Category Archives: Treasury

Obama Stands with Palestinian Violence

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Words Have Consequences: Palestinian Authority Incitement to Violence

WITNESSES: Mr. Elliott Abrams

Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies

Council on Foreign Relations

Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D.

Vice President for Research

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Mr. David Makovsky

Ziegler Distinguished Fellow

Director

Project on the Middle East Peace Process

Irwin Levy Family Program on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

 

October 22 is going to be a busy day on Capitol Hill. First Hillary testifies again before the Gowdy Benghazi Committee, but in other room, there will be testimony on the Palestinian Authority inciting the violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Obama Intifada

Column: How coddling Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas led to terrorism in Israel

FreeBeacon: More than 30 dead in Israel as Palestinians armed with knives attack innocents. What’s responsible? A campaign of incitement, which slanderously accuses Jews of intruding on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and murdering Arab children in cold blood.

And who is legitimizing this campaign? None other than Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, whom President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have long held up as a peacemaker. “I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue,” Obama told writer Jeffrey Goldberg in 2014.

That’s a strange view of commitment. This is the same Abbas, remember, who rejected then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s absurdly generous 2008 peace offer. The same Abbas who resisted negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 10-month settlement freeze in 2010, which Obama demanded explicitly on the grounds that it would give Abbas the cover he needed to begin talks. Abbas finally relented to Saudi pressure, and attended a few meetings with Netanyahu that September. But under no definition of what the word “negotiation” actually means were these meetings for real: The freeze was about to expire, the get togethers were perfunctory, and nothing of significance was discussed. The farce ended soon after.

It is a lie to say that Mahmoud Abbas is committed to a diplomatic resolution. Just as it was a lie when, the other day at Harvard, Secretary Kerry attributed the bloodshed to “a frustration that is growing” because of the “massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” As Elliott Abrams points out, there has been an increase in the population of the settlements, but not in their size. As if the settlements have any connection to what’s happening in the first place: The terror gripping Israel is the result of a Palestinian leadership so adrift and corrupt, so aggrieved and conspiratorial, that it encourages the radicalization of its youth and promotes an atmosphere of hatred and murder. More here.

***

Yeah, Obama was financially funding the enemy of Israel too!

Congress Looks to Cut U.S. Aid to Palestinians Amid Terror Campaign

Resolution would cut $5 billion in aid as a result of violence

FreeBeacon: Momentum is building on Capitol Hill for a new congressional resolution that would cut more than $5 billion in U.S. aid to the Palestinians as a result of an increase in violence that has claimed the lives of at least eight Israelis and wounded many more, according to a copy of the measure viewed by the Free Beacon.

The bill comes amid criticism from lawmakers about the Obama administration’s response to the terrorism and efforts to blame Israel for the violence.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Tex.), among others, has demanded that Secretary of State John Kerry resign his post in light of accusations by the administration that Israel has fostered the violence as a result of its policies to combat Palestinian terrorism.

Rep. Martha McSally (R., Ariz.), a retired Air Force colonel, is now seeking to hold the Palestinian Authority directly responsible for the terrorist acts by cutting off U.S. taxpayer aid to the governing body, officials of which have called for more violence against Jewish people in recent days.

The resolution, a copy of which was obtained by the Free Beacon, calls on the Obama administration to more strongly condemn the Palestinian violence and seeks to condition continued U.S. aid on the Palestinian government’s acceptance of a Jewish state.

The measure “demands, as a condition of continued United States aid … that the President re-certify that the Palestinian Authority (PA) government, including all ministers, has publicly accepted” Israel’s right to exist.

McSally’s measure would “freeze all United States funding to the Palestinian Authority until their leaders openly increase efforts to end their incitement of violence.”

The resolution also expresses concern about the Obama administration’s continued use of executive authority to continue paying the Palestinians despite the government’s support for terrorism against Israel.

It expresses concern “about the use of national security waivers to continue supplying aid to the Palestinian Authority,” according to the text.

The measure also suggests that no U.S. aid should be given to a joint government that includes Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules over the Gaza Strip.

The Obama administration has come under fire from the pro-Israel community in recent days due to its statements blaming Israel for the violence.

Kerry, for instance, inaccurately stated that so-called Israeli “settlement” growth, the construction of Jewish homes in Jewish neighborhoods of Israel, is to blame for Palestinian violence.

“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years,” Kerry said. “Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any movement.”

John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department, similarly accused Israelis of committing “terrorism.”

“Individuals on both sides of this divide are—have proven capable of, and in our view, are guilty of acts of terrorism,” Kirby told reporters earlier this week following questions about the spike in violence.

Kirby also noted that the administration has seen “credible reports of excessive use of force” by the Israelis against Palestinian “civilians,” several of whom have attempted to murder Jews in recent days.

“We routinely raise our concerns about that” with the Israeli government, Kirby said.

Cruz has demanded that Kerry resign over these comments.

“Once again Secretary Kerry and his staff have proven themselves utterly unfit for the positions they hold,” Cruz said late Thursday. “Mr. Kirby should immediately retract his offensive assertion that Israel is ‘guilty of acts of terror’ or resign, and Secretary Kerry should immediately disavow these remarks or resign.”

Finally Arrest Warrants Issued on Hezbollah

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Argentine court seeks arrest of Hezbollah man for ’92 bombing Hussein Suleiman wanted by country’s Supreme Court for attack on Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 22

TimesofIsrael: Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice issued an international arrest warrant against Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman, a Hezbollah member who is being investigated for his involvement in the 1992 attack against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
The attack, which came two years before the bombing of Jewish organization AMIA in Buenos Aires, killed 22 people and injured more than 200. The court on Thursday also reiterated the warrant to arrest Jose Salman El Reda Reda, also as a suspect in the deadly attack.

Suleiman was arrested in Jordan in 2001 and confessed that in 1991 he traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil, later transporting to Buenos Aires the explosives used in the deadly blast.
The ruling from Argentina’s highest court said, “Since 2005, this Court has been investigating Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman as an operative agent of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and a member of the Islamic Jihad.”
The ruling added that: “Recently, in September, 2015, the Israel Embassy in Buenos Aires, through the Foreign Affairs Ministry, confirmed the information and thus the international arrest warrant was issued on the named.”
On Friday, Israeli officials welcomed the ruling and confirmed its role in the investigation.
A statement issued by the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires said: “Israel sees with satisfaction all the advances in the search for truth and justice in the cause against our embassy in Buenos Aires.”

Perspective, two years later:

19 Years Since AMIA Argentina Bombing and Hezbollah Terror Threat Growing

From the Israeli Defense Force: On this date in 1994, the Lebanese terrorist organization attacked a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and wounding hundreds. Today, Hezbollah has an extensive terror network around the globe, making it one of the largest and most violent terrorist organizations in the world.

Nineteen years ago today – at 9:53 a.m. on July 18, 1994 – a shock wave ripped through the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. A Hezbollah terrorist had detonated a car bomb with more than 400 kg of explosives outside the building of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA, a Jewish community center and headquarters of the Jewish community of Argentina). The vast amount of explosives caused the building to collapse, killing 85 people and wounding more than 300.

This was one of Hezbollah’s bloodiest acts of terror. The attack was perpetrated in the heart of Buenos Aires and caused damage to surrounding buildings, including a school. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, had been quoted in the Al-Watan al-Arabi newspaper a month before the attack, saying: “One thousand suicide commandos are ready to strike Israel across the entire globe.”

Khader Tleis, a member of the Lebanese parliament on behalf of Hezbollah, said that Israel knew that the terrorist organization could “do a lot even outside Lebanon,” and threatened that Israel would be hit “in and outside of Lebanon.” These public expressions reflect the clear objectives of the terrorist organization: to eradicate Israel and to impose radical Islamist Shiite theology.

The Iran-Hezbollah Connection

“Diplomats at the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires who collaborated with the planners of the attack knew that the explosion would injure and kill many Argentines. Iranians knew, Hezbollah terrorists knew, those who assisted in the attack knew – knew and planned,” former Israeli Minister of Public Security Avi Dichter later stated. “Diplomats, neighbors and passersby who just went out there at the wrong time were executed.”

At a press conference on October 25, 2006, Argentine prosecutors Dr. Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martínez Burgos revealed the primary findings of the Argentine investigation into the attack. Among their main points: The investigation unequivocally determined that the decision to bomb the AMIA building had been made by the leadership of the Iranian regime and carried out by Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy for implementing its policies.

In light of the report, the Argentine prosecution asked Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral to issue international arrest warrants for seven high-ranking members of the Iranian regime and one senior Hezbollah terrorist operative, all involved in the terrorist attack. One of the seven was Ahmad Vahidi, who currently serves as the Iranian minister of defense and was commander of the Iranian regime’s Quds Force at the time of the 1994 attack.

Next up, Normalizing Relations with North Korea

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Sheesh, this blogger has been predicting this….. THE MADNESS CONTINUES:

North Korea reportedly willing to sign peace treaty with US to end conflict

FNC: North Korea reportedly rejected the idea of resuming talks to abandon its nuclear program on Saturday, but said it would welcome negotiations for a peace treaty with Washington.

North Korea’s foreign ministry made the statement one day after President Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye said they were ready to open talks with Pyongyang on sanctions if they were serious about dissolving its nuclear program, according to Reuters.

“If the United States insists on taking a different path, the Korean peninsula will only see our unlimited nuclear deterrent being strengthened further,” the North said in a statement.

North and South Korea are still technically at war after signing a truce in 1953 to temporarily end their conflict. The U.S. also signed the deal after backing the South.

Obama, while meeting with Park on Friday, said Iran had been prepared to have a “serious conversation” about the possibility of giving up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. He said there’s no indication of that in North Korea’s case.

“At the point where Pyongyang says, `We’re interested in seeing relief from sanctions and improved relations, and we are prepared to have a serious conversation about denuclearization,’ it’s fair to say we’ll be right there at the table,” Obama told a joint news conference.

In a joint statement after Friday’s meeting, the U.S. and South Korea said that if North Korea decides to launch another rocket into space or test a nuclear explosion, “it will face consequences, including seeking further significant measures by the U.N. Security Council.” The statement also said they would never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

North Korea had walked away from talks involving the U.S. and four other countries in 2008 and continued to conduct nuclear tests. It claims the only way to end conflict with Washington is to sign a peace treaty.

Park’s visit Friday further strengthened South Korea’s ties with the U.S.

U.S. retains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and nearly 50,000 troops in Japan. Obama called the U.S.-South Korean alliance “unbreakable.” Park called it a “lynchpin” of regional security.

In August, the two Koreas threatened each other with war after two South Korean soldiers were wounded by land mines Seoul says were planted by the North. The tensions have since eased, and the two sides have agreed to resume next week reunions of Korean families divided by the Korean War.

The Obama administration has faced criticism from hawks and doves alike for a lack of high-level attention on North Korea, which estimated to have enough fissile material for between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons. More details here.

From McClatchy:

Obama said the U.S. would be willing to talk with North Korea about sanctions relief and improved relations if it agreed to give up nuclear weapons. He said there’s no indication that the government in Pyongyang can “foresee a future in which they did not possess or were not pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Citing the U.S. outreach to Cuba and the agreement to limit Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, Obama said the U.S. is “prepared to engage nations with which we have had troubled histories.” He stressed that he and Park reaffirmed that neither country would accept North Korea as a nuclear weapon state and will insist that Pyongyang abide by its obligations.

“These are both countries that have a long history of antagonism towards the United States,” he said of Iran and North Korea. “But we were prepared to have a serious conversation with the Iranians once they showed that they were serious about the possibility of giving up the pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Saying nothing of human rights violations, the official White House statement is here:

2015 United States-Republic of Korea Joint Statement on North Korea

On October 16, 2015, President Barack Obama of the United States of America and President Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea committed to the following.

The United States-Republic of Korea alliance remains committed to countering the threat to peace and security posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs as well as other provocations. We will maintain our robust deterrence posture and continue to modernize our alliance and enhance our close collaboration to better respond to all forms of North Korean provocations.

The United States and the Republic of Korea share deep concern about the continued advancement of North Korea’s UN-proscribed nuclear and missile capabilities and commit to address the North Korean nuclear problem with utmost urgency and determination.

We reaffirm our commitment to our common goal, shared by the international community, to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea in a peaceful manner. North Korea’s continuing development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs is an ongoing violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and is contrary to North Korea’s commitments under the 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks. We strongly urge North Korea to immediately and fully comply with its international obligations and commitments.

We oppose any actions by North Korea that raise tensions or violate UN Security Council resolutions. In particular, if North Korea carries out a launch using ballistic missile technology or a nuclear test, it will face consequences, including seeking further significant measures by the UN Security Council.  In this regard, we are committed to working with the international community to ensure the effective and transparent implementation of all UN Security Council resolutions, including sanctions measures, concerning North Korea, and we encourage all states to exercise strict vigilance against North Korea’s prohibited activities.

The United States and the Republic of Korea maintain no hostile policy towards North Korea and remain open to dialogue with North Korea to achieve our shared goal of denuclearization. Recognizing the common interests of our Six-Party Talks partners in the denuclearization of North Korea, we will continue to strengthen our coordination with China and the other parties in order to bring North Korea, which has refused all offers of denuclearization dialogue, back to credible and meaningful talks as soon as possible.

We reaffirm that we will never accept North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state, and that its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is incompatible with its economic development goals. Along with the rest of the international community, we stand ready to offer a brighter future to North Korea, if North Korea demonstrates a genuine willingness to completely abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and agrees to abide by its international obligations and commitments.

The United States appreciates President Park’s tireless efforts to improve inter-Korean relations, including through repeated overtures to North Korea, and welcomes President Park’s principled approach that resulted in a peaceful resolution of the August tensions.  The United States will continue to strongly support her vision of a peacefully unified Korean Peninsula, as envisaged in her Dresden address. We will intensify high-level strategic consultations to create a favorable environment for the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.

The Republic of Korea and the United States join the international community in condemning the deplorable human rights situation in North Korea as documented in the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report. We look forward to supporting the work of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Seoul). We remain dedicated to working with the international community to improve the human rights situation in North Korea and ensure accountability for human rights violations, as well as to improve the livelihood of the people in North Korea.

Telegram, New Platform for Terrorists to Communicate

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Sitting on the knife’s edge when it comes to protecting people’s communication from investigative agencies like the FBI and the NSA is a slippery and inexact argument. The Director of the FBI, James Comey has begged Congress for some legislation such that some encryption can be broken for terror and other criminal cases to be investigated yet nothing is forthcoming and not likely in the future.

FBI Director James Comey spoke to legal professionals and scholars this week about cyber threats and the FBI’s abilities to counter and investigate those evolving threats.

In remarks at the American Law Institute on Tuesday and at a cyber security summit on Wednesday at Georgetown University Law Center, Comey said the group calling itself the Islamic State, or ISIL, represents the FBI’s most urgent threat. He described the organization’s use of social media to motivate troubled people in the United States to engage in acts of violence—either by traveling to the so-called caliphate or killing where they are. Comey said ISIL reaches out to individuals on Twitter and elsewhere, then moves their more sensitive communications to encrypted platforms.

“The threat we face has morphed,” Comey said on Wednesday. “It’s a chaotic spider web through social media—increasingly invisible to us because the operational communications are happening in an encrypted channel.”

Comey later elaborated on the issue of encryption, which is a process of encoding messages—on mobile phones for example—that only authorized parties can access. While it can be effective at thwarting digital thieves, strong encryption also limits the amount of information—or evidence—that law enforcement can effectively gather from a device.

“Increasingly we’re finding ourselves unable to read what we find, or unable to open a device,” Comey said, “and that is a serious concern.”

The issue of “going dark,” as the Bureau calls it, is worthy of a larger public conversation about the balance between privacy and public safety, Comey said. Momentum toward universal encryption, he explained, may have unintended consequences.

“As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, and therefore all of our lives—including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies—will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court-ordered process,” he said. “And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning.”

The Director also pointed to provisions of the Patriot Act of 2001 that, if allowed to expire on June 1, could hobble the FBI’s investigative abilities. One of the provisions is Section 215, which authorized the National Security Agency’s database of telephony records and metadata.

Comey said the FBI relies on that provision fewer than 200 times a year—in particular cases to get particular records. “If we lose that authority,” Comey said, “we can’t get information that I think everybody wants us to attain.”

Two other provisions include:

  • Roving wiretaps. The FBI has had authority since the 1980s to use legally authorized roving wiretaps in criminal cases—allowing authorities to follow surveillance targets rather than their phones, which can be easily trashed and replaced. The Patriot Act extended that authority to terrorism and counterintelligence cases.
  • The Lone Wolf provision. In 2004, Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize intelligence gathering on individuals not affiliated with any known terrorist organization.

“These three are going to go away June 1,” Comey said, “and I don’t want them to get lost in the conversation about metadata.”

It was not but a few months ago, the leadership of Islamic State (ISIS) published an edict for the top terror commanders to use an app called ‘Telegram’ and they are.

Now what? How is the conflict of civil liberties resolved?

Director Comey Speaks at Georgetown University Law Center

  

Why Telegram has become the hottest messaging app in the world

Secret messages and advanced cryptography pose a challenge to WhatsApp

When WhatsApp went down for four hours this weekend, nearly 5 million people signed up for messaging service Telegram. The app skyrocketed to the top of the App Store charts, and is now the top free app in 46 countries from Germany to Ecuador. In the US and several other countries, the app is no. 1 in the social networking category, ahead of Facebook, WhatsApp, Kik, and others.

Screen568x568 4.1393343382

It’s not immediately clear why Telegram emerged as the alternative of choice following WhatsApp’s downtime. Users could have switched to Kik, or Facebook Messenger, or LINE — all of which have hundreds of millions of users. There’s seemingly something different about Telegram. Its rise isn’t only due to WhatsApp’s acquisition and subsequent downtime. “We have been the no. 1 app in Spanish, Arabic, and several Latin American app stores for several weeks before the Facebook deal happened,” says Telegram’s Markus Ra. “The growth was there — so the WhatsApp acquisition and problems merely multiplied the effect across all affected countries.” According to app analytics site App Annie, Telegram started truly gaining steam on February 17th, days before the WhatsApp news even hit.

Built by the pioneering Durov brothers behind Russia’s largest social network, VKontakte (also known as VK), Telegram is a messaging service combining the speed of WhatsApp with Snapchat’s ephemerality and advanced new security measures. WhatsApp might have heralded the first time we heard of Telegram, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Telegram feels in many ways like a straight-up clone of WhatsApp, from its green double-checkmark read receipts to its cartoonish wallpapers. There’s also the usual gamut of messaging app features including the ability to see a friend’s online status and attach photos, videos, your location, contacts, and documents to messages. But where it lacks originality, Telegram makes up for it in speed and security features. “Telegram is the fastest and most secure mass market messaging system in the world,” the company claims, which it attributes in part to Nikolai Durov’s open-sourced MTProto protocol. Telegram was in fact built as a testing bed for MTProto, Reuters reported when the app launched back in August. The company is so confident in the security of MTProto that it’s offering $200,000 to anyone who can crack it. It’s not unusual for companies to offer bug bounties, but bounties of this size are generally only reserved for critical bugs in widely used apps like Windows.

“The no. 1 reason for me to support and help launch Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies,” Durov told TechCrunch. Durov built in a feature that lets you start a “Secret Chat” with any of your friends. According to Telegram, Secret Chats offer end-to-end encryption, leave no trace on the company’s servers, and let you set Snapchat-esque self-destruct timers on messages that range from two seconds to one week. There’s also the ability to check the security of your Secret Chats using an image that serves as an encryption key. By comparing your encryption key to a friend’s, you can effectively verify that your conversation is secure and less vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, the company says. But despite Telegram’s alleged sophistication, no cryptographic method is infallible. The company has, in fact, already doled out $100,000 to one developer for finding a critical bug, TechCrunch reports.

“The no. 1 reason for me to [help launch] Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies.”

Telegram is interesting not just because of its stringent security standards, but also because it allows any developer to build a Telegram client of their own, and even for desktop computers. Most new messaging services today, including WhatsApp, build one-size-fits-all messaging apps and lock out third-party developers. It’s hard to blame them, since maintaining one federated language and security paradigm across dozens of apps is difficult. Also, making money off of a platform takes more thought than making money off a simple paid app. Yet, the Durovs’ VKontakte found a lot of success letting developers build alternate versions of its site. More importantly, Telegram operates as a non-profit organization, and doesn’t plan to charge for its services.

“Telegram is not intended to bring revenue, it will never sell ads or accept outside investment. It also cannot be sold,” the company writes in its FAQ. “We’re not building a ‘user base,’ we are building a messenger for the people.” If Telegram ever “runs out” of the money supplied by the Durov brothers, the company says, it will ask for donations from its users. Telegram’s noble goals echo the sentiments of many bright-eyed startup founders, but with the Durovs’ pocketbook in hand and the service’s open API available to third-party developers, it may actually have a chance at fulfilling its goals. Telegram isn’t a CryptoCat for the masses, considering it uses your phone number, of all things, as an identifier — but it’s an important step towards finding a highly encrypted messaging platform that’s accessible to anyone.

“Telegram is not intended to bring revenue, it will never sell ads.”

Championing an ostensibly noble goal, free services, and the experience of VKontakte’s creators, Telegram would seem like a great alternative to any of the leading messages apps out there. After WhatsApp’s acquisition news and downtime, the app is spiking at the right time. The company incentivized several million new users into switching over, but keeping those users will be a continuous challenge. “The switching cost for users on a phone number-based messaging services is at or near zero,” argues Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger in a blog post, but that’s only half the story. A network is only as strong as the number of friends you have using it, and convincing all of your friends to switch is no easy task. If Facebook thought that WhatsApp users were liable to switch at a moment’s notice, it wouldn’t have paid $19 billion for the company.

Facebook paid for WhatsApp’s user base, but also for its brand — a brand that spent years solving a very important problem: that it costs a fortune to text across borders. Perhaps the next messaging problem to solve is personal security, considering WhatsApp’s alleged cryptographic weaknesses and the NSA’s data collection policies. WhatsApp became synonymous with texting. Perhaps for Telegram to succeed, it will need to become synonymous with security.

Iran’s Mullahs Say Thank You to Obama

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MEMRI October 15, 2015 Special Dispatch No.6187 Senior Iranian Negotiators Salehi, Kamalvandi: On October 19 President Obama Will Announce Lifting Of American Sanctions http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8799.htm    

According to senior Iranian negotiators, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and an architect of the nuclear agreement (JCPOA), and Beherouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on October 19, 2015 President Obama will announce that sanctions will be lifted and not merely suspended, contrary to the July 14,

2015 text of the agreement to which Iran is obligated.[1]  

If this report proves accurate, it means that President Obama surrendered to the threats and demands of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to amend the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) on this critical point, because lifting sanctions instead of suspending them will not allow their automatic reimposition (“snapback”). In this way, President Obama’s promise that the agreement incorporates the security mechanism of restoring the sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation, has been broken. 

It should be emphasized that Salehi’s statement has not been verified at this stage by any Western or American source.  

Khamenei issued his demands and threat on September 3, 2015 in a public address before Iran’s Assembly of Experts[2] and the Iranian Majlis incorporated them in the text that it approved on October 13, 2015.[3]  

Following Khamenei’s address in early September 2015, contacts between Iran and the US and the P5 +1 powers took place September 28, 2015, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly but their results were not published[4] and subsequently Khamenei issued a guideline on October 7, 2015 banning contacts with the US.[5]  

Endnotes:  

[1] Fars (Iran), October 15, 2015; ILNA (Iran), October 15, 2015.  

[2] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6151, Khamenei Declares That He Will Not Honor The Agreement If Sanctions Are Merely Suspended And Not Lifted, September 4, 2015.  

[3] See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 1192, The Iranian Majlis Has Not Approved The JCPOA But Iran’s Amended Version Of It, October 13, 2015.  

[4] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6162, Expected September 28 NY Meeting

Between P5+1 Foreign Ministers And Iran Could Signify Reopening Of Nuclear

Negotiations To Address Khamenei’s September 3 Threat That If Sanctions Are

Not Lifted, But Merely Suspended, There Will Be No Agreement, September 21,

2015.

 

 

[5] Twitter.com/khamenei_ir, October 7, 2015.

 

Quote of the Day:

President Obama and his foreign-policy admirers—a dwindling lot—hoped that the nuclear deal would make Iran more open to cooperation in the Middle East and with the U.S. Mark this down as another case in which the world is disappointing the American President.

–Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “The Mullahs Say Thanks”

The Iran deal seemed to be predicated on the notion that if we made all sorts of concessions to Iran it would become a different kind of regime. It would play nicer with President Obama’s imaginary friend “the international community.”

It hasn’t gotten off to a good start. For starters, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, held captive for more than a year, was just convicted of espionage. Reporters keep referring to the Iranian “justice” system, as if there had been a fair trial open to the public. Sure.

The verdict was announced on Monday.  As the Wall Street Journal notes:

The timing of the conviction won’t escape students of history. Friday was the 444th day of his captivity. That was the number of days U.S. diplomats in Iran spent as hostages following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mr. Rezaian’s conviction three days later is the mullah equivalent of mailing a dead fish to an adversary.

Mr. Rezaian’s brother has said that he thinks our government should let the Iranians know that “there will be consequences.” Strongly worded letter to follow. But even if our government responded (and it won’t), the mullahs aren’t listening.You see, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei just banned further diplomatic negotiations with Washington.

In other news from our Iranian friends, the regime tested on Sunday a guided ballistic missile that code-named Emad (“Pillar”), which the Journal notes is in violation of the nuclear deal. This is also in violation of a recent U.N. Security Council resolution banning any Iranian tests of guided missiles for eight years. It will be difficult for Secretary of State John Kerry’s crack team to glean further information directly, however, because of that Iranian ban on talking to Washington.

If Iran were not a regime bent on nuclear power and destruction and if this were not so dangerous for the world, particularly our mistreated ally (?) Israel, you’d almost have to cheer the mullahs for their gutsiness. But the regime is a totalitarian monstrosity and Israel is in danger of annihilation, which makes it all very unfunny. The Wall Street Journal comments:

The more likely outcome is that the Obama Administration will find a way to explain that the missile test doesn’t violate the nuclear accord that Mr. Obama considers a crowning achievement. Meanwhile, Iran’s government will bank up to $150 billion that it can deploy to back its militia proxies in the Middle East. Add the new Iran-Russia offensive in Syria, and Tehran would appear to have taken the nuclear deal as a signal that it can now do whatever it wants without consequence.

The American recessional continues apace with word that the U.S. is pulling our Patriot missile defense systems from Turkey. This is a nice bookend to one of President Obama’s earliest foreign affairs initiatives, scrapping the missile-defense system for Poland, which would actually be rather nice to have just now as Vladimir Putin is raging through the neighborhood.

Don’t worry, though. President Obama is heading for a climate change conference. Hat tip for this post.

Meanwhile, the IAEA completed it’s first report on an inspection site:

VIENNA (AFP) – 

The UN atomic watchdog said Thursday it has completed on schedule gathering information in its probe into Iran’s alleged past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said that, in line with a plan agreed with Iran in July, its chief Yukiya Amano will now provide a “final assessment” on the investigation by December 15.

The IAEA keeps close tabs on Iran’s declared nuclear facilities to ensure that no atomic material is diverted by Iran to any covert weapons programme, an aim denied strenuously by Tehran.

Under a landmark July deal between Iran and six major powers, Iran will dramatically scale down its nuclear activities in order to render any effort to make an atomic bomb virtually impossible.

But the IAEA also wants to probe claims that at least until 2003, Iran conducted research into making nuclear weapons, including with explosives tests at the Parchin military base, something it also denies.

On July 14 — the same day as the wider deal with major powers — Iran and the IAEA agreed a separate “road map” agreement aimed at completing an investigation into these activities by December 15.

The plan included Iran providing the IAEA with information by August 15, which happened on schedule although the IAEA said that there remained “ambiguities” to be resolved.

Thursday’s announcement by the IAEA also helps clear the way for preparations to begin for the implementation of the wider deal between Iran and major powers.

The accord, hailed as a massive diplomatic achievement after over decade of rising tensions, won final approval in Iran on Wednesday as a top panel of jurists and clerics gave it the green light.

Members of the US Congress failed in September to torpedo the deal, with President Barack Obama securing enough support in the Senate to protect the agreement.

In return for downscaling its programme, painful UN and Western sanctions on Iran are due to be lifted. Iranian officials have said this should happen by the end of 2015 or January at the latest.