What began in 2012 with secret negotiations between Valerie Jarrett and Iran has now borne its toxic, likely nuclear, fruit. It is now all but certain, excepting an unlikely Congressional intervention, that the Obama administration will officially legitimize the world’s most prolific sponsor of Islamic terror. This follows on the heels of a surprise announcement that Obama would normalize relations with Cuba.
From Tehran to Havana, evil is winning, and Obama is leading the way.
Let’s recall a few things about the Iranian and Cuban deals, and their negotiators:
Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1956. A personal friend of Barack and Michelle since she introduced the couple, Jarrett is widely assumed to be the most powerful person in the White House. The subject of an FBI investigation, Jarrett’s family is connected with old guard Chicago Communists, including Obama’s political mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.
If that weren’t enough to make you question this “deal,” Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter is married to an Iranian man with family in Iran. Conflict of interest, anyone?
Barack Obama is the president who backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood into power during the Arab Spring. After issuing Presidential Study Directive Eleven (PSD-11), Obama allied the U.S.A. with terrorists in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and is still backing anti-Assad terrorists in Syria. His administration, through the DOJ, has purged all mention of “Islam” and “Muslims” from counter-terrorism. With Obama’s approval, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service have been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans. Yes, that means Obama views American citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most dangerous threat to national security.
Likewise, domestic counter-terrorism efforts have been hampered against Muslim Brotherhood front Islamic organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who are now regarded as friends and invited to the White House. Finally, Obama has crippled the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and left the southern border completely open to whatever murderer, rapist, or terrorist wants to walk in.
Iran, for its part, has been the preeminent sponsor of Islamic terrorism since 1979. Its current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, personally translated into Farsi the works of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brother who developed the ideology of modern Islamic terror. Iran funds both Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has a friendly relationship with the terrorist regime of Omar Bashir in the Sudan, where there is ongoing Christian genocide.
Through Hezbollah, they operate narcotics and terrorist networks around the world, including in Latin America. Hezbollah is remarkably powerful in Venezuela and Mexico, and was behind the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which targeted Argentine Jews.
Cuba, an Iranian ally, is home to another other rogue anti-American regime that welcomes Hezbollah terrorists. Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist who launched Obama’s political career, helped organize trips to Cuba for the Students for a Democratic Society with the infamous Venceremos Brigade.
Not only have the Ayatollahs and Castro brothers been rewarded for their treachery, they are being rewarded handsomely: Cuba will now have full diplomatic relations with the United States, and Iran is expected to receive $100 billion in previously frozen funds.
Do you now start to get a picture of what Obama and the U.S. State Department have accomplished?
2016: A Vote for Republicans, or more Terrorists
In a rare show of wise solidarity, GOP Presidential candidates have denounced the disastrous Iranian deal. Indeed, to listen to Republicans today is almost like listening to former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who has publicly blamed Obama for ruining the close relationship between the United States and Israel.
Hillary, who will almost assuredly be the Democratic nominee, is supportive of the deal. Unsurprising, as Clinton was a fellow architect of the Arab Spring, and her personal aide Huma Abedin is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood through her immediate family.
For Americans at all concerned with the future of their country, it should be very clear that the Democrat Party stands with terrorists. Choose wisely in 2016.
Official the Joint Plan of Action with Iran is now complete with several items considered just housekeeping matters are still to be worked out. The Parchin plant MAY have allowed inspections while the other locations are off limits. The Fordo plant continues the enrichment work and Bashir al Assad is dancing at Disney. (sarcasm)
It is unclear if the UK Parliament or France votes on the JPOA but it is likely to occur. China and Russia stand with Iran especially on the arms embargo and sanction relief side.
As the Senate wraps up debate this week on Iran legislation, expect to hear a lot about “hardliners.”
The Senate’s alleged hardliners have tried to add conditions to a nuclear deal the U.S. is currently negotiating with Iranian moderates, but there is little chance the senators will succeed. The majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is expected to call for an end to debate on their meddling amendments.
President Obama views the politics of the Iran deal in these terms himself. Back in March when Senator Tom Cotton and 46 other Republicans sent a letter to Iran’s leaders, reminding them that any deal signed with Obama could be reversed by Congress or future presidents, the president played the hardliner card: “I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members for Congress wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran.”
There is definitely a political logic to pinning this “hardliner” label on the senators. The White House can artfully shift the conversation away from the contents of the deal it is negotiating. Instead the debate is framed as the Americans and Iranians who seek peace (moderates) versus those in both nations who want war (hardliners).
It’s simple, but deceptive. This tactic understates the power of Iran’s hardliners and dramatically overstates the power of U.S. hardliners.
In Iran, the people inside the system who are negotiating a deal, such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, must take the agreement to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for approval. In Iran, the hardliner approves the deal.
In the U.S. system it’s the other way around. Senators like Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz support amendments that would set new conditions before lifting Congressional sanctions on Iran. But there are not enough votes in the Senate to overturn an Obama veto on the legislation if these amendments are attached. In other words, Obama frames the conversation in the U.S., because he has the power to ignore his hardliners whereas Zarif is obliged to placate his.
Then there is the substance of the amendments themselves. Democrats and Republicans have derided certain Republicans’ amendments to the bill as “poison pills,” aimed at making a deal with Iran impossible. But these amendments would require Iran to end its war against its neighbors, release U.S. citizens who have been jailed and recognize the right of the world’s only Jewish state to exist. Outside the context of Iran negotiations, these are hardly radical views. Obama has expressed support for these positions himself.
Compare those demands with those of the Iranian hardliners. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces on Sunday reiterated the red line that no military installations would be accessible for international inspections. This would pose a problem, given that the U.S. and other great powers have agreed to allow Iran to keep most of its nuclear infrastructure in exchange for tough inspections. The Iranian hardliners appear to be putting back in play something Obama’s team believed was already agreed.
The most important distinction between Iran’s hardliners and America’s hardliners however is their political legitimacy. Iran’s people have supported reform, but nonetheless the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and domestic spy agency have tightened the grip on power despite elections when reformers won the presidency.
Contrast their ascent with the plight of Iran’s moderates: In 1997, Iranians elected a reformer president, Mohammed Khatami, who promised to open up Iran’s political system. But throughout his presidency he was unable to stop the arrests of student activists or the shuttering of opposition newspapers. By the end of Khatami’s presidency, some of his closest advisers were tried in public for charges tantamount to treason. In 2013, Iranians elected Hassan Rouhani, who ran as a reformer even though under Khatami he had overseen crackdowns on reformers. Rouhani has not freed the leaders of the 2009 green movement from house arrest or most of the activists who protested elections in 2009.
When Obama talks about his Iran negotiations, he glosses over all of this. He emphasizes instead that Rouhani has a mandate to negotiate and that he is taking advantage of this diplomatic window.
Obama had threatened to veto legislation that would give Congress a chance to review, but not modify, any agreement the administration reaches with Iran and five other world powers. Now the president says he will sign the legislation, but only if it doesn’t include the kinds of amendments favored by the so-called hardliners. After all, those amendments are unacceptable to the hardliners who actually have sway — in Iran.
The story of Russia’s El Presidente for Life (apparently), Vladimir Putin, is intriguing, to say the least. For over 15 years, Vladimir Putin has been the de facto supreme leader of the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012, succeeding Dmitry Medvedev. Putin previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.
The people (i.e. “the family”) behind Putin’s rise to power remain in the shadows, and are a mystery to many.
At around the 43:30 min. mark is a clip of Vladimir Putin stating he will ask the Duma to “reinstate Aleksandrov’s music”—meaning, he asked the Russian Parliament to reinstate the national anthem of the Soviet Union, originally written for Josef Stalin.
One Russian political party that put its support behind Putin was known as the “Fatherland” party. An interesting twist (i.e. dialectic), considering the “former” Soviet Union has long been known as the “Motherland.”
[OBP] was formed from the movement Fatherland, chaired by the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, and the movement All Russia, chaired by regional Presidents of the Republics of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev, of Bashkortostan, Murtaza Rakhimov, of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev, and the Governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev. In his founding Congress, that took place on 28 August 1999, their first chairman elected were Yevgeny Primakov and Yury Luzhkov.
The party took part in the 1999 State Duma election, being led by Yevgeny Primakov, Yury Luzhkov and Vladimir Yakovlev. During the pre-election debates, the block suffered from ‘black public relations’ campaign in Boris Berezovsky-controlled media and competition with the rival conservative Unity Party of Russia. ‘Fatherland’ supported the election of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia in 2000.
In 1 December 2001 a joint congress of rival party Unity and Fatherland-All Russia decided to merge both parties into a single new political party, United Russia. In the IV Congress of Fatherland, at 9 April 2002, it was decided to disband the organization.
Who would’ve ever thunk that the gay rights movement and the “Fatherland” have something in common?
Well, if anything, it makes for a colorful tale … does it not?
