

Islamist terrorists are intent on killing American law enforcement and military personnel, in addition to innocent civilians. Radicals are increasingly targeting men and women in uniform here in the United States. In August, ISIS supporters released another “hit list” of American government personnel, including service members. Since early 2014, the majority of Islamist terror plots on U.S. soil have featured plans to kill police or U.S. service members.

ISIS has largely maintained its terror safe havens in Syria and Iraq while expanding globally more than a year after the U.S. and its allies launched operations against it. Al Qaeda affiliates from Syria to Yemen have also carved out sanctuary and seized additional terrain. ISIS retained control over its major strongholds in Syria and Iraq while undertaking disruption attacks and offensives in key territory; ISIS-affiliated militants have simultaneously consolidated control in Libya. Foreign fighters continue to swell the ranks of Islamist extremist groups looking to recruit foot soldiers and activate followers to launch attacks in their home countries.

HOMEGROWN ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year.

By the numbers

Since September 11, 2001, there have been 124 U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists. Over 80 percent of these cases—which include plotted attacks and attempts to join foreign terrorist organizations—have occurred or been disrupted since 2009.1

 

• Authorities have arrested or charged at least 52 individuals in the United States this year – 67 since 2014 – in ISIS-related cases. The cases involve individuals: plotting attacks; attempting to travel to join ISIS overseas; sending money, equipment and weapons to terrorists; falsifying statements to federal authorities; and failing to report a felony.2

• FBI Director James Comey has said authorities have hundreds of open investigations of potential ISIS-inspired extremists that cover all 56 of the bureau’s field offices in all 50 states. He stated there may be hundreds or thousands of Americans who are taking in recruitment propaganda over social media applications: “It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill.”

Recent Developments

August 24: Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal, 42, was arrested in Avondale, Arizona, for helping a 24-year-old New York City resident travel to Syria to receive military training from ISIS. El Gammal was an avid ISIS supporter online and engaged the recruit through social media before in-person meetings. El Gammal and the recruit communicated with an unnamed co-conspirator based in Turkey.

TERROR PLOTS AGAINST THE WEST

ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed.

By the numbers

• Since early 2014, there have been 57 planned or executed ISIS-linked terror plots against Western targets, including 15 inside in the United States.3

• There have been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked plots against Western targets in the first seven months of this year (37) than in all of 2014 (20).4

Recent Developments

• August 21: A 25-year-old Moroccan national, Ayoub El Khazzani, attacked passengers on a train in Thalys, France, before a group led by three Americans, including two service members on vacation, subdued him. Khazzani was armed with an arsenal of weapons and 270 rounds of ammunition. He watched a jihadist propaganda video before attempting to launch his attack. He had lived in and attended a radical mosque in Spain before relocating to France. He had also lived in Belgium and traveled from Germany to Turkey in early May before returning to Europe in June. This trip was reportedly part of a plot to fight with ISIS in Syria.

• August 13: ISIS’s “hacking division” released information regarding 1,400 American government personnel, including service members, and encouraged supporters to track down and attack them. The list included names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. ISIS operative and hacker Junaid Hussain had been central to similar plots targeting servicemembers; Hussain was eliminated in an August 24th drone strike in Syria.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Undeterred by airstrikes, foreign fighters continue to pour into the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, bolstering ISIS and representing a potential threat to their home countries—including America—upon return.

By the numbers

• More than 25,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremists—the largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in world history. U.S. estimates reportedly put its current manpower at 20,000-30,000 members. “We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers” since last August, according to a defense official.

• Approximately 4,500 Western fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq.5 Europol recently assessed that the high-end estimate of EU citizens who left to fight in Syria may have been as high as 5,000 at the beginning of this year.

• An estimated 550 Western women have traveled to the conflict zone.

Read the whole report here.

 

 

Syria Then, Syria a Typical Day Today

There are Americans in Syria fighting on that the United States has ignored. The WSJ has the back story.

All those devastating reports and photos of Syrians fleeing to any part of Europe and leaving this behind.

Ariha, Syria then:

What is notable:

  1. Basic citizens have become savvy fighters.
  2. The rebels fighting against the Assad regime have become battle trained and skilled at tactics in taking over a city.
  3. The city is empty of the common Syria family, no infrastructure left.
  4. Syria today is due to Bashir al Assad being supported by Iran and Russia.