Iran Sanctions, the Agenda of Congress

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50 House republicans calls upon Kerry to change course on and support US allies in the region.
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Report paving way for Iran sanctions relief likely on Saturday – source

An IAEA report verifying that Iran has kept its promises under a nuclear deal it reached with world powers last year is likely to be issued on Saturday, paving the way for sanctions on Tehran to be lifted, a diplomatic source said on Friday.

Iranian and other officials had previously said they expected the report to come out on Friday.

“Almost all details are ironed out,” said another diplomatic source, based in the Austrian capital.

Vienna is home to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog in charge of monitoring Iran’s implementation of the measures required in the deal Iran reached with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last July.

The July deal calls on the agency to release its report once it has verified Iran has implemented all nuclear-related measures. The IAEA had no comment on Friday on the timing of the report.

Iranian officials have said Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union’s Federica Mogherini would issue a statement on Saturday or Sunday on the “Implementation Day” of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions.

Under the July agreement, Iran agreed to shrink its atomic programme in exchange for the lifting of some EU, U.S. and U.N sanctions, which would allow billions of dollars of investment to flow into the country.

Since July, Iran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at its enrichment sites, shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia and dismantled the core of its Arak nuclear reactor.

Some officials said a meeting in relation to Iran might take place on Saturday in Vienna, where the deal was reached.

“There may be some sort of a meeting tomorrow in Vienna, after which, if everything goes well, we will issue a statement from the Secretary-General,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

***

WSJ: BRUSSELS—The European Union has rolled over until January 28 the modest sanctions suspension Iran won following the 2013 interim nuclear deal.

The move comes as Western and Iranian officials say they expect the full implementation of last July’s final nuclear deal to take place in coming days. That will trigger the suspension of broad European, U.S. and United Nations sanctions on Iran.

“As soon as the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms that Iran has taken the nuclear measures under” July’s deal, member states “will give effect to the lifting of all EU economic financial sanctions taken in connection with the Iranian nuclear program,” the bloc said in a news release. That “will supersede the limited sanctions relief extended today,” the bloc said.

Under the interim deal, struck in November 2013, Iran won relief from sanctions on gold and precious-metals trading and some measures affecting its auto and petrochemicals exports. The sanctions relief, which included the unfreezing of some oil revenues held under U.S. sanctions abroad, was estimated at the time to be worth some $7 billion.

In exchange, Iran agreed modest restraints on its nuclear program.

July’s final deal lifts most sanctions on Iran in exchange for major steps to wind back Tehran’s nuclear activities.

According to EU diplomats, the bloc was originally considering rolling over the sanctions suspension for three weeks but as Iran raced to complete the work needed for the final nuclear deal to take effect, they cut the rollover period to two weeks.

Newton Schwartz, Esq. Files First Lawsuit Against Cruz

Schwartz-v-Cruz-complaint

Hat tip to J. Christian Adams, he found that Schwartz actually has a history of behavior violations with regard to BAR Associations. Click here to read the documents. Further, Schwartz is a Bernie Sanders supporter.

January 14, 2015, Newton Schwartz filed the first lawsuit against Ted Cruz challenging his legal ability to be president of the United States. This matter was a core and heated exchange during the last Fox Business Republican debate between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

 

Obama: Naysayers on Economy, Peddling Fiction

The market is spiraling. China who is the second largest U.S. debt holder has an economy that is spiraling oil prices are spiraling and what about WalMart?

Walmart to shutter 269 stores – including more than half in US

Guardian: The retail giant announced it is working to transfer 10,000 US employees to nearby stores, as CEO said closings are ‘necessary to keep the company strong’

Walmart is closing 269 stores, more than half of them in the US and another big chunk in its challenging Brazilian market. The stores being shuttered account for a fraction of the company’s 11,000 stores worldwide and less than 1% of its global revenue, but according to workers’ group Making Change at Walmart, this announcement will affect 10,000 US employees.

More than 95% of the stores set to be closed in the US are within 10 miles of another Walmart. The Bentonville, Arkansas, company said it is working to ensure that workers are placed in nearby locations.

The store closures will start at the end of the month, and many closures will be of the company’s Walmart Express stores: all 102 of them (out of the 154 locations to be shuttered in the US).

In 2011, Walmart Express marked the retailer’s first entry into the convenience store arena. The stores are about 12,000 square feet and sell essentials like toothpaste. But the concept never caught on as the stores served the same purpose as Walmart’s larger Neighborhood Markets: fill-in trips and prescription pickups.

By: Greg Campbell

During his final State of the Union Address on Tuesday, amidst his unseemly campaign politicking in a year where he is ineligible for reelection, President Obama sniped at Republicans and touted supposed economic successes that have occurred under his stewardship.

He even insisted that anyone “claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

To hear Obama speak of supposed economic success is hardly surprising; the president has long kept his own counsel and obliged himself his own conjured facts and false realities.

His administration has touted “bringing peace to Syria” as an accomplishment. As Obamacare takes effect like Cancer metastasizing in a body, he continues to assert that Americans love it and that it is working. He insisted just last week that he held the constitutional authority to undermine the Second Amendment without Congress.

So, it is of little surprise to discover that this same delusional man asserted that it is those who warn of Obama’s economy that are “peddling fiction.”

The fact is that by simple and complex metrics alike, it’s easy to see the devastating toll his “leadership” has taken on our nation’s financial health.

It turns out that not only is Obama being less-than-honest, but he’s outright lying. Obama’s economy can boast of the worst economic numbers in over 80 years!

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The economic expansion—already the worst on record since World War II—is weaker than previously thought, according to newly revised data.

From 2012 through 2014, the economy grew at an all-too-familiar rate of 2% annually, according to three years of revised figures the Commerce Department released Thursday. That’s a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from prior estimates.

The revisions were released concurrently with the government’s first estimate of second-quarter output.

Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has advanced at a 2.2% annual pace through the end of last year. That’s more than a half-percentage point worse than the next-weakest expansion of the past 70 years, the one from 2001 through 2007. While there have been highs and lows in individual quarters, overall the economy has failed to break out of its roughly 2% pattern for six years.

Obama, admittedly, came to office at a time when America was in trouble. Applying for the job of president, he promised to help revitalize the economy. What came from him and his Democratic minions in Congress was a punishing program of job-killing economic burdens on job creators and an expansion of government increased government dependency and that squeezed more and more out of the middle class and the lower class.

The Daily Caller reports on Obama’s failures:

Over the first five years of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy grew more slowly than during any five-year period since just after the end of World War II, averaging less than 1.3 percent per year. If we leave out the sharp recession of 1945-46 following World War II, Obama looks even worse, ranking dead last among all presidents since 1932. No other president since the Great Depression has presided over such a steadily poor rate of economic growth during his first five years in office. This slow growth should not be a surprise in light of the policies this administration has pursued.

An economy usually grows rapidly in the years immediately following a recession. As Peter Ferrera points out in Forbes, the U.S. economy has not even reached its long run average rate of growth of 3.3 percent; the highest annual growth rate since Obama took office was 2.8 percent. Total growth in real GDP over the 19 quarters of economic recovery since the second quarter of 2009 has been 10.2 percent. Growth over the same length of time during previous post-World War II recoveries has ranged from 15.1 percent during George W. Bush’s presidency to 30 percent during the recovery that began when John F. Kennedy was elected.

Facts and figures are to Obama like BBs to a tank; they just simply bounce-off without having any real effect.

When he and his fellow Democrats encounter facts that do not jibe with their preferred narratives, they simply deny reality in favor of crafting a new one to spoon-feed to the lapdog media and the government-dependent and government-created invalids who are willing to believe his lies without any semblance of critical thought.

In truth, it takes no economic genius to understand our situation. It requires just some honest observation.

Are jobs more plentiful than they were before?

Is it easier to obtain the American dream now than before?

Is $18 trillion+ in national debt a good indicator of economic stability?

Obama Cool with Iran’s Aggressions

Unabated Hostility

Smith, WeeklyStandard: Early last Wednesday, Iran released the ten American sailors it had detained to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The administration understood clearly that the Iranians were both trying to ruin Obama’s victory lap and sending a message—on the eve of implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—that Tehran will be calling the shots. So Obama made no mention of Iran’s capturing 10 Americans during his speech: No way were the Iranians going to get a rise out of him on his day.

The administration would prefer to forget the incident entirely—along with a series of other hostile acts by Iran since the nuclear deal was signed in July. In addition to its customary “Death to America” rallies, in the last few months the Islamic Republic has sentenced, in secret, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian; imprisoned U.S. citizen Siamak Namazi; tested ballistic missiles, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions; fired rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Straits of Hormuz; and attacked two diplomatic missions belonging to longtime American ally Saudi Arabia. Detaining American sailors comports perfectly with this pattern.

Some American lawmakers aren’t willing to let it slide. Representative Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) released a statement saying “we now must fully investigate Iran for possible violations of the Geneva Convention and ensure these sailors were treated properly.”

Pompeo is on solid ground. When the Iranians detained British sailors in 2007 and paraded them on television, Prime Minister Tony Blair rightly described it as a breach of the Geneva Conventions. Article 13 stipulates that “prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.” The first piece of evidence that the Iranians violated Geneva are the photographs and videos of the American sailors, especially those of them kneeling with their hands behind their heads, which were shown repeatedly in the Iranian media; further evidence is the coerced apology from the commanding officer.

It’s worth noting that Iran’s latest hostile action has given us a clearer picture of how the regime actually functions. As the event unfolded, CNN and other American media spoke of the “two Irans,” meaning the hardliners and the moderates. This has been the administration’s working theory, which holds that the former comprises the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The “moderates” in this view are figures like President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. In this scenario, it was the “hardliners” who were responsible for detaining the 10 Americans, and it was thanks to the diplomatic channel that John Kerry opened with Zarif while negotiating the nuclear deal that the sailors were freed without much delay. This theory posits that the hardliners kidnapped the Americans in an effort to embarrass the moderates, who want warmer relations with the White House. Therefore, the fact that the moderates prevailed signals a great victory for moderation and American diplomacy—for “principled diplomacy,” to use Obama’s phrase.

This scenario may be possible, but it isn’t likely. If there really is a split in the regime, why would the hardliners put themselves in a position to lose an intra-regime battle against the moderates? It would show the world that they’re not only weaker than the moderates, they’re also weaker than the moderates’ new partners, John Kerry and Barack Obama. Indeed, if it was the moderates who liberated the sailors from the grip of the extremists, it means the supreme leader himself required them to free the Great Satan’s seamen. Which would mean that the supreme leader has sided with the moderates and the Americans against the extremists.

That’s a stretch, to say the least. What is far more likely is that there is no such split between moderates and hardliners. The two camps—if there are indeed two camps—work in tandem. The hardliners take prisoners and the moderates negotiate the price of their release. Iran’s moderates are a ministry of bagmen sent out to collect on behalf of the hard men.

In short, the regime with which the White House has negotiated the future of American national security is still a regime that takes Americans hostage. Unless you believe that hijacking a U.S. Navy boat, humiliating its crew, photographing them with their hands above their heads, and broadcasting their apologies on state television is a demonstration of peaceful, moderate intentions.

Terrorists, Here, There and Here

Houston terror suspect reportedly wanted to blow up Galleria, Sharpstown Mall

ABC: During testimony, we learned he allegedly discussed placing bombs at Houston’s Galleria.

Eyewitness News also obtained photographic evidence used during the bond hearing — photos of what was seized from his apartment and one of Al Hardan allegedly pledging his loyalty to the Islamic State.

A federal investigator testified that Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, wanted to blow up the Galleria and Sharpstown Mall with a remote bomb. According to testimony, Al Hardan would put the bomb in a trash can and detonate it using a cell phone.

They also say he received military training on how to use an AK-47 late last year at a farm just outside of Houston. Agents say the training was conducted with a confidential informant, and the entire event was recorded by federal investigators. More here.

Just this week, Secretary of State John Kerry made this announcement of refugees:

DeptofState: Refugees survive terrible ordeals: torture, upheaval, perilous journeys, and tremendous loss. They are persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group. Today, due to conflict and repression, there are nearly 20 million refugees in the world. For a small number of the most vulnerable of these refugees, the United States strives to provide a new start through refugee resettlement.

It is a tradition that exemplifies American leadership in humanitarian causes around the world, and makes our nation a beacon of hope. That is why Secretary Kerry was pleased to announce today that we will further expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, offering a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous and irregular journey many are currently taking in the hands of human smugglers. Full statement here

The UK has a border issue very much like that of the United States when it comes to terrorist and smugglers.

Mr Hobbs said the defence of the entire UK coastline, which is around 17,000km, is in the hands of just five customs cutters, decreasing numbers of coastguard vessels and a “paltry number” of police marine units, highlighting the scrapping of Essex Police’s units in 2013.

“If we are going to defend our borders against thousands of migrants including possible terrorist threats then we need to have strong coastal borders and airports – it should not be one at the expense of the other,” he added. Full summary here.

Florida Hezbollah Imam Travels to Syria and Back

Did Mohamad al-Halabi visit his terrorist nephew in Damascus?

FrontPage: Mohamad al-Halabi, a.k.a. Mohamad al-Fouani, the imam of the American Islamic Center of Florida, may operate out of Pompano Beach, Florida, however a good part of his life still resides in the Middle East, including his associations with the terrorist organization Hezbollah. In November, al-Halabi left the shores of the United States to travel to his native home of Syria. While there, he visited family, but were they his Hezbollah family?

Recently the American Islamic Center of Florida or AICF moved from Boca Raton, where it had been a part of the community since 2003, to its new location in Pompano Beach. It seems the move has also prompted Mohamad al-Halabi, the Shiite mosque’s imam, to go by another name, that being Mohamad al-Fouani.

For the mosque and the imam it is a new beginning, though it is not enough to shake al-Halabi’s – or al-Fouani’s – radical past, no matter how much he attempts to conceal his identity from law enforcement or others. Full story here.

Lastly but certainly not least, we have normalized relations with Iran and just what does Iran do and what is the future?

Tehran Acknowledge 200 Thousand Armed Youth in Five Countries

In the first official confession of the presence of Iranian Armed youth, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander, Mohammad Ali Jafari, acknowledged training tens of thousands of Shiite youths, whom he called the armed revolutionary generation, for jihad in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Jafari said, at the funeral of Hamid Reza Asadullah, a leader in the Revolutionary Guards who was killed in Syria, that the positive outcome of the developments and events in the region is the training of about two hundred thousand armed young troops and the major role these troops are playing in the countries of the region.

Jafari added that he is looking forward to encourage the third generation of the revolution to support the Iranian Guardian Jurist, pointing out the importance of the presence of Iranian youths in battles of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
The IRGC works outside Iran through the Quds Force, which is led by General Qassem Soleimani. Remarkably, it does not have any military force, yet it prepares and trains all the Revolutionary Guards’ institutions for use when needed.

The IRGC used to include four major forces, which are the Ground Forces, Air Force, Navy, and Missile Force. Recently, and according to an expert who observes Iranian affairs, the IRGG introduced its fifth force, which is the “Electronic, Intelligence and Cultural Deterrence Force”.

The expert told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Guards work in Syria through military advisers who monitor operating rooms. The Guards’ fighters who head towards supporting the Syrian regime had no regulatory decisions; however, they are experienced in battling and have worked in advanced operating rooms.