Impeach John Kerry over Allegiance to Iran

Incredible…..John Kerry with the Obama administration’s approval proves more loyalty to Iran than to the United States. It is no longer deniable that Iran’s best partner is John Kerry with Barack Obama’s approval. It is all about the waiver, meaning agreements, treaties and accords have no teeth, the pen is mighty when waivers unwind objectives and our own Congress.

In part from Politico: “Has anybody in the West been targeted by any Iranian national, anybody of Iranian origin, or anyone traveling to Iran?” Zarif asked. “Whereas many people have been targeted by the nationals of your allies, people visiting your allies, and people transiting the territory of, again, your allies. So you’re looking at the wrong address.”

Zarif mentioned the 9/11 attacks, as well as the recent San Bernardino and Paris attacks. His remarks were veiled references to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose citizens have been implicated in those and other lethal strikes. Neither nation is singled out in the new visa law.

Despite Kerry’s letter, the National Iranian American Council remained wary of the visa law. “It remains unclear how these steps will ensure that dual citizens are not discriminated against solely on the basis of their nationality,” the group said Sunday.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/iran-visa-waivers-kerry-nuclear-deal-217014#ixzz3v93uDvMt

Iran Nuclear Deal Restricts U.S. More Than Congress Knew

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Members of Congress knew the Iran nuclear deal came with strings attached. They just didn’t know how many.

When the administration presented the agreement to Congress, lawmakers were told that new sanctions on Iran would violate the deal. Now the administration is trying to sidestep a recently passed provision to tighten rules on visas for those who have visited Iran.

Since the accord was struck last summer, the U.S. emphasis on complying with its end of the deal has publicly eclipsed its efforts to pressure Iran. In that time, Iranian authorities have detained two American dual nationals and sentenced a third on what most observers say are trumped up espionage charges. Iran’s military has conducted two missile tests, one of which the U.N. said violated sanctions, and engaged in a new offensive with Russia in Syria to shore up the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

In the latest example of the U.S. effort to reassure Iran, the State Department is scrambling to confirm to Iran that it won’t enforce new rules that would increase screening of Europeans who have visited Iran and plan to come to America. There is concern the new visa waiver provisions, included in the omnibus budget Congress passed last week, would hinder business people seeking to open up new ventures in Iran once sanctions are lifted.

U.S. officials confirmed over the weekend that Secretary of State John Kerry sent his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, a letter promising to use executive powers to waive the new restrictions on those who have visited Iran but are citizens of countries in the Visa Waiver Program. These officials also told us that they have told Iranian diplomats that, because they are not specific to Iran, the new visa waiver provisions do not violate the detailed sequence of steps Iran and other countries committed to taking as part of the agreement. Even so, the State Department is promising to sidestep the new rule.

At issue is a provision that would require travelers who visit certain countries — including Iran, Sudan, Syria and Iraq — to apply at a U.S. Embassy for a visa before coming to the U.S., even if they are from a country for which such visas would normally be waived.

House staffers who spoke with us say Iran was included for good reason, because it remains on the U.S. list of state of sponsors of terrorism for its open support for Hezbollah and Hamas. The White House did not object until the Iranian government told the administration last week that the bill would violate the nuclear agreement, according to correspondence on these negotiations shared with us.

Since 2013, when the open negotiations with Iran began, the Obama administration has repeatedly told Congress that additional sanctions on the Islamic Republic would wreck negotiations. The resulting agreement obligates the West to lift sanctions in exchange for more transparency and limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. Iran and the White House seem to be interpreting “lift sanctions” more broadly than others expected.

“If the United States Congress cannot implement a more secure visa procedure for those who travel to state sponsors of terrorism like Iran, then the Iran deal ties the hands of lawmakers to a greater extent than even deal critics feared,” Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert in Iran sanctions, told us.

Over the weekend, Zarif said in an interview with al-Monitor that Iran’s inclusion on the list might violate the agreement. Zarif called the new restrictions “absurd” because no one connected to Iran was involved in the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. He also said the provision “sends a very bad signal to the Iranians that the U.S. is bent on hostile policy toward Iran, no matter what.”

The issue is particularly sensitive for the State Department because Iran has yet to implement its side of the deal: The new transparency and limitations on the nuclear program are to begin in the coming weeks. State Department officials have said they fear more hardline elements of the regime in Tehran are trying to scuttle the deal for political advantage over President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration negotiated the accord.

In February, Iran will have parliamentary elections and elections for the powerful assembly of experts, the committee of clerics that would choose the next supreme leader of Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dies. If anti-deal elements win those elections, the future of the nuclear deal will be dim.

These factors explain why Kerry has been willing to overlook Iran’s own provocations while trying to mitigate what Iran sees as provocations from the U.S. Congress. They also explain why Iran seems so intent to provoke the U.S. at the moment it’s supposed to implement the deal to which it just agreed.

Russia Committing War Crimes

Russia may have committed war crimes in Syria: Amnesty #SyriaWarThe London-based rights group says it ‘is crucial that suspected violations are independently and impartially investigated’

Amnesty International says three months of Russian air raids have killed hundreds of civilians in Syria, many in targeted attacks that could constitute war crimes.The rights group said on Wednesday that there was evidence Russia had lied to cover up attacks on a field hospital and a mosque, and was using internationally banned cluster bombs in civilian areas.Some attacks “appear to have directly attacked civilians or civilian objects by striking residential areas with no evident military target and even medical facilities”, said Amnesty’s Middle East director Philip Luther.”Such attacks may amount to war crimes,” he said, adding that it “is crucial that suspected violations are independently and impartially investigated”.

The report focuses on attacks in Homs, Idlib and Aleppo provinces between September and November, which killed at least 200 civilians and around a dozen fighters, the group said.Amnesty noted that Russian authorities “have claimed that their armed forces are only striking ‘terrorist’ targets. After some attacks, they have responded to reports of civilian deaths, by denying they killed civilians; after others, they have simply stayed silent.”In one of the deadliest incidents, Amnesty said three missiles were fired at a busy market in the Idlib locality of Ariha, killing 49 civilians.Local media activist Mohammed Qurabi al-Ghazal quoted as saying: “In just a few moments, people were screaming, the smell of burning was in the air and there was just chaos.”In another suspected Russian attack, at least 46 civilians, including 32 children and 11 women sheltering in the basement of a residential building, were killed in October in Ghantu, Homs, Amnesty said.Video footage showed “no evidence of a military presence”, and weapons experts said the nature of the destruction “indicated possible use of fuel-air explosives, a type of weapon particularly prone to indiscriminate effects when used in the vicinity of civilians”.

On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian air strikes had killed 2,132 people since the campaign began at the end of September, including 710 civilians.The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes since it broke out in March 2011.

Back in October:

Russia Condemned For Bombing Civilians In Syria

A coalition of countries has condemned Russia for killing civilians and not targeting Islamic State (IS) forces in its deadly bombing raids on Syria.

The UK, US, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey voiced “deep concern” over Moscow’s actions as Russian jets carried out a third day of airstrikes in the war-torn country.

They said in a statement they are especially concerned about “attacks by the Russian Air Force on Hama, Homs and Idlib since yesterday (Thursday) which led to civilian casualties and did not target Daesh (IS).

“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalisation.

“We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL (IS).”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s jets appear to be targeting rebel groups trying to topple his ally Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

They reportedly hit a camp operated by a rebel group trained by American CIA agents.

However, Russia says its Sukhoi-34 jets are attacking IS forces, and destroyed a command centre and training camp used to prepare “terrorists”.

Moscow says it has carried out 18 attacks in Syria since Thursday night, with 12 of them hitting IS targets.

The Kremlin has denied reports that its strikes have killed at least 36 civilians, including five children.

:: Why Is Putin Joining The Syrian Conflict?

The US-led coalition criticised Russia as Mr Putin held talks with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris to try to overcome differences on whether Mr Assad should stay in power.

The Syrian President is Russia’s main ally in the Middle East, while Western leaders are firmly opposed to his rule.

Mr Hollande told Mr Putin that Russian airstrikes must be confined to targeting IS militants.

And Mrs Merkel added the leaders “said very clearly that Daesh (IS) was the enemy that we needed to fight”.

Mr Putin left the Paris meeting without comment and did not appear alongside the French and German leaders.

Russia’s raids have triggered discussions in the Pentagon about whether America should use military force to protect US-trained and equipped rebels if they are bombed by Moscow.

US President Barack Obama said: “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.”

He said Russia is also failing to differentiate between IS and more moderate insurgents in Syria.

“From their perspective, they’re all terrorists. And that’s a recipe for disaster,” said Mr Obama.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said it had been forced to suspend planned humanitarian operations in Syria, including evacuating the wounded, due to a “surge of military activity”.

Turkey Partially Deals with Hamas, Terror

If the United States knows the top Hamas terrorist and where he is, then why not detain him? While Secretary of State, John Kerry has failed miserably at dealing with all the terrifying issues with Iran, at least some pressure was placed on Turkey to get rid of the top Hamas leader, but Hamas in general is allowed to continue operations in Turkey. It is twisted for sure.

Hamas is a terror organization and responsible for deadly conflicts and hostilities on a constant basis in Israel.

This condition as explained below, describes how convoluted diplomatic objectives are with respect to how the Obama administration functions, rather, malfunctions.

Top Hamas Terrorist Leaves Turkey After Pressure From U.S., Israel

TheTower: Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas leader who manages the terrorist group’s operations in the West Bank, was reportedly expelled from Turkey under pressure from the United States and Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday.

According to the Post, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal agreed that al-Arouri would “voluntarily” depart the country and not return, though Hamas would be allowed to continue operations on its soil. Erdogan’s ongoing support for the terror group remains a stumbling block in efforts to restore diplomatic relations between Anakara and Jerusalem.

Earlier this month, Erdogan said that reconciliation between Israel and Turkey would benefit the entire region. The two countries reached a preliminary deal to restore diplomatic relations late last week. Israel agreed to compensate the families of crew members killed during the IDF’s 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara, which attempted to breach Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, but refused to end its blockade of the territory, despite Erdogan’s demands.

In Where the Shadiest Players Find a Home, which was published in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Jonathan Schanzer explored the extent of Turkey’s recent support for Hamas:

But Turkey’s support for Hamas remains strong. Just how strong? We don’t know. In December 2011, Palestinian news sources reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “instructed the Ministry of Finance to allocate $300 million to be sent to Hamas’ government in Gaza.” Both Turkey and Hamas denied this, but Reuters and Haaretzpublished subsequent reports citing this number. …

Then there is the presence of the aforementioned Saleh al-Arouri. The Israeli news website Ynet reported last year that Arouri “operates out of Turkey, with the backing of the Turkish government.”…

Arouri is also believed to be in charge of Hamas’ operations in the West Bank. In January, a senior Israeli military official confirmed this when he told Israel Hayom that Hamas’ recent West Bank operations are “directed from Gaza via Turkey.” More recently, in August, the Israelis announced that Arouri was at the center of a plot to bring down the Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. Arouri recruited the leader of the operation, according to reports. …

Arouri is not the only Hamas figure in Turkey. In 2011, Israel released 10 Hamas operatives to Turkey as part of the prisoner exchange deal with Hamas that secured the release of kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. Among the Hamas figures believed to have gone to Turkey include Mahmoud Attoun and Taysir Suleiman. Both were sentenced to life terms in Israeli prison for murder. Both men today appear on television and lecture about the merits of Hamas in Turkey and around the Arab world.

YNet: Israel established al-Arouri’s expulsion from the country as a condition for achieving full reconciliation between Ankara and Jerusalem. Al-Arouri’s “voluntary” departure was agreed upon during the meeting between Hamas’ political chief, Khaled Mashal and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu last Saturday.

Nevertheless, Erdogan clarified to close associates that he had no intention of closing Hamas’ offices in Turkey and would not stop his financial and moral support of Hamas, as Israel requested.

Moreover, Turkey is adamant regarding its request that Israel remove the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and Israel refuses to do this. Turkish officials claim that Israel agreed to lighten the blockade, but Israel denies this.

 

A secret meeting was reported on last Thursday between the soon-to-be Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoy in the contacts with Turkey, Joseph Ciechanover and Turkish under-foreign minister Feridun Sinirlioglu in Zurich.

 

The Prime Minister’s Office announced that at the meeting it was agreed upon that Turkey’s ambassador would return to Tel Aviv and Israel’s envoy would return to Ankara. Moreover, Israel agreed to establish a compensation fund for those killed in the Mavi Marmara incident, and in return Turkey will renounce any and all claims regarding it.

 

It was also agreed upon that al-Arouri would be expelled from Turkey and that talks about laying a gas pipeline between Israel and Turkey would soon begin.

 

Al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, sat in Israeli jails for 15 years before being expelled to Syria. In 2012, when Hamas’ offices in Syria were closed down, he fled to Turkey. From Turkey he was involved in orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teenagers in Gush Etzion in June 2014.

 

Obama Gave Clemency to 95 Convicts, Who are They

Obama gave the warning earlier this year. He also has collaborated with an outside agency on who and why he commutes their sentences.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama plans to grant clemency to federal offenders “more aggressively” during the remainder of his presidency, he said in a sit-down interview with The Huffington Post on Friday.

Obama has faced criticism for rarely using his power to grant pardons and commutations. In December, he commuted the sentences of eight federal drug offenders, including four who had been sentenced to life. That brought his total number of commutations to 18.

Obama said he had granted clemency so infrequently because of problems in the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. The former head of that office, who was appointed during the George W. Bush administration, resigned in April amid criticism from criminal justice advocates.

“I noticed that what I was getting was mostly small-time crimes from very long ago,” Obama said. “It’d be a 65-year-old who wanted a pardon to get his gun rights back. Most of them were legitimate, but they didn’t address the broader issues that we face, particularly around nonviolent drug offenses. So we’ve revamped now the DOJ office. We’re now getting much more representative applicants.”

Many of those new applications came from what’s known as the Clemency Project 2014, announced when the head of the Office of the Pardon Attorney resigned. That project, which operates independently of the government, is intended to help DOJ sort through a huge number of applicants to figure out who meets specific criteria laid out by the administration.

4 of the 95 Prisoners Obama Just Set Free Had Nothing to Do With Drug Sentences

On Friday, President Obama granted clemency to 95 convicted prisoners. The vast majority of these individuals received harsh sentences for relatively minor drug offenses. Most of them will become free men and women on April 16, 2016.

Speaking to the press, Obama said:

“Earlier today, I commuted the sentences of 95 men and women who had served their debt to society – another step forward in upholding our fundamental ideals of justice and fairness.”

While they were referred to by the media as “drug offenders,” four of the men and women included were not punished for anything having to do with drugs. Here is some background on these “Freed Four.”

George Andre Axam

Crime: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon

Sentence: 15 years in prison

Though Axam had a history of drug abuse and felony offenses, the crime for which he was imprisoned occurred in December of 2001.

After arguing with his daughter outside his Atlanta house, Axam went back inside, retrieved a gun, then went outside and reportedly aimed it at his daughter’s boyfriend, who was sitting in a car. Axam proceeded to fire “one of two shots in [the boyfriend’s] direction,” then fled into the woods when the police came after him.

Carolyn Yvonne Butler

Crime: Three counts each of armed bank robbery and using a firearm during a violent crime

Sentence: 48 years in prison

Butler robbed three banks at gunpoint in 1991 – one on June 4, another on July 10, and the third on November 22. She reportedly purchased a .25 caliber pistol in San Antonio two days before the first crime.

Though she appealed her guilty verdicts, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld her convictions.

Jon Dylan Girard

Crime: Counterfeiting

Sentence: Six months of home confinement and three years probation

Girard, a physician in Dayton, Ohio, was convicted of counterfeiting in 2002. He was granted a full pardon by the President.

Melody Eileen Homa (née Childress)

Crime: Aiding and abetting bank fraud

Sentence: Thirty days of home confinement, three years probation, 200 hours of community service

Homa committed her crime way back in 1991. Like Girard, the presidential pardon expunged the bank fraud charges from her record.

It’s unclear why these four individuals were tapped for sentence commutation or pardon. Obama has now granted clemency to a total of 163 prisoners in 2015.

Tashfeen Malik’s Visa Application Clues to Jihad

The trained Jihad widow by al Qaeda?

In part from BusinessInsider:

Malik, who was born in Pakistan and lived in Saudi Arabia for part of her life, moved to the US after meeting Farook first online and then in person when he traveled to Mecca for a religious pilgrimage in 2013. Farook was born in the US.

Malik was allowed to enter the US on a K-1 “fiance” visa. That program is now under more scrutiny, with the US government considering stronger screening measures for applicants. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating the issuance of Malik’s visa by Homeland Security officials.

Her application lists addresses in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, including in Punjab Province and Riyadh, where Malik has lived in the past five years.

Farook also wrote the following “intention to marry” statement as part of Malik’s visa application. In the statement, signed on January 20, 2014, Farook wrote that he and Malik “intend to marry within the first month of her arriving in the US.”

Syed Rizwan Farook marriage statementHouse Judiciary Committee

A stamp on the document shows that Malik was admitted into the US on July 27, 2014.

Malik and Farook had both reportedly been radicalized before they met.

FBI Director James Comey said at a US Senate hearing earlier this month that they discussed jihad and martyrdom before they discussed Malik coming to the US to marry Farook.

And a friend of Farook, who has since been arrested, allegedly told authorities after the attacks that he was planning other attacks with Farook in 2011 and 2012.

Malik also reportedly posted a message on Facebook pledging allegiance to the leader of the terrorist group ISIS — aka the Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh — while the San Bernardino attack was ongoing. She and Farook died in a shootout with police later that day.

Here’s the full visa application:

Tashfeen Malik Visa Application