Category Archives: Energy Agenda

Why Obama Chose Qatar Over Congress

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Today, al Thani is visiting the White House again. Question is why?

Qatari officials have positioned themselves as mediators and interlocutors in a number of regional conflicts in recent years. Qatar’s deployment of military aircraft to support NATO-led operations in Libya and U.S.-led operations against the Islamic State in Syria signaled a new assertiveness, as has reported Qatari support for armed elements of the Syrian opposition. Some of Qatar’s positions have drawn U.S. scrutiny and raised the ire of its Gulf Arab neighbors, including its leaders’ willingness to engage Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Taliban and allegations of Qatari support for extremists in Syria. It remains unclear whether Qatar’s active and—for the United States—at times vexing policies may change under Emir Tamim. To date, the Obama Administration has remained committed to military and counterterrorism cooperation with the ambitious leaders of this wealthy, strategically located country.
The United States opened its embassy in Doha in 1973, but U.S. relations with Qatar did not blossom until after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In the late 1980s, the United States and Qatar engaged in a prolonged diplomatic dispute regarding Qatar’s black market procurement of U.S.- made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.7 The dispute froze planned economic and military cooperation, and Congress approved a ban on arms sales to Qatar (§566(d), P.L. 100-461) until the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, when Qatar allowed coalition forces to operate from Qatari territory and agreed to destroy the missiles in question.8 In January 1991, Qatari armored forces helped coalition troops repel an Iraqi attack on the Saudi Arabian town of Kafji, on the coastal road leading south from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province.9 In June 1992, Qatar signed a defense cooperation agreement with the United States, opening a period of close coordination in military affairs that has continued to the present. The United States promptly recognized the assumption of power by Shaykh Hamad in June 1995 and welcomed Qatar’s defense cooperation, as well as Shaykh Hamad’s modest political, economic, and educational reform efforts. President Obama congratulated Emir Tamim upon his accession to the throne in June 2013, and Qatari-U.S. relations remain close, amid some differences over regional security questions. Qatari-U.S. defense relations have expanded to include cooperative defense exercises, equipment pre-positioning, and base access agreements. U.S. concerns regarding alleged material support for terrorist groups by some Qataris, including reported past support by a prominent member of the royal family, have been balanced over time by Qatar’s counterterrorism efforts and its broader, long-term commitment to host and support U.S. military forces active in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the CENTCOM area of responsibility. In December 2013, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel visited Doha, met with Emir Tamim, and signed a new 10-year defense cooperation agreement, followed in July 2014 by agreements for $11 billion in advanced arms sales.

The United States has provided limited counterterrorism assistance to Qatar to support the development of its domestic security forces, and the Export-Import Bank has provided over $2 billion in loan guarantees to support various natural gas development projects in Qatar since 1996. The Obama Administration has phased out U.S. foreign assistance and has not requested military construction funds for facilities in Qatar since FY2012. Qatar donated $100 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf states, and Qatari state entities and private individuals continue to make large investments in the United States. Several prominent U.S. universities have established satellite campuses in Doha at Qatar’s Education City, where Qatari, American, and other students pursue undergraduate and graduate coursework across a broad range of subjects.
In Congress, legislative action related to Qatar remains relatively limited with the exception of appropriations and authorization legislation that affects U.S. defense programs and congressional review of proposed foreign military sales to the Qatari military. Qatar’s foreign and domestic policies are monitored by congressional foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence committees, while Qatar’s resource wealth and associated economic clout fuels congressional interest in U.S.- Qatari trade and investment ties. (1)
*** The collusion continues:
Qatar’s Ties to Militants Strain Alliance

DOHA, Qatar—During President Barack Obama ’s first term, some members of his National Security Council lobbied to pull a U.S. fighter squadron out of an air base in Qatar to protest the emirate’s support of militant groups in the Mideast.

The Pentagon pushed back, according to former U.S. officials involved in the discussion, saying a regional military command the U.S. maintains at the base was vital to American operations in the region. The issue was decided in late 2013 when the U.S. extended its lease on the base and didn’t pull out any planes.

The episode, not previously reported, reflects long-standing divisions within the Obama administration over America’s widening alliance with Qatar. The problem is that the very traits making the Persian Gulf emirate a valuable ally are also a source of worry: Qatar’s relationships with Islamist groups.

Secretary of State John Kerry has formed a tight partnership with Qatari diplomats, using them as conduits for messages to Hamas in the Palestinian territories, to Afghanistan’s Taliban and to jihadist rebel groups in Syria and Libya, according to State Department officials. Mr. Kerry has lauded Qatar’s role in seeking to negotiate an end to Israeli-Hamas fighting last summer.

U.S. officials also have praised Qatar for using its channels to broker the release of Westerners held hostage, including U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was swapped last year for five captured Taliban commanders.

Champions of the U.S.-Qatar alliance, especially in the Defense and State departments, say Qatar is indispensable to the struggle against Islamic State, the group also called ISIS or ISIL. U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State often launch from the air base in Qatar, al-Udeid, said American officials, who added that Qatar’s air force has provided surveillance and logistical support.

But Qatar also has given financial or diplomatic support to Mideast rebel groups, including some that seek to establish Islamic law or have ties to al Qaeda, according to U.S. and Arab officials as well as Western diplomats in the region. The support includes providing sanctuary to leaders of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar acknowledges.

For years, Islamist rebel fighters from Libya and Syria traveled to Qatar and returned with suitcases full of money, according to rebels who were interviewed and to Persian Gulf government officials. American officials said the U.S. has uncovered Qatari connections—such as involvement by members of the emirate’s elite business, religious and academic circles—in financing for Hamas, al Qaeda and Islamic State.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department said publicly that an Islamic State commander had received $2 million in cash from an unnamed Qatari businessman. The following month, a Treasury official publicly criticized Qatar for failing to act against what he called terrorist financiers living in the emirate.

Last week, Qatar protested when Egypt bombed Islamic State forces in Libya who had beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. An Egyptian diplomat responded by publicly accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism, which Qatar denied.

Visit from the emir

A chance to air these issues comes Tuesday as Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, meets with President Obama at the White House.

In interviews, senior Qatari officials denied their government funds or has funded terrorist organizations. They said Qatar has a right to have diplomatic ties with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements that they said have broad support in the Arab public. (The U.S. lists Hamas as a terrorist organization but not the Brotherhood.)

“We are not a bloc-mentality-belonging country. We create platforms for dialogue,” said Qatar’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah. “If this approach allows us to bring long-lasting peace and security in our region, we will not be affected by any criticism.”

Washington’s ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, said the U.S. relationship with the emirate “is a fundamentally good one, and we share a number of important interests. We don’t agree on everything, but we are always frank with each other about‎ where we disagree and why.”

U.S. and Arab officials say there are signs Qatar has begun paring back support for the most extreme militant groups following repeated warnings from Washington and certain Arab states. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates pulled their ambassadors from Doha in March 2014 to protest Qatar’s foreign policy, but have since returned the diplomats to their posts.

Washington and the American oil industry played leading roles in Qatar’s emergence on the global stage. Qatar was among the less wealthy Gulf states in the 1980s, before the export of its plentiful natural gas was made possible by technologies developed by U.S. oil companies that later became Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips .

“The American companies were really the ones who took a big bet on Qatar when others wouldn’t,” said Mr. Attiyah. “That’s part of the core of our special relationship.”

Qatar now has the world’s highest per capita income, says the International Monetary Fund. Several U.S. universities, including Georgetown, Northwestern and Cornell, have opened campuses in Doha.

In 2003, the Pentagon moved the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command to Qatar’s al-Udeid air base, a move that gave the emirate a sense of security from potentially hostile neighbors.

Qatar also invests in the U.S. Last month, Qatar’s finance minister said his government would invest $35 billion in the U.S. over five years, in areas such as technology and infrastructure.

The “Arab Spring” protests of late 2010 and 2011 deepened Washington’s alliance with Qatar but also exposed divisions in the two countries’ visions for the Mideast. Qatar began promoting a brand of pro-Islamist foreign policy that confused Washington and alienated some Arab allies.

One Gulf-region government official described a Sheraton hotel in Doha as a hangout for Islamists from Libya, Syria, Egypt and the Palestinian territories. A spokesman for Sheraton owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. noted that the hotel hosts hundreds of international travelers daily and said, “We do not do business with terrorists nor condone or facilitate any activity that is antithetical to our company values.” He said the firm works with law enforcement, including retaining passport information for all guests.

Nusra Front

According to U.S. and regional Arab government officials, commanders of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s arm in Syria, began visiting Doha in 2012 for meetings with senior Qatari military officials and financiers. Nusra is fighting to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, a regional rival of Qatar.

Syrian rebels and Persian Gulf government officials said Qatar cultivates a relationship with Nusra in part to maintain the emirate’s role in negotiations to free hostages held by militants in Syria and Lebanon. Over the past year, Qatar has gained the release of hostages including United Nationspeacekeepers, Greek Orthodox nuns and a U.S. freelance journalist. Arab and U.N. officials have said the releases involve ransoms, which Qatar denies.

Some Qatari officials view Nusra as a crucial fighting force against the Syrian regime and don’t consider it terrorist.

The U.S. in 2012 tipped off Lebanese officials that a Qatari sheik, Abd al-Aziz bin Khalifa al-Attiyah, was visiting Beirut to pass funds to Nusra, according to Lebanese and U.S. officials. A Lebanese official said that on one trip, Sheik Attiyah, who is a cousin of Qatar’s current foreign minister, was driven to the Lebanon-Syria border town of Aarsal and there distributed money for Syrian rebel fighters.

Lebanese security forces arrested Sheik Attiyah on terrorism charges in 2012, but he was freed after a Qatari protest, Lebanese and Qatari officials said. This past June, a Beirut military court sentenced him in absentia to seven years in prison on the charges.

A London attorney for Sheik Attiyah, Cameron Doley, called the charges “completely and utterly untrue.” Qatari government officials also said Mr. Attiyah wasn’t involved in terrorism and described his arrest as political. Officials of the Lebanese government and the security directorate that carried out the arrest declined to comment.

U.S. officials have been pressing Qatar to arrest a former Qatari central-bank official who was sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.N. for an alleged role as a terrorism financier and as a lieutenant of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Qatar detained the official, Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy, in 2008 for six months after a Bahrain court convicted him on terrorism charges. He was released later that year, drawing a string of inquiries from the U.S. ambassador, according to State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Subaiy couldn’t be reached for comment. In September, the Treasury alleged that two Jordanians with Qatari IDs had worked with Mr. Subaiy to transfer cash to al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. The Jordanians couldn’t be reached for comment.

In October, the Treasury’s top counterterrorism official publicly criticized Qatar for inaction on Mr. Subaiy and a second alleged al Qaeda financier, Abd al-Rahman al-Nuaymi. “There are U.S.- and U.N.-designated terrorist financiers in Qatar that have not been acted against under Qatari law,” said David Cohen , then a Treasury undersecretary.

Mr. Nuaymi, who also couldn’t be reached for comment, has in the past denied funding terrorism and called charges against him politically motivated.

Living in Doha

Qatari officials confirmed that Messrs. Subaiy and Nuaymi remain free in Doha but said they are under surveillance and their bank accounts are frozen. “We know that there is a problem, and we are building a case to take those involved to court,” said Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, Mohammad al-Kuwari. “We’re committed to working with the U.S. on these cases.”

The idea of pulling some U.S. fighter planes out of Qatar’s al-Udeid to signal displeasure with Qatar’s foreign policy—a proposal made several years ago by some National Security Council members—prompted a wrenching internal debate pitting U.S. ideals against pragmatism. One senior defense official at the time opposed the idea, saying it threatened to undermine a key Mideast relationship while having little effect on Qatar’s policy.

A senior administration official said, “Whether or not that was a view expressed or considered by an individual in the past, it was never a serious policy consideration in a broader context.”

In recent months, U.S. and Qatari officials said there has been an uptick in Qatari moves against alleged terrorist financiers. They said the emirate has expelled a Jordanian associate of Mr. Nuaymi and shut a social-media website the U.S. believed was used in raising money for al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria.

Qatar has moved to mend its ties with Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Gulf countries. In November, Qatar’s emir met in Jidda with Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah and other regional monarchs, agreeing to end their feud and work to stabilize the region, said Arab officials.

But Qatar has resisted pressure from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to evict Hamas’s top leadership, according to U.S. and Arab diplomats. U.S. officials believe that many of the Qatari nationals involved in fundraising for Syrian rebels remain active. Mr. Kerry regularly raises his concerns about Qatar’s ties to extremist groups in his meeting with Doha’s diplomats, a U.S. official said.

“The Qataris need to know they can’t have it both ways,” said Dennis Ross, who was Mr. Obama’s top Mideast adviser in his first term. “But so far, they see that they can.”

—Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.

(1) http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL31718.pdf

Pssst, You ARE a Customer of This Bank

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“If the Desert Sunlight solar firm is the ‘beginnings of a renewable energy future,’ then the future doesn’t look bright for taxpayers, ratepayers and all Americans who think mega-corporations should make a living by selling their products, not by selling a bill of goods,” The Heritage Foundation’s Mitchell Tu and David Kreutzer wrote for The Daily Signal.

In addition to benefiting from the Department of Energy’s now-defunct 1705 loan program, two of the four firms involved also are significant beneficiaries of funding provided by the Export-Import Bank: General Electric and First Solar.

The Export-Import Bank provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of U.S. goods. The bank’s charter is set to expire June 30, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are beginning to wade into the debate over whether it’s life should be extended.

Pulling back the curtain and going deeper…..

Communist Regime-financing Ex-Im Bank Fights for Survival

The U.S. taxpayer-backed Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), widely criticized for crony capitalism as well as for financing communist and socialist regimes with American money, is fighting for its very survival amid scandals as a growing coalition of lawmakers in Congress works to finally shut it down. From funneling billions in “loans” to state-owned banks in Russia and Communist China, to offering the corrupt Brazilian state-owned oil giant Petrobras $2 billion to “develop oil fields,” to hiring politically connected “green energy” cronies, the bank’s activities have come under increasing criticism on Capitol Hill. Now, with its charter set to expire this summer without congressional action, the Ex-Im Bank — originally created to subsidize U.S. exports to the mass-murdering regime ruling the Soviet Union — is sparring with the American people’s elected representatives over its fate.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, key figures in the establishment wing of the GOP, often dubbed “RINOs” for being alleged “Republicans In Name Only,” are pushing for the re-authorizing the Ex-Im Bank’s charter. Corporate welfare-loving Democrats, too, despite being in the minority in both chambers of Congress, are working to keep the controversial bank alive. Even the most extreme self-styled “progressives,” such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose specialty is attacking business and markets in the quest for ever bigger and more oppressive government, want to re-authorize Ex-Im. Meanwhile, Big Business lobbyists with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other special-interest outfits are right now twisting arms on Capitol Hill and plotting strategies to keep the taxpayer-backed Ex-Im cash flowing to their members.

Establishment Republicans anxious to please powerful special interests have proposed “reforming” the bank in an effort to make saving it more palatable to the public. Among them is Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.), who introduced a bill with more than 50 GOP co-sponsors, so far, to “reform” the bank while re-authorizing its charter until 2019. Last week, a coalition of Big Government-loving Democrats led by ultra-leftist Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) tried to force the House Financial Services Committee to at least consider renewing Ex-Im’s charter, but conservatives on the panel voted down their amendment. Even Obama, who accurately described the bank as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare” while on the campaign trail in 2008, is now working hard to browbeat Congress into re-authorizing the Ex-Im Bank.

“Bipartisan support for corporate welfare and a corporatism state provides compelling evidence that in the end, it is money and power — not ideology — that drives the DC insider establishment,” wrote Tom Borelli, a senior fellow with the pro-market group FreedomWorks. “Instead of drawing a clear policy distinction over corporatism and making the Democrats own the label of ‘the party of big business and special interests,’ Republican backers of the Ex-Im Bank are blurring the lines between the parties and tarnishing the GOP’s brand.” He said that unless conservative activists express strong opposition to re-authorizing the crony-capitalist bank, conservative members of the House of Representatives would likely be “overwhelmed” by Democrats and “ideologically bankrupt Republicans.”

Supporters of the Ex-Im Bank point out that its taxpayer-backed loan programs are contingent on the foreign entities involved purchasing U.S.-sourced goods and services. As such, the controversial bank likes to argue that it helps “support American jobs” and promote exports. Numerous other national governments also have similar institutions that subsidize some companies or government-owned “enterprises,” so the Ex-Im claims that it, too, must subsidize certain U.S. firms and foreign entities. Another argument often cited by the Ex-Im Bank and its supporters — primarily Big Business — is that rather than costing taxpayers money, it sometimes earns some revenue for the Treasury. Even this may be misleading, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office forecasting that U.S. taxpayers will bear some $2 billion in Ex-Im losses over the next decade. Plus, there is always the prospect that enough bad loans from the bank could end up putting U.S. taxpayers on the hook for many more billions of dollars.

The federal bank also harms a wide array of Americans, experts say. “Ex-Im places the 99.96 percent of U.S. small businesses that it doesn’t subsidize at a competitive disadvantage because the subsidies artificially lower costs for privileged competitors,” explained Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow with the market-oriented Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Sadly, the privileges Ex-Im extends to the few come at the expense of countless American firms and their workers. Unsubsidized firms may see reduced revenues — and their employees may see their hours cut, their salaries stagnate, or their jobs simply vanish because their employers cannot compete on the uneven playing field created by the federal government….It is time for Congress to start cleaning up its house and agree to end programs that need to go away. Enough with the pretense of reform.”

Critics have also rallied against the bank in recent years citing a wide array of other arguments. For one, and perhaps most importantly, there is no authority in the U.S. Constitution for the federal government to create a taxpayer-backed bank that picks winners and losers by loaning money to foreign governments, banks, and companies. Secondly, if participants in the free-market do not consider loans to be wise enough to put private funds behind them, critics of the Ex-Im Bank say the federal government has no business putting taxpayers’ money on the line instead. And while it may be true that some businesses and jobs benefit from Ex-Im schemes, many others suffer as a result. Countless examples have been cited by experts.

Even putting those problems aside, another major concern surrounding Ex-Im Bank is its long history of subsidizing ruthless communist regimes — a sordid pattern that continues to this day. In fact, the bank was originally established in 1934 specifically to finance exports to the Soviet Union. Why would a U.S. taxpayer-backed bank be needed to finance exports to Moscow’s regime? Because anyone with any sense in the private sector knew better than to trust the collection of gangsters, mass-murderers, megalomaniacs, and cut-throats in Moscow enslaving the Russian people while trying to mooch off of Americans to pay for it. Numerous other brutal regimes also received Ex-Im financing under a variety of pretexts.

Despite the growing uproar, the Ex-Im Bank’s financing for brutal regimes that analyst say represent major national security concerns to the United States continues unabated. Between 1997 and 2013, for example, the bank provided almost $2 billion in loans and long-term guarantees just to banks in Communist China and Russia, CNSNews.com reported, citing Ex-Im’s annual reports. Among the recipients: Bank of China, the Russian Agricultural Bank, China’s State Development Bank, Gazprombank, and many more. Of course, despite claims to be shifting toward what they call “state capitalism,” the banking “industries” in both Russia and Communist China remain entirely dominated and largely owned by the respective regimes.

“I don’t think Ex-Im subsidies to Chinese and Russian banks or State-Owned Enterprises constitute good uses of taxpayer resources,” Dan Ikenson, the director of the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, told CNSNews.com. “But, believe it or not, Ex-Im does partner with foreign export credit agencies to fund export sales and infrastructure projects even though the primary rationalization for having Ex-Im in the first place is to counteract the advantages provided to foreign businesses by those export credit agencies. It’s a complete sham.” In a report about Ex-Im’s victims, Ikenson also noted that the bank causes “substantial” “collateral damage” to many American companies.

More recently, the Ex-Im Bank offered $2 billion to Petrobras, an oil conglomerate owned primarily by the corruption-plagued, Marxist-Leninist-dominated Brazilian government, currently headed by former communist terrorist and close Castro ally Dilma Rousseff. A series of scandals in recent years surrounding the state-owned giant, which has also counted billionaire Obama ally George Soros among its investors, revealed that Petrobras was being used by Rousseff’s extremist “Workers’ Party” to bribe politicians and help finance more socialist scheming in Brazil and Latin America. Aside from the national security concerns, U.S. lawmakers lambasted Ex-Im for funding Brazilian government oil exploration even while the Obama administration was working to shut down as much American energy production as possible and destroy Petrobras’ U.S. competitors.

A growing chorus of critics from across the political spectrum is calling on Congress to finally let the Ex-Im Bank’s charter expire as a first step to reining in cronyism, corruption, market distortions, and the financing of hostile foreign governments with U.S. taxpayer money. However, despite the mass opposition, unless the American people speak out loudly and clearly against Ex-Im and corporate welfare, analysts say the alliance of politicians in the pockets of Big Business and Big Government may yet succeed in re-authorizing the taxpayer-backed boondoggle.

_______

Detail about this bank: The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is the official export credit agency of the United States federal government.[1] It was established in 1934 by an executive order, and made an independent agency in the Executive branch by Congress in 1945, for the purposes of financing and insuring foreign purchases of United States goods for customers unable or unwilling to accept credit risk. The mission of the Bank is to create and sustain U.S. jobs by financing sales of U.S. exports to international buyers. The Bank is chartered as a government corporation by the Congress of the United States; it was last chartered for a three-year term in 2012 and extended in September 2014 through June 30th, 2015.[2] [3] Its Charter spells out the Bank’s authorities and limitations. Among them is the principle that Ex-Im Bank does not compete with private sector lenders, but rather provides financing for transactions that would otherwise not take place because commercial lenders are either unable or unwilling to accept the political or commercial risks inherent in the deal. Its current chairman and president is Fred P. Hochberg.

The ‘Unwelcome’ mat for Netanyahu

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If you know anything about the Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency, they are not only covert, clandestine but assertive in gathering intelligence for the full safety and security of Israel. Given this fact, you can rest assured that Israel is very current on the P5+1 negotiations with Iran on their nuclear program in addition to being current on the status of that weapons program.

The White House has become defiant with regard to Israel in recent years and it has hit a crescendo with the formal visit by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the joint Congress on March 3. So, this begs the question, does Netanyahu have the ‘goods’ and he will tell all while the White House has dispatched his staff and cabinet secretaries to be somewhere else?

WASHINGTON (AP) – In what is becoming an increasingly nasty grudge match, the White House is mulling ways to undercut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Washington and blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world.

There are limits. Administration officials have discarded the idea of President Barack Obama himself giving an Iran-related address to rebut the two speeches Netanyahu is to deliver during his early March visit. But other options remain on the table.

Among them: a presidential interview with a prominent journalist known for coverage of the rift between Obama and Netanyahu, multiple Sunday show television appearances by senior national security aides and a pointed snub of America’s leading pro-Israel lobby, which is holding its annual meeting while Netanyahu is in Washington, according to the officials.

The administration has already ruled out meetings between Netanyahu and Obama, saying it would be inappropriate for the two to meet so close to Israel’s March 17 elections. But the White House is now doubling down on a cold-shoulder strategy, including dispatching Cabinet members out of the country and sending a lower-ranking official than normal to represent the administration at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the officials said.

Vice President Joe Biden will be away, his absence behind Netanyahu conspicuous in coverage of the speech to Congress. Other options were described by officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Netanyahu’s plan for a March 3 address to a joint meeting of Congress has further strained already tense ties between the U.S. and Israel. Congressional Republicans orchestrated Netanyahu’s visit without consulting the White House or State Department, a move the Obama administration blasted as a break in diplomatic protocol. Some Democratic lawmakers say they will boycott the speech.

U.S. officials believe Netanyahu’s trip to Washington is aimed primarily at derailing a nuclear deal with Iran, Obama’s signature foreign policy objective. While Netanyahu has long been skeptical of the negotiations, his opposition has increased over what he sees as Obama’s willingness to make concessions that would leave Iran on the brink of being able to build a nuclear weapon. His opposition has intensified as negotiations go into overdrive with an end-of-March deadline for a framework deal.  “I think this is a bad agreement that is dangerous for the state of Israel, and not just for it,” Netanyahu said Thursday.

The difference of opinion over the deal has become unusually rancorous.

The White House and State Department have both publicly accused Israeli officials of leaking “cherry-picked” details of the negotiations to try to discredit the administration. And, in extraordinary admissions this week, the administration acknowledged that the U.S. is withholding sensitive details of the talks from Israel, its main Middle East ally, to prevent such leaks.

The rebukes have only emboldened the leader of Israel, whose country Iran has threatened to annihilate. He has a double-barrel attack on the Iran talks ready for when he arrives in Washington. Not only will he address Congress, he will also deliver similar remarks at the AIPAC conference, an event to which administrations past and present have traditionally sent top foreign policy officials.

But maybe not this year.

An AIPAC official said Friday that the group has not yet received any reply to its invitation for senior administration figures to attend the meeting that starts March 1. The official stressed that last-minute RSVPs are not unusual, but the White House has been signaling for some time that a Cabinet-level guest may not coming.

Instead, the administration is toying with the idea of sending newly installed Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken to speak to the conference, according to officials familiar with internal discussions on the matter. But it’s possible Treasury Secretary Jack Lew could attend.

Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, who have both previously addressed AIPAC, will be out of the country on foreign travel that appears to have been arranged to make them unavailable to speak. Biden will be visiting Uruguay and Guatemala on a trip that was announced after Netanyahu’s speech was scheduled, while the State Department announced abruptly this week that Kerry will be traveling to as-yet-determined destinations for the duration of the AIPAC conference.

Obama spoke to AIPAC in 2012, while he was in the midst of his re-election campaign.

*** But there is more that gives clues as to what Netanyahu may have in his brief case regarding the Iranian nuclear program. It comes down to two countries, Iran and North Korea.

Why The U.S. Can’t Trust Iran And Its Nuclear Plans
The White House thinks Iran’s compliance with the terms of the interim deal indicates that an agreement may still be reached. The only problem: Trusting Iran is the surest path to a bad deal.
The history of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs—so full of inconsistencies, prevarications, concealments and outright lies—makes it hard to escape the conclusion that Iran’s claim to be pursuing nuclear power for peaceful purposes is disingenuous. That is why only draconian restrictions—enforced through intrusive verification and unrestricted inspections over decades—can offer guarantees that Tehran will not try to cheat again.
Since the exposure of Iran’s illicit nuclear facilities at Arak and Natanz in 2002, Tehran’s nuclear program has remained opaque. At a minimum, those revelations show Iran had lied to the international community for more than a decade, as it was busy building those facilities. That concealment in itself should elicit considerable suspicion and warrant demands that Iran make a full disclosure of the history, nature and extent of its nuclear activities. Exposure of its undeclared facilities gave Tehran a chance to just do that—instead, it chose to defy the international community and pursue its nuclear goals.
The door has always been open for Iran to come clean
For the next three years, Iran played hide-and-seek with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Eventually, in September 2005, the IAEA declared that “Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement… constitute non-compliance”and deferred Tehran to the UN Security Council.
Since then, punishment for Iran’s non-compliance has been slow and incremental, always leaving the door open for it to come clean. After two UN sanctions resolutions (1737 and 1747) failed to move Tehran, an August 2007 IAEA-Iranian joint working plan offered Iran a path to address all of the IAEA outstanding concerns about their past activities.
Instead, Tehran stalled for another six years.
In September 2009, President Obama, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown exposed another industrial-size clandestine facility: the Fordow uranium-enrichment plant. Unlike previous discoveries, which Iran had sought to explain away in the context of a civil nuclear program, Fordow was too large to be a research facility and too small for civil purposes. It was, on the other hand, ideal for military-grade enrichment, having been dug deep under a mountain and supervised by Iran’s military.
Iran again demurred and denied the obvious.
                             
Evidence of Iranian nuclear subterfuge
The mounting body of evidence of Iranian nuclear subterfuge led the IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano to lament in his February 2010 report Iran’s ongoing failure to address “concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
At that point, a country loath to incur international isolation and eager to maintain economic growth, might recalibrate its course. By then, Iran had twice been offered a list of economic, political and diplomatic incentives in exchange for transparency and verification. The 2006 and 2008 proposals, formulated by the six world powers negotiating with Iran on behalf of the international community, were incorporated in UN Security Council resolution 1929 in June 2010 as a sign that Tehran could choose tantalizing economic incentives over sanctions if it only would own up to its past nuclear activities.
Iran again chose sanctions.
Frustrated with nearly a decade of foot-dragging, the IAEA published an extensive and damning report detailing possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program in November 2011.  As in the past, Tehran dismissed the information as Western “fabrications.”
Since the November 2013 interim agreement, none of the above questions has been addressed, and access to scientists and suspicious sites is still being denied.
Iran’s stalling tactics continue
One thing has changed, though. Rather than recognizing that Iran’s stalling tactics continue; or seeing Iran’s nuclear opaqueness as the greatest obstacle to a good deal; or objecting to a deal that does not fully address Iran’s past nuclear and ballistic missile research, the Obama administration has agreed to defer those issues to the ongoing IAEA work that Iran has stymied for more than a decade.
In June 2003, in a rare moment of public frustration, then-IAEA director Mohammad ElBaradei opined that “Iran should not wait for us to ask questions and then respond; it should come forward with a complete and immediate declaration of all its nuclear activities. That would be the best way to resolve the issues within the next few weeks.”
Twelve years on, ElBaradei’s sound assessment still resonates. Unless the coming nuclear deal rests on an unambiguous accounting of Iran’s nuclear past and present, the country will have obtained what it always wanted: an end to the sanctions regime and an unobstructed path to nuclear weapons.

Ask the Clinton’s About These Foreigners Please

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How about the HSBC bank that is embroiled in a major scandal? How long have the Clinton’s known the Brit Richard Caring? Have Hillary and Bill describe their relationship with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnet. Then of course there is Huma Abedin, the Dubai Foundation, Friends of Saudi Arabia, Hani Masri, Oman, Saban Family Foundation and the Soros Foundation, just handful of the Clinton’s foreign friendly network.

So, where does all this lead? Foreign friends, NGO’s, foundations and powerbrokers buy presidential candidates and Hillary is no exception. She using the same page out of the money playbook that Barack Obama used.

Foreign Government Gifts to Clinton Foundation on the Rise

Donations raise ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up expected 2016 bid

The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.

Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

In 2009, the Clinton Foundation stopped raising money from foreign governments after Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state. Former President Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation while his wife was at the State Department, agreed to the gift ban at the behest of the Obama administration, which worried about a secretary of state’s husband raising millions while she represented U.S. interests abroad.

The ban wasn’t absolute; some foreign government donations were permitted for ongoing programs approved by State Department ethics officials.

The donations come as Mrs. Clinton prepares for an expected run for the Democratic nomination for president, and they raise many of the same ethical quandaries. Since leaving the State Department in early 2013, Mrs. Clinton officially joined the foundation, which changed its name to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and has become a prodigious fundraiser as the foundation launched a $250 million endowment campaign, officials said.

A representative for Hillary Clinton referred all questions to the Clinton Foundation.

A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation said the charity has a need to raise money for its many projects, which aim to do such things as improve education, health care and the environment around the world. He also said that donors go through a vigorous vetting process.

One of the 2014 donations comes from a Canadian agency promoting the proposed Keystone pipeline, which is favored by Republicans and under review by the Obama administration. The Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development agency of Canada, a first-time donor, gave between $250,000 and $500,000. The donations, which are disclosed voluntarily by the foundation, are given only in ranges.

One of the agency’s priorities for 2014-2015 was to promote Keystone XL “as a stable and secure source of energy and energy technology,” according to the agency’s website. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department was involved in approving the U.S. government’s initial environmental-impact statement. Since leaving State, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly declined to comment on Keystone.

The Canadian donation originated from an agency office separate from the one that advocates for Keystone XL, a Foundation spokesman said.

While the Canadian donation didn’t appear in a Clinton Foundation online database of donors until recently, the donation of about $480,000 was announced in June in Cartagena, Colombia, where the program provides job training for youths.

Kirk Hanson, director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California, said the Clintons should immediately reimpose the ban, for the same reasons it was in place while Mrs. Clinton led U.S. foreign policy.

“Now that she is gearing up to run for president, the same potential exists for foreign governments to curry favor with her as a potential president of the United States,” he said.

If she becomes president and deals with these nations, “she can’t recuse herself,” added James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. “Whether it influences her decision making is questionable, but it is a legitimate thing to focus on by her political opposition.”

The donations weren’t announced by the foundation and were discovered by The Wall Street Journal during a search of donations of more than $50,000 posted on the foundation’s online database. Exactly when the website was updated isn’t clear. The foundation typically updates its website with the previous year’s donations near the beginning of the year. All 2014 donations were noted with asterisks.

At least four foreign countries gave to the foundation in 2013—Norway, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands—a fact that has garnered little attention. The number of governments contributing in 2014 appears to have doubled from the previous year. Since its founding, the foundation has raised at least $48 million from overseas governments, according to a Journal tally.

United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.

A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.

The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.

Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.

Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.

The Clinton Foundation has set a goal of creating a $250 million endowment, an official said. One purpose was secure the future of the foundation’s programs without having to rely so much on the former president’s personal fundraising efforts, the official said.

The Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman donations went to the endowment drive.

Normalizing Relations with the Houthi are Failing

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So when Jen Psaki, the State Department spokesperson said we have asked for our embassy assets to be return, well it does not seem that is going to turn out well. Normalizing relations which started months ago before the coup is also failing.  Even when the United Nations makes an appeal to the Houthi, it is rejected.

Yemen’s Houthis reject U.N. Security Council call to restore order

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militia on Monday rejected a unanimous appeal from the U.N. Security Council to restore constitutional order in the country after months of chaos, Middle Eastern media reported.

At a special meeting of the 15-member Security Council on Sunday, the diplomats adopted a resolution calling on the Houthis to return control of the government to elected leaders and release President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, who has been under house arrest since Jan. 22.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council also met over the weekend in Riyadh and warned that Yemen’s neighbors would take action themselves if the Shiite militants continue to engage in clashes with other Yemenis and fail to allow government functions to resume.

“Yemen is collapsing before our eyes. We cannot stand by and watch,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned during a Security Council briefing last week. On Monday, the Houthi rebels refused either to cede power or to release Hadi, the Al-Arabiya news agency reported from Sana, the Yemeni capital.

It quoted a Houthi statement as saying the outside world needed to “respect the will and sovereignty of the Yemeni people, and to be accurate and objective.” The Houthis also reportedly warned the Security Council “not to follow the lead of regional powers that aim tirelessly to eliminate the will of the Yemeni people in a flagrant violation of international conventions that criminalize meddling in internal affairs,” the news agency reported. A U.N. special envoy visited Hadi at his Sana home on Monday to discuss the international efforts to secure his freedom and avert further bloodshed in a country where badly deteriorating security has prompted an exodus of diplomats. Special U.N. advisor Jamal Benomar told Yemen’s Saba News Agency that he assured Hadi that the international community was working for his release. He also urged all parties to Yemen’s turmoil to engage in negotiations to avert a full-scale sectarian war.

“Either the country will descend into civil war and disintegration, or the country will find a way to put the transition back on track,” Benomar was quoted as saying by Sana. “This largely depends on the political will of Yemeni leaders. They all bear responsibility for the current state of affairs, as well as responsibility for finding a way to pull the country from the brink.” Nadia Sakkaf, who was information minister in the government, announced via Twitter on Monday that Hadi needs to travel abroad “immediately” for medical treatment of a heart condition that has been aggravated by his detention.

The Security Council resolution, drafted by Britain and Jordan, “deplored the unilateral actions taken by the Houthis to dissolve parliament and take over Yemen’s government institutions” and reiterated calls for all factions to resolve their disputes through negotiation.

The soaring insecurity prompted the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates to close their embassies in Sana earlier this month. On Monday, Turkey and Japan announced that they too were relocating their diplomatic staffs out of the country until order is restored.

Yemen is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which U.S. security officials consider the most dangerous remnant of the global terror network developed by Osama bin Laden.

Yemen’s location along the narrow passage from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden also poses risks to oil shipments from the region if the Shiite militants gain control of the strategic overlooks and attempt to menace exports from Saudi Arabia, the Sunni powerhouse that is Houthi-allied Iran’s arch rival for power in the Muslim world.

*** But also in Yemen is Islamic State and al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula.  Thee is not much room left for the United States.

ISIS gaining ground in Yemen, competing with al Qaeda

The Syria-based terror group ISIS is active and recruiting inside the Middle Eastern state of Yemen, already a hotbed of terrorist activity, CNN has learned.

The disturbing information comes from a Yemeni official, who told CNN on Wednesday that ISIS has a presence in at least three provinces in southern and central Yemen, and there is now a “real competition” between ISIS and the Yemen-based terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

That competition manifested itself in a gun-battle between the two groups in Yemen’s eastern provinces last month, the same official said, though he did not have specifics on the casualties that resulted from that incident.

CNN cannot independently confirm the claims.

American officials do think ISIS is trying to recruit in Yemen. But one U.S. counter-terror official stressed the view that AQAP remains the dominant force there. The American intelligence view is that while there may be a smattering of ISIS loyalists among Sunni extremists in Yemen, they are likely “mid-level AQAP militants who are sympathetic to ISIL’s vision but haven’t broken ranks.”

According to some experts, ISIS may be seeking a foothold in the Middle East’s poorest country because of its historical importance.