Category Archives: Terror

Arms Race, Cyber Defenses Fail

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By: Damian Paletta, Danny Yadron and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries
Countries toiled for years and spent billions of dollars to build elaborate facilities that would allow them to join the exclusive club of nations that possessed nuclear weapons.
Getting into the cyberweapon club is easier, cheaper and available to almost anyone with cash and a computer.
A series of successful computer attacks carried out by the U.S. and others has kicked off a frantic and destabilizing digital arms race, with dozens of countries amassing stockpiles of malicious code. The programs range from the most elementary, such as typo-ridden emails asking for a password, to software that takes orders from a rotating list of Twitter handles.
The proliferation of these weapons has spread so widely that the U.S. and China-longtime cyber adversaries-brokered a limited agreement last month not to conduct certain types of cyberattacks against each other, such as intrusions that steal corporate information and then pass it along to domestic companies. Cyberattacks that steal government secrets, however, remain fair game.
This comes after other countries have begun to amass cyberweaponry on an unprecedented scale. Pakistan and India, two nuclear-armed rivals, regularly hack each other’s companies and governments, security researchers said. Estonia and Belarus are racing to build defensive shields to counter Russia. Denmark and the Netherlands have begun programs to develop offensive computer weapons, as have Argentina and France.
In total, at least 29 countries have formal military or intelligence units dedicated to offensive hacking efforts, according to a Wall Street Journal compilation of government records and interviews with U.S. and foreign officials. Some 50 countries have bought off-the-shelf hacking software that can be used for domestic and international surveillance. The U.S. has among the most-advanced operations.
In the nuclear arms race, “the acronym was MAD-mutually assured destruction-which kept everything nice and tidy,” said Matthijs Veenendaal, a researcher at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a research group in Estonia. “Here you have the same acronym, but it’s ‘mutually assured doubt,’ because you can never be sure what the attack will be.”
Governments have used computer attacks to mine and steal information, erase computers, disable bank networks and-in one extreme case-destroy nuclear centrifuges.
Nation states have also looked into using cyberweapons to knock out electrical grids, disable domestic airline networks, jam Internet connectivity, erase money from bank accounts and confuse radar systems, experts believe.
Large conventional militaries and nuclear forces are ill-suited to this new kind of warfare, which evens the playing field between big and small countries. Cyberattacks are hard to stop and sometimes impossible to trace. The West, as a result, has been forced to start reconfiguring its militaries to better meet the threat.
 
Access to cyberweapons, according to U.S. and foreign officials and security researchers, is far more widespread than access to nuclear weapons was at the height of the nuclear arms race, a result of inexpensive technology and the power of distributed computing.
More than two dozen countries have accumulated advanced cyberweapons in the past decade. Some Defense Department officials compare the current moment to the lull between the World Wars when militaries realized the potential of armed planes.
“It’s not like developing an air force,” in terms of cost and expertise, said Michael Schmitt, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and part of an international group studying how international law relates to cyberwarfare. “You don’t need to have your own cyberforce to have a very robust and very scary offensive capability.”
For example, hackers aligned with the Syrian government have spied into the computers of rebel militias, stolen tactical information and then used the stolen intelligence in the ongoing and bloody battle, according to several researchers, including FireEye Inc.
Most cyberattacks linked to the U.S. and foreign governments in recent years involve cyberspying-breaking into a computer network and stealing data. More-aggressive covert weapons go further, either erasing computer records or destroying physical property.
“With some countries, we’re comfortable with knowing what their capabilities are, but with other countries we’re still lost,” said Andre McGregor, a former cyber special agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and now the director of security at Tanium Inc., a Silicon Valley cybersecurity startup. “We don’t have the visibility into their toolset.”
The Military Balance, a widely read annual assessment of global military powers published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, tallies tanks, battalions and aircraft carriers. When it comes to national cyberforces it says “capabilities are not assessed quantitatively.”
In the U.S., the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, FBI and others all play roles in combing through intelligence.
U.S. officials say their biggest concerns are the cyberweapons held by the Chinese, Russians, Iranians and North Koreans, countries that have deployed advanced attacks that either dug inside U.S. government networks or targeted top U.S. companies. Even Israel, a U.S. ally, was linked to hacking tools found on the computers of European hotels used for America’s diplomatic talks with Iran, according to the analysis of the spyware by a top cybersecurity firm. Israeli officials have denied spying on the U.S.
Cyberarmies tend to be integrated with a country’s military, its intelligence services, or both, as is the case in China and the U.S.
In China, hackers are famous for the relatively low-tech tactic of “phishing”-sending a flood of disguised emails to trick corporate employees and government bureaucrats to letting them into their networks.
The U.S. suspects that is how they penetrated the Office of Personnel Management, using a phishing email to breach an OPM contractor and then crack the agency’s network. The records of more than 21 million people were exposed in the 2014 and 2015 data breach, disclosed this summer. China has said it wasn’t involved.
China’s army has divisions devoted to cyberattacks, and recent evidence shows links between the country’s military and hackers who appear to be pressing the country’s interests abroad.
“They used to be snap and grab-get in and dump everything they can,” said Tommy Stiansen, co-founder and chief technology officer at Norse Corp., a California cybersecurity firm that tracks nation-state activity. “Now they trickle out the information, stay hidden in the system. We’ve even seen Chinese actors patch and repair networks once they’ve broken in.”
China opposes the militarization of cyberspace or a cyberarms race, said Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, adding China “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law.”
Choosy in targets
 
Russian hackers have targeted diplomatic and political data, burrowing inside unclassified networks at the Pentagon, State Department and White House, also using emails laced with malware, according to security researchers and U.S. officials.
They have stolen President Barack Obama‘s daily schedule and diplomatic correspondence sent across the State Department’s unclassified network, according to people briefed on the investigation. A Russian government spokesman in April denied Russia’s involvement.
“Russia has never waged cyberwarfare against anyone,” Andrey Akulchev, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said in a written statement Friday. “Russia believes that the cybersphere should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
Russia’s top hackers tend to be choosier in their targets, tailoring email attacks to those they believe might unwittingly open links or attachments.
“They are sitting there trying to think through ‘how do I really want to compromise this target?’ ” said Laura Galante, director of threat intelligence at FireEye, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity company that works closely with Washington. “The Chinese just want a foothold into the target. Russian theft is very personal.”
U.S. spies and security researchers say Russia is particularly skilled at developing hacking tools. Some malicious software linked to Russia by security researchers has a feature meant to help it target computers on classified government networks usually not connected to the Internet.
The virus does this by jumping onto USB thumb drives connected to targeted computers, in the hopes that the user-such as U.S. military personnel-will then plug that USB drive into a computer on the classified network.
Russian hackers also make efforts to hide stolen data in normal network traffic. In one example, a piece of malware hides its communications in consumer Web services to fool cybersecurity defenses. The code downloads its instructions from a set of Twitter accounts. It then exports data to commercial storage services. This tactic is effective because corporate cybersecurity systems often don’t block traffic to and from these sites.
Government investigators believe Iranian hackers implanted the Shamoon virus on computers at Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest energy firm, in 2012. The Aramco attack erased 75% of the company’s computers and replaced screen images with burning American flags. The attack didn’t affect oil production, but it rattled the company, and security officials, as it revealed the extent of Iran’s cybercapabilities. A spokesman for Aramco didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The move was at least partly in retaliation for the alleged U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran discovered in 2010 that deployed the Stuxnet computer worm to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges-considered to be the most successful and advanced cyberattack ever. The U.S. and Israel haven’t confirmed or denied involvement with Stuxnet.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has said that Iran used malware to destroy computers last year at Las Vegas Sands Corp., a casino company run by Sheldon Adelson, a major critic of the Iranian government. A Sands spokesman declined to comment.
Adm. Michael Rogers, center, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, confers with Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work ahead of testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Defense officials have also said Iranian hackers have temporarily overwhelmed the websites of numerous U.S. banks, in an annoying but relatively pedestrian technique known as a “denial of service” attack. The attack was allegedly in response to a YouTube video depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Some U.S. officials suspected it was retaliation for sanctions and the Stuxnet attack.
In 2012, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly announced the creation of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace charged to oversee the defense of Iran’s computer networks and develop “new ways of infiltrating or attacking the computer networks of its enemies.”
National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers said Iranian cyberattacks have slowed since nuclear talks intensified last year, but that Tehran appears “fully committed” to using cyberattacks as part of its national strategy.
A spokesman for the Iranian government didn’t respond to request for comment.
Sony hack
 
U.S. officials accused North Korea of destroying computer files and records at Sony Corp.’s Hollywood film unit in 2014, allegedly in retaliation for “The Interview,” a satirical movie about assassins of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The breach was considered one of the most successful nation-state attacks. North Korea successfully implanted malware on Sony computers, which allowed them to both steal and destroy company records, the FBI alleged.
South Korea has also accused North Korea of trying to hack a nuclear reactor, television networks and at least one bank.
“Cybercapability, especially offensive cybercapability, is a relatively inexpensive method that a country can exploit to ‘hit above its weight class,’ which North Korea is fully aware of and is attempting to leverage,” said Steve Sin, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence officer who now researches unconventional weapons and technology.
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., meanwhile, has advertised for a “cyber operations planner” to “facilitate” offensive computer attacks with the South Korean and U.S. governments, according to a job posting it listed online.
A Northrop spokesman said the customer determines the scope of work performed.
A spokesman for North Korea couldn’t be reached for comment. The country hasn’t commented publicly on cyberprograms.
Many cybersecurity experts, however, consider the U.S. government to have the most advanced operations. When Kaspersky Lab ZAO, a Russian cybersecurity company, this year released a report on a group it called the Equation Group-which U.S. officials confirmed was a thinly veiled reference to the NSA-it referred to the operatives as the “crown creator of cyberespionage.”
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents that showed the NSA had implanted malware on tens of thousands of foreign computers. That allowed the U.S. government secret access to data and, potentially, the industrial control systems behind power plants and pipelines. The Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In some instances, Kaspersky found, the NSA was able to burrow so deeply into computers that it infected the code that controls how a hard drive spins. So-called firmware isn’t scanned by computer defenses.
“We, too, practice cyberespionage, and, in a public forum, I’m not going to say how successful we are, but we’re not bad,” Mr. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told a Senate panel in September.
U.S. Cyber Command now has nine “National Mission Teams” with plans to build four more. These each comprise 60 military personnel that will “conduct full-spectrum cyberspace operations to provide cyber options to senior policy makers in response to attacks against our nation,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.
The Navy, Army, and Air Force will each build four teams, with the Marines building a single unit. Each will have a “separate mission with a specific focus area,” though these have so far remained secret.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III told a group of reporters in April that he wanted to see the military develop “blunt force trauma” powers with their cyberweapons. He gave examples of computer codes that could “make an enemy air defense system go completely blank” or have an enemy’s “radar show a thousand false targets that all look real.” He didn’t say the military had finished designing such powers.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter has made the development of new cyberweapons a priority, although the policy seems in flux after questions were raised by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
This activity has prompted other countries to join the digital buildup.
In 2014, the Netherlands announced it would begin training its own Internet troops through a domestic cybersecurity company, called Fox-IT. The head of the Dutch armed forces, Major Gen. Tom Middendorp, said in a symposium the group should be prepared to carry out attacks, not just block them, according to a Dutch media report. The Netherlands’ military strategy, laid out in various documents, refers to hacking as a “force multiplier.” A Dutch military spokesman confirmed the efforts but declined to make Gen. Middendorp available for an interview.
In 2013, Denmark’s Defense Ministry began allocating about $10 million a year for “computer network operations,” which include “defensive and offensive military operations,” according to government budget documents. That amount is just 0.24% of the Danish defense budget, reflecting the tiny barrier of entry.
Countries unable to develop their own weapons can buy off-the-shelf systems from private parties. Earlier this year, an attack and document leak on the Italian firm Hacking Team revealed the company had sold its surveillance tools to dozens of countries, including Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Azerbaijan.
Hacking Team touted its product as “the hacking suite for governmental interception,” and computer security researchers who studied its program said it took advantage of holes in popular software to get onto opponents’ computers and mobile devices. The FBI is among the groups listed as clients of Hacking Team. An FBI spokesman said it didn’t comment on specific tools or techniques.
Most of these countries use surveillance software on domestic enemies or insurgent groups, according to officials with numerous countries and researchers.
States aren’t the only players. About 30 Arabic-fluent hackers in the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Turkey are building their own tools to hit targets in Egypt, Israel and the U.S., according to researchers at Kaspersky Lab.
And in August, the U.S. used a drone to kill Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain in Raqqa, Syria, showing the extent to which digital warfare has upset the balance of power on the modern battlefield.
The British citizen had used inexpensive tools to hack more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel and published personal and financial details online for others to exploit. He helped sharpen the terror group’s defense against Western surveillance and built hacking tools to penetrate computer systems, according to people familiar with the matter.
National-security and cyberweapon experts are watching the growing digital arms stockpile nervously, worried that one-off attacks could eventually turn messier, particularly given how little is known about what each country is capable of doing.
“What we can do, we can expect done back to us,” said Howard Schmidt, who was the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator until 2012. The U.S. is thinking, “Yeah, I don’t want to pull that trigger because it’s going to be more than a single shot that goes off.”

Obama Sells Syrian Peace Talks that Will Never Come

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As noted in the Steve Kroft, 60 Minutes interview with Barack Obama, when challenged on leadership, Obama said he leads on climate change.

The White House has falsely created a bucket-load of people to blame for any intelligence failures, including declaring CENTCOM had modified intelligence reports to make al Qaeda appear as though the terror group was decimated, which is hardly a fact of today.

It should also be noted, the U.S. intelligence agencies collaborate several times daily with allied foreign intelligence services and the United Nations has their own intelligence pathways. In fact, the UN has been approached to seek urgent agreements of peace, no-fly zones, cease fires or a discussion on a coalition government for Syria.

WASHINGTON —CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad’s forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.

The Russians “know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. “They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State” group. More here.

So, within DC, there are arguments at every corner about what to do with regard to Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. It is not a matter of failed intelligence. Saudi Arabia is especially concerned about Syria and has been equipping anti-Assad forces. The Saudis met with the Russians over the weekend.

DailyBeast;

Politicians in Washington are pointing their fingers at spies for making them look silly on Russia and Syria. Did our spies mess up again?
As Russia continues airstrikes in Syria, a fight is brewing between members of Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies over what lawmakers were told about the Russian military operations, and when.The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA and other spy agencies responsible for tracking the Russian military buildup in Syria, is “looking at possible problems in the timely provision of information to Congress,” a congressional staff member told The Daily Beast. Three other officials confirmed that the inquiry—which is not a formal investigation—is underway and that lawmakers have been talking to intelligence officials about whether their reports to Congress accurately predicted when the Russian air strikes would begin and that they would target rebel groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. intelligence officials fired back that they had provided lawmakers with warnings about Russia’s intentions to begin military operations in Syria, including in the weeks before airstrikes began in late September.

“Any suggestion that the intelligence community was surprised by Russia’s military support to the Assad regime is misleading,” a senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast. Members of Congress had access to intelligence reports on the movements of Russian aircraft into Syria as well as the buildup of ground troops and could read them anytime they chose, another official said.

Russia has long been a subject of close scrutiny for the CIA and other intelligence agencies. But since the end of the Cold War and a post-9/11 shift to focusing on terrorist organizations and the rise of extremist groups, some lawmakers have questioned whether the agencies are paying enough attention to old foes in Moscow.

“For several years, the Intelligence Community has provided regular assessments of Russia’s military, political, and financial support to the [Assad] regime,” Brian Hale, a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement. “In recent months, the Intelligence Community tracked and reported Moscow’s determination to play a more direct role in propping up Assad’s grip on power, including its deployment of offensive military assets to Syria. While these events unfolded quickly, the IC carried out its responsibilities with equal agility.”

The pushback from officials underscored how sensitive the agencies are to allegations of “intelligence failures” and in particular being behind the curve about Russia’s international ambitions and the rise of extremists groups in the Middle East. The Defense Department is also investigating allegations that senior intelligence officials at the military’s Central Command manipulated intelligence reports to paint a rosy picture about the U.S.-led air campaign against the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.

The congressional inquiry also highlights how politicized the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria has become in the wake of a total breakdown in the U.S. military’s training of rebel groups and a 13-month-old U.S.-led air campaign that has failed to destroy ISIS forces in Syria or Iraq.

The White House defended the quality of the intelligence reporting on Syria and noted that journalists had also been tracking the deployment of military aircraft and ground troops into the country.

“I don’t think there was anybody that had the expectation in the administration that Russia wasn’t prepared to use that equipment to advance what they view as their interests inside of Syria,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Thursday, adding that officials had already assessed Russia and wanted to prop up the embattled Assad regime before the airstrikes began.

“I don’t think that’s a surprise,” Earnest said. “The president, before Russia commenced their military activities, said that a decision by Russia to double down on Assad militarily would be a losing bet. That’s something that the President said before we saw this Russian military activity and we continue to believe that that’s true.”

Reuters first reported that lawmakers were examinig possible intelligence lapses over Russia’s intervention and were concerned that intelligence agencies were slow to grasp Putin’s intentions.

That’s a charge that lawmakers have made in the past.

After Russian forces invaded the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in 2014, lawmakers blasted the Pentagon and intelligence community for failing to anticipate Putin’s plans.

“It was not predicted by our intelligence. That is well known, which is another massive failure because of our total misreading of the intentions of Vladimir Putin,” Sen. John McCain told then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during a hearing. That prompted James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, to defend his analysts’ work.

“I have lived through some genuine intelligence failures in my career, and this was not a failure by any stretch,” Clapper said in an interview with Washington news radio station WTOP in March 2014.

“We tracked [the situation in Ukraine] pretty carefully and portrayed what the possibilities were and certainly portrayed the difficulties we’d have, because of the movements of Russian troops and provided anticipatory warning of their incursion into Crimea,” Clapper said.

Three months later, when ISIS forces rolled into the Iraqi city of Mosul and established a major foothold inside the country, the agencies again found themselves on the defensive, recounting all the times they’d said they warned lawmakers about the rising strength of ISIS in the region and how it could threaten security. Critics said, however, that the intelligence agencies hadn’t predicted ISIS would take over whole cities, and that the reporting wasn’t specific enough to develop a counterattack.

The debate over intelligence assessments on Russia’s recent airstrikes has a similar theme. Lawmakers are zeroing in on specific reporting about military movements and potential targets, as well assessments about Putin’s intentions and his strategy, to get at the question of how the U.S. response to Russia’s operation might have been different with other kinds of information.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said in a statement on Thursday that it was “certainly true that few would have predicted that Putin would react to the weakening position of the Assad regime by sending in combat aircraft and augmenting its naval presence. An increase in Russia’s material support for the Assad regime seemed much more probable.”

That suggested that some lawmakers viewed the intelligence assessments as not declarative or precise enough for Congress to understand how the events would unfold.

But, Schiff added, “As Putin’s intention to deploy more military power to Syria became clearer in recent weeks, the Intelligence Community kept the Committee apprised of those developments. Although we will continue to look into the timeliness and accuracy of intelligence assessments, I do not think we should rush to find fault with the Intelligence Community in its ability to discern exactly what is in Putin’s head.”

Military and intelligence officials did warn that Russia was likely to begin military operations in Syria in the days before air strikes began.

Nine days before Russia’s first bombing runs on Syrian rebel groups, including those that the CIA had given weapons and training, three U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that airstrikes would begin “soon.” They noted that Russian drone flights to scout potential targets were underway—those same flights were also reported on social media by eyewitnesses in Syria.

The officials’ assessment on the imminence of Russian airstrikes marked a shift from previous statements, when officials had said they weren’t sure whether Russia intended to use force in Syria and enter into the country’s long and brutal civil war. That shifting analysis reflected the rapid increase in the number of Russian jets in the region, as well as reports by eyewitnesses that Russian military forces were working with Assad’s army. Videos supporting those claims could be found on YouTube.

And yet, those aggressive, visible moves were met with hardly a shrug in some circles in Washington.

“There are not discussions happening here about what this means for U.S. influence on the war against ISIS,” one defense official told The Daily Beast at the time.

In light of the administration’s response, it’s questionable whether more precise assessments of Russia’s movements would have led to any attempts to head off its intervention.

Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that reading the Russian leader’s mind was all but impossible.

“Putin notoriously keeps a tight counsel and employs a deliberate strategy of improvisation and unpredictability,” Schiff said. “That said, we need to make sure that we appropriately prioritize so-called hard targets like Russia.”

Only Obama Adheres to Iran Deal, Others Pretend

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Primer: 

 

SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 11 Oct.’15:”Fiery Scenes as Iran MPs Give Partial Nod to Nuclear Deal”, Agence France Press

SUBJECT: Iran’s ‘partial nod’ to nuclear deal  

FULL TEXT: Iran’s parliament gave a partial nod to a nuclear deal with world powers Sunday but only after fiery clashes and allegations from a top negotiator that a lawmaker had threatened to kill him.  

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, went on the attack for the government at the end of a boisterous debate where he and other officials were accused of having capitulated.  

Ultraconservative lawmakers repeatedly warned of holes in the text of the agreement and criticized President Hassan Rouhani for suggesting MPs were deliberately delaying the deal.  

Red with anger, Alireza Zakani, who headed a panel reviewing the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, for two months, demanded “fundamental changes” to the text.  

“This deal serves Wendy Sherman” and not Iran’s interests, Zakani said, referring to America’s senior negotiator in talks which resulted in the agreement in Vienna on July 14.  

Hardliners in Tehran often railed against two years of diplomacy that led to the deal. Iran’s government says the accord will protect the country’s nuclear program while seeing sanctions lifted.  

Despite Sunday’s[11 Oct] disagreements, the outlines of a motion titled “Iran’s Plan for Reciprocal and Proper Action in Implementing JCPOA” were approved by 139 of 253 lawmakers present.  

One-hundred lawmakers voted against and 12 abstained. Iran has 290 MPs in total. They stopped short of endorsing the nuclear accord on Sunday and said specific details of the text are to be discussed and voted on Tuesday. Members of the U.S. Congress failed in September to torpedo the White House’s historic deal with Iran.  

Salehi, an atomic scientist by training and a former foreign minister, hit out at what he said was the “immoral” behavior of some MPs in the way they had responded to talks and the deal.  

Having to raise his voice, Salehi said: “Truth might be bitter for some…  Listen. Listen. Hear me once and for all. Hear it from someone who is going be buried under cement.”  

The latter remark was in reference to a lawmaker who Salehi said took a vow to kill him because the government agreed to remove and disable the core of a reactor at Arak, one of Iran’s nuclear sites.  

“We negotiated within a framework and principles. Who set that framework?  Me? A minimum and maximum was set for us,” Salehi said.  

So-called red lines for the talks were also laid down by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Supreme National Security Council that he oversees.  

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led Iran’s diplomacy with the six powers, attended Sunday’s parliament session but he did not speak publicly. State television broadcast only live audio of the session over stills of the parliament, citing “opposition from Majlis authorities.”  

However, pictures posted on social media sites showed the fierce exchanges.

Now to Obama:

Obama will be the only person sticking to Iran deal

By Amir Taheri

NYP: Sometime this week, President Obama is scheduled to sign an executive order to meet the Oct. 15 “adoption day” he has set for the nuclear deal he says he has made with Iran. According to the president’s timetable the next step would be “the start day of implementation,” fixed for Dec. 15.

But as things now stand, Obama may end up being the only person in the world to sign his much-wanted deal, in effect making a treaty with himself.

The Iranians have signed nothing and have no plans for doing so. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has not even been discussed at the Islamic Republic’s Council of Ministers. Nor has the Tehran government bothered to even provide an official Persian translation of the 159-page text.

The Islamic Majlis, the ersatz parliament, is examining an unofficial text and is due to express its views at an unspecified date in a document “running into more than 1,000 pages,” according to Mohsen Zakani, who heads the “examining committee.”

“The changes we seek would require substantial rewriting of the text,” he adds enigmatically.

Nor have Britain, China, Germany, France and Russia, who were involved in the so-called P5+1 talks that produced the JCPOA, deemed it necessary to provide the Obama “deal” with any legal basis of their own. Obama’s partners have simply decided that the deal he is promoting is really about lifting sanctions against Iran and nothing else.

So they have started doing just that without bothering about JCPOA’s other provisions. Britain has lifted the ban on 22 Iranian banks and companies blacklisted because of alleged involvement in deals linked to the nuclear issue.

German trade with Iran has risen by 33 percent, making it the Islamic Republic’s third-largest partner after China.

China has signed preliminary accords to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors. Russia has started delivering S300 anti-aircraft missile systems and is engaged in talks to sell Sukhoi planes to the Islamic Republic.

France has sent its foreign minister and a 100-man delegation to negotiate big business deals, including projects to double Iran’s crude oil exports.

Other nations have also interpreted JCPOA as a green light for dropping sanctions. Indian trade with Iran has risen by 17 percent, and New Delhi is negotiating massive investment in a rail-and-sea hub in the Iranian port of Chah-Bahar on the Gulf of Oman. With help from Austrian, Turkish and United Arab Emirates banks, the many banking restrictions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear program have been pushed aside.

“The structures of sanctions built over decades is crumbling,” boasts Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Meanwhile, the nuclear project is and shall remain “fully intact,” says the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi.

“We have started working on a process of nuclear fusion that will be cutting-edge technology for the next 50 years,” he adds.

Even before Obama’s “implementation day,” the mullahs are receiving an average of $400 million a month, no big sum, but enough to ease the regime’s cash-flow problems and increase pay for its repressive forces by around 21 percent.

Last month, Iran and the P5+1 created a joint commission to establish the modalities of implementation of an accord, a process they wish to complete by December 2017 when the first two-year review of JCPOA is scheduled to take place and when Obama will no longer be in the White House. (If things go awry Obama could always blame his successor or even George W Bush.)

Both Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have often claimed that, its obvious shortcomings notwithstanding, their nuke deal with the “moderate faction” in Tehran might encourage positive changes in Iran’s behavior.

That hasn’t happened.

The mullahs see the “deal” as a means with which Obama would oppose any suggestion of trying to curb Iran.

“Obama won’t do anything that might jeopardize the deal,” says Ziba Kalam, a Rouhani adviser. “This is his biggest, if not the only, foreign policy success.”

If there have been changes in Tehran’s behavior they have been for the worst. Iran has teamed up with Russia to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, mocking Obama’s “Assad must go” rhetoric. More importantly, Iran has built its direct military presence in Syria to 7,000 men. (One of Iran’s most senior generals was killed in Aleppo on Wednesday.)

Tehran has also pressured Iraqi Premier Haidar al-Abadi’s weak government to distance itself from Washington and join a dubious coalition with Iran, Russia and Syria.

Certain that Obama is paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent “deal” the mullahs have intensified their backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last week a delegation was in Tehran with a long shopping list for arms.

In Lebanon, the mullahs have toughened their stance on choosing the country’s next president. And in Bahrain, Tehran is working on a plan to “ensure an early victory” of the Shiite revolution in the archipelago.

Confident that Obama is determined to abandon traditional allies of the United States, Tehran has also heightened propaganda war against Saudi Arabia, now openly calling for the overthrow of the monarchy there.

The mullahs are also heightening contacts with Palestinian groups in the hope of unleashing a new “Intifada.”

“Palestine is thirsty for a third Intifada,” Supreme Guide Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan said in an editorial last Thursday. “It is the duty of every Muslim to help start it as soon as possible.”

Obama’s hopes of engaging Iran on other issues were dashed last week when Khamenei declared “any dialogue with the American Great Satan” to be” forbidden.”

“We have no need of America” his adviser Ali-Akbar Velayati added later. “Iran is the region’s big power in its own right.”

Obama had hoped that by sucking up to the mullahs he would at least persuade them to moderate their “hate-America campaign.” Not a bit of that.

“Death to America” slogans, adoring official buildings in Tehran have been painted afresh along with US flags, painted at the entrance of offices so that they could be trampled underfoot. None of the US citizens still held hostages in Iran has been released, and one, Washington Post stringer Jason Rezai, is branded as “head of a spy ring “in Tehran. Paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent deal, Obama doesn’t even call for their release.

Government-sponsored anti-American nationwide events are announced for November, anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. The annual “End of America” week-long conference is planned for February and is to focus on “African-American victims of US police” and the possibility of “self-determination for blacks.”

According to official sources “families of Black American victims” and a number of “black American revolutionaries” have been invited.

Inside Iran, Obama’s “moderate partners” have doubled the number of executions and political prisoners. Last week they crushed marches by teachers calling for release of their leaders. Hundreds of trade unionists have been arrested and a new “anti-insurrection” brigade paraded in Tehran to terrorize possible protestors.

The Obama deal may end up as the biggest diplomatic scam in recent history.

Bowe Bergdahl, Time Served

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Remember, Obama approved the ransom payment to Haqqani for Bergdahl, or was it? Perhaps it was to finish the prisoner swap details with both networks, the Taliban and Haqqani.

An Army officer is recommending that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a lower-level court martial and be spared the possibility of jail time for leaving his post in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Saturday.
Defense attorney Eugene Fidell said Lt. Col. Mark Visger has decided Bergdahl’s case should go to a military system similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanor charges. It limits the maximum punishment to reduction of rank, a bad conduct discharge and a short jail term, though that isn’t being sought, Fidell said. Military prosecutors charged Bergdahl in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, a charge that could carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

By The Associated Press – Associated Press – Saturday, October 10, 2015

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces in May 2014 after nearly five years in captivity in Afghanistan. Here is a look at some of the key events from his capture until Saturday, when an Army officer recommended Bergdahl’s case should go to a military system that’s similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanors:

June 30, 2009 – Bergdahl, who is serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment, vanishes from a base in Afghanistan’s Paktika province near the border of Pakistan.

July 2, 2009 – Two U.S. officials tell The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Bergdahl had “just walked off” his base with three Afghans after his shift.

July 18, 2009 – Taliban posts video online showing Bergdahl saying he was “scared I won’t be able to go home.” Bergdahl also says he was lagging behind a patrol when he was captured.

July 19, 2009 – Pentagon confirms missing U.S. solider in Afghanistan is Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho.

July 22, 2009 – More than 500 people attend a vigil in Hailey, Idaho, to show support for Bergdahl and his family.

Dec. 25, 2009 – The Taliban releases a video showing Bergdahl apparently healthy and making a lengthy statement criticizing the U.S. military operation.

June 16, 2011 – The Army announces that Bergdahl has been promoted from specialist to sergeant.

June 30, 2011 – Bergdahl’s parents mark the second anniversary of their son’s capture at hometown event.

Aug. 29, 2011 – US officials tell the AP that direct U.S. talks with the Taliban had evolved to a substantive negotiation before they were scuttled by Afghan officials who feared the talks would undercut President Hamid Karzai.

May 9, 2012 – Bergdahl’s parents say they are hopeful that negotiations or a prisoner swap could bring their son home. Bob Bergdahl tells hometown newspaper that he’s concerned the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to secure his son’s release. The AP agreed in 2010 – at the request of the Pentagon and the White House – not to report on the proposed prisoner swap and ongoing negotiations, on the grounds that public discussion would endanger Bergdahl’s life. When Bergdahl’s parents began to discuss the deal publicly, the AP and other news organizations reported the proposed swap – a plan that would allow the transfer of five Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Weekend of May 27, 2012 – President Barack Obama calls Bergdahl’s parents to assure them that he and the U.S. Department of Defense were doing everything in their power to free Bergdahl.

June 29, 2012 – Bergdahl’s family and hometown marks the third anniversary of his capture. Parents release a statement saying they hope he’s released this year and can return home.

June 20, 2013 – The Taliban proposes a deal in which they would free Bergdahl in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay.

July 9, 2013 – The Taliban close the office in Qatar that was serving as the site for negotiations with the U.S.

Jan. 15, 2014 – U.S. officials say they received a new video of Bergdahl that they believe was taken in the last month, showing Bergdahl is alive.

Feb. 18, 2014 – Bergdahl’s family says they are cautiously optimistic about reported renewed efforts by the Obama’s administration to win his freedom.

May 31, 2014 – Obama administration officials announce that Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban in exchange for the release of five Guantanamo detainees. Bergdahl’s parents say they’re “joyful and relieved.” But debate quickly erupts over whether Bergdahl is a hero or a deserter.

June 2, 2014 – Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry criticizes the U.S. for swapping Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to secure Bergdahl’s release. American officials tell The Associated Press that the Pentagon concluded in 2012 that Bergdahl walked away from his unit, something members of his unit had said put soldiers in danger.

June 4, 2014 – Bergdahl’s Idaho hometown cancels plans to celebrate his return, citing security concerns.

June 13, 2014 – Bergdahl arrives at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

June 16, 2014 – The Army says it is investigating the facts and circumstances around Bergdahl’s disappearance.

Aug. 6, 2014 – The Army begins questioning Bergdahl, who by now has returned to regular duty, about his disappearance.

Aug. 21, 2014 – The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon broke the law when it swapped Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders because it didn’t notify relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance and used money from a wartime account to make the transfer.

Dec. 19, 2014 – The Army says it has finished its investigation.

March 25, 2015 – Bergdahl is charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

March 26, 2015 – Bergdahl’s lawyer releases a note in which Bergdahl says he was repeatedly tortured by the Taliban.

Sept. 17, 2015 – An Article 32 hearing begins to determine whether Bergdahl should face a military trial for leaving his post.

Sept. 18, 2015 – The hearing ends, and the presiding officer will forward his recommendations to the leader of the U.S. Army Forces Command, who will decide whether it should be referred to a court-martial or be resolved in another manner.

Oct. 9, 2015 – Bergdahl’s attorney says an Army officer recommends that Bergdahl face a lesser court-martial, meaning it should go to a military system that’s similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanor, as well as not spend time in jail.

ISIS, Toyota Trucks and the U.S. State Dept

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File this one under…..’shaking my head’.

 

Where did Islamic State get all those Toyota trucks?

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was founded in Doha, Qatar in 2012. It is a lobby operation in Washington DC supporting the banner of the Free Syrian Army, presently led by Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition.

Sadly, while the West attempted to support the anti-Assad forces in an admittedly failed program this week with particular emphasis on Russian intervention into Syria with bombing of only an estimated 10% of Islamic State forces, the U.S. has terminated this program. Many of those trained by Special Forces and the CIA fell victim to being kidnapped, killed or defected to Islamic State and those pesky Toyota rides were seized by ISIS fighting factions.

As airspace de-confliction talks continue between Russia and the United States, a decision was made by Secretary Carter to begin to support the Kurds instead as airstrikes by the U.S. has picked up some pace in the last two days.

Heh, perhaps the targets now being watched are convoys with U.S. State Department Toyota trucks in the hands of Islamic State.

 

Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved: Evidence Show Transferring Was Through Turkey

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of Russia’s air operations over Syria and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.

ABC News in their article, “US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks,” reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury’s inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

 

Mystery Solved

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the “Free Syrian Army.”

US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, “Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels,” reported that:

So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It’s fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public.

The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

 

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.

Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become.

Russia’s intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa.