Why we need to know ?

 

 June 9, 2015

Syria’s disintegration into civil war since 2011 has created a strategic dilemma for Israel that the upcoming US-Iran deal will throw into stark relief. On the one hand Israeli security has benefited from the conflict in two concrete ways. Firstly its enemy the Syrian Baath party-state has partially collapsed, losing territory, allies like Gaza’s Hamas, and military resources. Secondly its northern border is quieter as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its Iranian backers have been forced to divert men and money into propping up the Damascus regime. Shia-influenced Arab regimes in Beruit, Damascus, and Baghdad may one day form a hostile front against Tel Aviv but today each has Sunni militia groups that pose them more immediate problems.

On the other hand Sunni fundamentalist terrorist organizations like Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrah al-Sham (which recently claimed Syria’s Idlib province), and Islamic State (IS) are equally antithetical to any Arab-Israeli peace. Israel may not love the Arab regimes that surround it but it has learned to live with them. A tangle of Sunni jihadi principalities competing for recruits, money, and territory would make for violent, unstable neighbors, even if they spent most of their efforts fighting each other. Hezbollah has shown Israel that a hybrid party-militia with a religious group identity can be a more nimble security threat than a sclerotic dictatorship.

Syria’s conventional military threat to Israel, never large, has diminished drastically; its unconventional threats such as terrorist proxies or chemical weapons programs have been dismantled or unleashed against internal enemies. The Baath have been characteristically ruthless in their treatment of their domestic enemies but are reeling from a Turkish-Saudi backed rebel coalition in the north and a simultaneous IS thrust from the east. The fall of Palmyra shows the regime is suffering a manpower shortage and Damascus and its foreign allies have resorted to recruiting Afghan mercenaries and arming Palestinian factions in the Yarmouk refugee camp among other measures. Many Iraqi Shia militiamen have returned home to fight IS, aggravating Syrian government overstretch.

Preoccupied with Gaza Israel has largely kept out of Syria. Now however reports have surfaced of wounded al-Nusra gunmen receiving treatment in Israeli hospitals, making it likely that the present Israeli government sees the odious Damascus regime as still the major threat to Tel Aviv. In material terms this may seem so, but the Afghan precedent is not encouraging. In the 1980s the West and Arab monarchies collaborated to bring down the Soviet-backed communist regime and got al-Qaeda and the Taliban as eventual successors.

Israel may be correct when it calculates helping in the Assad’s regime end will check Iranian influence in the Arab world. It may also be that the range of forces now weighted against the government of Syria are such that it is already fatally compromised even without Israel’s minor interventions in the rebels’ favor; Syrian and international jihadi groups could become a regional force regardless of what Tel Aviv does. Nonetheless by helping Jabhat al-Nusra now Israelis may find they have more ideologically-motivated and less deterrable neighbors facing them in the future.

Regardless of whether a weakened Assad prevails or not, whichever side wins the Syrian civil war wiIl be anti-Israeli. Assad would need Iranian money to rebuild his country and Tehran remains staunchly hostile to Tel Aviv regardless of recent elections and movements on the nuclear issue. The issue of the Golan Heights would doubtless also prove a useful diversion for the more corrupt militias the regime has created and justify the patriotic need for their continued existence. Meanwhile the jihadi movement is openly anti-Semitic and theocratic in its worldview. The re-conquest of formerly Muslim Palestine would be a rhetorical device all its factions could employ to mobilize supporters.

For Israel, the best outcome would be mutual exhaustion and a negotiated settlement to a government of national reconciliation which kept Syria’s state apparatus intact but without Assad and his family at the top. A UN-backed treaty similar to the Taif Agreement that ended Lebanon’s civil war would empower the country’s Sunni majority while allowing the state to reassert its authority in territory currently abandoned to IS and the Syrian Kurdish militias. Such a government would be divided between Syria’s many communities and preoccupied with its own internal security, not the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Iran threatened to shoot down US Navy spy planes in the Persian Gulf

 Rare Bipartisan Consensus in US Politics: The Iran Deal was a Bad Idea

August  , 2016

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Iran threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance aircraft flying close to Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, the latest in a series of recent provocations between Iran and the US military in the region, three US defense officials with knowledge of the incident told Fox News.

On Sept. 10, a Navy P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an EP-3 Eries with a crew of roughly 24, were flying a reconnaissance mission 13 miles off the coast of Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, according to officials.

Iran’s territorial waters—like all nations--extend 12 miles into the sea, according to international maritime law.

At some point during the flight, the Iranian military warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down. 

The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the officials told Fox.  

“We wanted to test the Iranian reaction,” one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets were flying close to Iran.

“It’s one thing to tell someone to get off your lawn, but we weren’t on their lawn,” the official continued.  “Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it’s not considered professional.”

The official said the Iranian behavior was characterized as “unprofessional.”  Another official said the incident was not considered “unsafe” because there were no Iranian missile launchers in the area, according to the latest intelligence reports.

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More than likely President Obama had good intentions when it came to the Iran deal.  He didn’t want another Middle East quagmire, and possibly thought it could achieve Sunni Muslim and Israeli dialogue.  That has been achieved, as the hatred Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have for Iran after the United States’ (US) nuclear deal has been unprecedented.  Dialogue and open relations are now the norm between former enemies.

What if that is what the president and former Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Kerry wanted all along. A balance of power strategy, based upon realist foreign policy that ties former enemies together based upon a mutually agreed upon threat. The way we now see the Asian nations led by Japan and South Korea united against a more formidable China that negates international tribunal rulings over threatened waters in the South China Sea.

But agreements like this which the US takes the lead on have consequences. President Obama was warned by former secretaries of state on the Right about the disastrous consequences of formulating a quasi-treaty with Iran. And now Salon.com, a leading intellectual site for the Left, has agreed with the Right and Congressional Republicans – this is a bad deal for America and the world. In our hyper-partisan environment to have a leading Democratic-friendly site refer to the agreement as a “travesty,” we know this is an unfavorable deal.

This wasn’t The National Review, The Weekly Standard, or right-leaning talk radio making this hyperbolic statement – this was Salon.com. That the president of the United States has the mendacity to scoff away concerns about airlifting $400 million in hard currency to the Iranians for American hostages means we are no longer in the best of times, but the worst of times.

Americans of good conscious should want our Presidents to succeed – whether Democrat or Republican – but when agreements with the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world are negotiated, and then undone, President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and Democratic nominee Clinton should answer for their policy decisions. To never consider Iranian history, ideological positions, or rogue behavior is naïve bordering on narcissistic national suicide.

Did the President have America’s best in mind, or was he only thinking about his presidential legacy? I never begrudge a president taking vacations, golfing, or spending every weekend at Camp David – but with the Wall Street Journal’s revelation about the US paying Iran money for hostages – maybe the president needs to cut his Martha’s Vineyard vacation short. The left and the right both agree that the President has possibly broken the law, or at the very least endangered Americans worldwide with his actions on Iran.

And this is our supposed partner for a new Middle East, with Ayatollah Khomeini now flouting his disregard for negotiating with the US. He now says he can’t trust the US, and because of Iranian actions, other center-left foreign policy elites are now urging the US to stay tough on Iranian sanctions. Do the president and deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, who pushed, coddled, and basically lied this deal through Congress have any idea?

The Iranians seem to have an idea where this deal is headed, and for them it more and more seems about money. Money for their oil infrastructure, and more missiles for their proxy – Hezbollah – to fire at Israeli cities while not considering the consequences of the Arab League, OPEC, and Israel’s new friends. Saudi Arabia isn’t going to sit back and do nothing the next time Hezbollah attacks Israel through Lebanon. Too much is at stake for these countries where self-interest rightly understood is at stake, and now Egypt has even more of the leverage it needs to oppress its citizenry, all in the name of killing ISIS terrorists in the Sinai.

The Council on Foreign Relations makes clear Iran has not changed its behavior, while multi-national banks still won’t do business with the regime. Hundreds of billions of new loans, fees, and revenue are at stake, but still they keep the Iranian regime at arm’s length. Though President Obama and Secretary Kerry have made numerous concessions attempting to integrate Iran into the world community, Iran is still a malignant force in actively pursuing regional aggression, money laundering, weapons proliferation, and making its continued threats against Israel.

That Salon.com article is now actively quoting the futility of this deal:

It subsidizes Iran’s hegemonic ambitions, and demonstrates the nuclear deal has merely emboldened Iran to further provoke America, secure in the knowledge the White House will do almost anything to protect its signature foreign policy achievement,” according to Tzvi Kahn, Senior Policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

The frightening irony is leading Democrats realize the destructive policies regarding Iran by the Obama Administration, yet President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton don’t seem to want to address the issue.