March 3, 2015 - On Bibi’s Knowns & Unknowns

In seeking to protect Israel from an existential Iranian threat, Prime Minister Netanyahu confronts problematic facts and key uncertainties. It will be interesting to hear how he deals with them in today’s address to Congress and all Americans—who also face an existential threat from Iran, whether they know it or not.

Consider former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s breakdown on what we know and don’t know about important issues when considering the content of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address.

In particular, contemplate Netanyahu’s efforts to assess existential threats to Israel in view of the apparent perceptions and actions of U.S. leadership in dealing with Iran, whose leaders since the 1979 revolution that founded the current regime have sworn to destroy the Little Satan Israel and the Great Satan America. This common threat should unite us with our Israeli friends—but does it do so? If not, why not?

Known Knowns.

Not the least of the Prime Minister’s “known knowns,” to use the first of Rumsfeld’s categories, is that one of the few consistencies of recent U.S. foreign policy is the Obama administration’s failures and obviously delusional perspectives,

From its widely publicized “Reset” with Russia—now fomenting what some call a new Cold War with aggressive actions in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, while our strategic forces atrophy due to lack of the support promised by the Obama administration in exchange for the votes of a few foolish Republican Senators during the 2010 Lame Duck Session, enabling ratification of the New START Treaty, an ill-advised treaty that required U.S. strategic force reductions and legitimized a build-up of modernized Russian strategic forces;
To its vacuous “pivot to Asia” as North Korea increases its ability to threaten us with nuclear armed missiles and satellites (in cooperation with Iran), not to mention China’s persistent progress in becoming a peer economic and military competitor-especially to threaten our naval operations and key space systems as well as the U.S. homeland; and
To its failures in the Middle East where we have withdrawn from three more embassies (most recently in Yemen, the President’s alleged model just a few months ago for his “successful” leading-from-behind policy in the Middle East) and have no apparent strategy to deal with the growing threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which the President ridiculed as a “Jayvee team” last September as they began to advance and our “partners” dropped their arms (actually U.S. made arms we had supplied) and ran. And ISIS is expanding beyond the Middle East, and has designs on America as well. Meanwhile, U.S. led negotiations with Iran seem to have reduced sanctions that were encouraging Iran to negotiate seriously with little apparent in return—we continue to “kick the can” down the road while the centrifuges spin.

Last week, the President and Secretary of State John Kerry declared we were safer than ever; but the President’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper almost immediately thereafter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that 2014 was “the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled.” Click here for a blunt but accurate assessment of this sad illustration of why Netanyahu has to believe Obama administration is at a minimum delusional—to be generous.

Furthermore, in some cases the record shows that our leaders have been astonishingly duplicitous. For example, there’s Benghazi—where it is now clear from recently made public email traffic (thanks to the persistent efforts of Judicial Watch) that the events were well known within minutes; nevertheless, the President and his most senior foreign policy advisors, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his National Security Advisor Susan Rice, misrepresented those facts to America and the rest of the world—for weeks on end, and to this day they have not admitted that they lied.

This will be a very political issue in the 2016 elections—click here for one example from the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). And of course, Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC) House Select Committee on Benghazi is supposed to be weighing in soon—including testimony from former Secretary of State Clinton. That hearing should be interesting.

Recently, Ms. Rice claimed that Netanyahu’s speech today is “destructive of the fabric” of our long time close ties with Israel. Maybe such “torn fabric” is with President Obama if it is possible to make that relationship less amicable—but with congress and the American people? I don’t think so. And I think Bibi—who well understands the American people from his years living with us knows better.

Imagine what he must think as he contemplates these facts among the “known” threats with which Israel must contend—and which American should also recognize and counter effectively. And why he wants to address the U.S. Congress and American people to seek to reassure the historic ties between the United States and Israel in confronting common enemies—particularly an Iran intent on gaining nuclear armed missiles that represent a threat to both our nations.

Known Unknowns.

Among the known unknowns are factors that affect the all-important issue of when Iran can gain deliverable nuclear weapons.

Uncertainties in estimating with confidence that timeline provoke major controversy because of a fundamental difference of perspectives—and inconvenient facts that limit confidence in gaining verifiably agreed approaches to processing nuclear materials.

Netanyahu wants assurance that Iran will never gain a capability that indeed is as existential threat to Israel posed by even one—or at most a few—Iranian nuclear weapons.

The administration’s apparent interest is to delay the time for Iran gets that capability—and to negotiate with Iran and others among the P5 +1 (the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) about “how much delay is enough.” For an up-to-date summary of ongoing efforts, see Michael Gordon’s article in the March 1, 2015 New York Times.

Notwithstanding optimistic prognostications, Effective verification is very problematic, especially considering a major circumvention “loophole” as discussed in depth by Sellin and Vallely in their February 28, 2015 Family Security Matters article “US – Iran nuclear deal may be dead on arrival and should be.”

In particular, the well-known and long-standing alliance between Iran and North Korea in developing and testing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them is an obvious pathway for Iran to cheat on whatever verification arrangements are negotiated with Iran alone.

Netanyahu has previously discussed his concerns about negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear materials enrichment efforts rather than to end them. And I have written—e.g., in our June 14, 2013 message and in earlier linked messages—about his views of a pending “red line” which he believes must not be crossed, views also shared in his September 27, 2012 address to the United Nations. It will be instructive to learn if he believes we are currently crossing that “red line.”

The perspective of many of the U.S. “elite” seems consistent with a policy of containment, as was underwritten by our deterrent policies during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But Iran is not the Soviet Union—and there is justified concern that the Mullahs cannot be deterred, when it comes to destroying the Little Satan and the Great Satan.

At least Bibi is cognizant of this reality—perhaps our leaders are not, or do not take it seriously. And dealing with the known unknowns adds major concerns about our negotiation objectives and approach.

Unknown Unknowns.

Then, as Rumsfeld noted, there are the unknowns we don’t know about—by definition. But they clearly exist—and have been evident from our experience in Middle East conflicts!

In my opinion, a little recognized and seldom discussed “unknown unknown” discovered after the 1991 Gulf War, Desert Storm, haunts the policies, plans, programs, and politics surrounding efforts to deal with Iran’s persistent efforts to develop nuclear weapons and other threatening activities in the Middle East.

I’ll never forget a lesson from the 1991 Gulf War, Desert Storm, which occurred on my watch as Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative. David Kay, who led the inspections of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) sites after the U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq in the Desert Storm conflict, visited with me to discuss their surprising discovery of an extensive hitherto unknown $10 Billion Iraqi program to develop nuclear weapons, employing 20,000-30,000 Iraqis. (Click here for the transcript of a very interesting BBC interview discussing these issues with David Kay and others.)

David then told me that he judged this major program, previously an “unknown unknown” to the intelligence community—including Israel’s vaunted Mossad, was within months of providing Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons. In effect, we probably dodged a “nuclear” bullet when President George H.W. Bush quickly formed and led the coalition that defeated Hussein in a hundred days, which ended that clandestine program—at least for the moment.

The subsequent “cat and mouse” game that Saddam Hussein played with UN inspectors for the next decade left a condition of “known unknowns” for those contemplating our next steps in the Middle East following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed almost 3000 Americans.

What turned out to be bad intelligence and associated uncertainties—along with the above summarized 1991 “unknown unknown” lesson and Hussein’s past activities and explicit claims—no doubt contributed to CIA Director George Tenet’s “slam dunk” assessment that Saddam was nearing a WMD capability and President George W. Bush’s decision to focus on Iraq—around the time Donald Rumsfeld made his “Unknown Unknowns” statement to the Press, quoted above. You know, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Notably, congress voted to support President George W. Bush’s decision again to go to war in the Middle East—focusing first on Iraq in Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. Then Senator and now Secretary of State John Kerry voted with the majority to support the President. You might forget that fact given revisionist “blame Bush” history lessons since David Kay found no significant WMD activities after Iraqi Freedom.

We—including the intelligence community—were fooled in 2003 by the “known unknowns.” Surely Prime Minister Netanyahu could be worried about this possibility today; and the truth about Iran’s programs could go either way.

So What?

Iran’s programs to develop nuclear weapons are not “unknown unknown” major programs—because we know about them and the Obama administration is negotiating with Iran to limit them. Press reports claim some in the intelligence community, including the Mossad, are telling our leaders that Iran is nowhere near having a nuclear weapon. For example, click here to read the Guardian’s February 23, 2015 account, challenging Netanyahu’s “red line” concerns.

That is similar to where we were in 1991, is it not? Except, then we did not know Iraq had a major clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons. Today, we know Iran has a major nuclear development program. After Desert Storm we learned that Iraq was within months of having a nuclear weapon in a program we did not know existed. Can we still be fooled by unknown unknowns associated with a program that we know exists?

Hmmmmm . . .

Of course, we can be fooled, as history has often shown. For potentially unhelpful news, consider the recent report that a top secret Iranian site is working on advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium. But maybe the intelligence community is fully aware of this and other sites of a clandestine program like that in Iraq over twenty years ago. Hope springs eternal.

Also consider an unsettling and not entirely unrelated fact. The August 2, 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt prompted the Manhattan Project, which resulted in an untested Uranium bomb, Little Boy, being dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. That was followed by the Plutonium bomb, Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 after a single test in New Mexico. Just six years from concept advocacy to employing the world’s first atomic bombs.

How long has Iran been working on the bomb? Most press accounts are focused on Iran’s processing of uranium. What about their efforts to develop a plutonium bomb? Hmmmmm.

Seventy years ago, were we really so much smarter than today’s Iranian scientists and engineers? Especially given their cooperation with North Korea and its nuclear development, testing and delivery system programs? And the proliferation of the key know how from Russia to China to North Korea, etc.

This sounds like the ingredients of a potential “Black Swan event” as I discussed in my December 11, 2013 message. Recall that a Black Swan event is an unexpected event, after which experts and even laymen usually conclude: “it was bound to happen . . . similar incidences even have happened before.”

That message also reviewed the “strategic warning” we have long had about the existential threat posed by a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event, and it also described how Iran is gaining the capability to execute an existential EMP attack. While my focus was on the Iranian threat to the Great Satan America, it is clear that Iran poses the same existential threat to the Little Satan Israel.

Just one more reason America and Israel should be working together. As we have worked together on missile defense systems to our common benefit since my advocacy as SDI Director in beginning the Israeli Arrow Program, we should also be working together to counter the existential EMP threat.

Perhaps this important subject might be included in the discussions Prime Minister Netanyahu has with congress and others in Washington, if not pouting officials of the Obama administration.

Sobering Bottom Lines—another Unknown Unknown?

While the above discussion has focused on uncertainties that weigh on Netanyahu’s consideration of the the Iranian nuclear program, we should not lose sight of other problems in the Middle East where “unknown unknowns” may be present—and where there is the potential for rude surprises.

For example, consider the people joining the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) recently summarized in the figure from the January 27, 2015 Washington Post. Could there somehow be a nuclear threat here?

Just to speculate a little further about specific uncertainties, consider the indicated 500 emigrees from Pakistan and remember that Pakistan is openly reported to have on the order of a hundred nuclear weapons. All under the control of trusted Pakastani officials, right?

Recall that our SEALs killed al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Ladin, very near a major Pakistani military facility, where he had been for years—and the Taliban immediately declared they would avenge his assassination. Documents retrieved by the SEALs, released last week for use in a New York trial, show conclusively that bin Ladin, who planned 9-11 attack on the United States, was still involved in planning to attack targets in Europe and the United States—and that his plans involved cooperative programs with Iran as well.

Don’t forget some have suggested that Iran is on our side in fighting ISIS—and the possibility that to gain that support the Obama administration may be making concessions in the negotiations with Iran that are of such great concern to Netanyahu.

To return to my example of a speculative concern, the Taliban still has a major presence in Pakistan and also collaborates with other jihadis, obviously including ISIS. It doesn’t take a Tom Clancy to imagine how ISIS, which spun off of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), might possibly get its hands on a nuclear weapon, does it? And possibly passing it to its “sleeper cells” in the United States?

FBI Director James Comey now says ISIS is active in all fifty states—updating his earlier statement that they were in all states but Alaska. And the pathways in the above figure are actually two way streets—especially given our porous borders and the ease of entering America from Europe.

Obvious bottom lines from thinking through such possible threat scenarios should make clear why we must identify the very complex integrated threat to all we hold dear and map a strategy to defeat it. As Andy McCarthy’s states in his recent National Review Online posting, which I urge you to read:

“[O]ur enemies are driven by an ideology, Islamic supremacism, that is rooted in a classical interpretation of sharia — Islamic law. Islamic supremacism is rabidly anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. It rejects the fundamental premise of our liberty: that people are free to govern themselves, rather than be ruled by a totalitarian legal code that suffocates liberty and brutally discriminates against non-Muslims and apostates. And sharia is an actual war on women — denying them equal rights under the law, subjecting them to unthinkable abuse, and reducing them in many ways to chattel.”

Andy observes that sharia and western democracy are antithetical to each other cannot coexist—a conclusion shared by Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood jurist and the world’s most influential Islamic scholar.

Thus, we are confronted by Islamic terrorists, not radical Islamists as some refer to them. I call them jihadis, awaiting a broader awakening to the reality of the precise threat that confronts us.

Such considerations must have weighed on Netanyahu as he considered his speech to congress. As he boarded his plane in Jerusalem on Sunday he said he was going to America as an “emissary of all the citizens of Israel, even those who don’t agree with me, and the entire Jewish people.” He received a warm welcome yesterday at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-as is appropriate. Click here for his speech.

For my part, I welcome him to speak on behalf of all Americans who stand with Israel, whether they agree with him or not in making this particular trip. Certainly, I welcome him to speak for me.

High Frontier Next Steps.

We currently are focused on raising South Carolinians’ awareness of EMP threats to the electric grid, and what they can do to counter them—especially as such threats are posed by rogue states like North Korea and Iran, and Islamic Terrorists like ISIS. We are working the problem in South Carolina from the bottom-up among local and state authorities—because Washington seems unable even to identify the obvious problems, let alone deal with them.

On March 14, 2015, we are joining with the Center for Security Policy and Breitbart News to sponsor the all-day South Carolina National Security Action Summit to discuss these very clear and present dangers we face—especially the vulnerability of our electric grid, the global jihad, immigration issues and the hollowing out of our military capabilities. As should be clear from my above discussion, these are linked to threats that also confront Israel.

A number of experts will be joining to discuss solutions to these important problems, if we simply can persuade the powers that be to execute them! So far, Senator Ted Cruz, former Senator Rick Santorum, Ambassador John Bolton, Governor Bobby Jindal, Phyllis Schlafly, Frank Gaffney, Dr. Peter Pry and a number of others have confirmed their participation. Please make your plans to join us in Columbia at the Brookland Baptist Banquet and Conference Center—especially if you live in South Carolina or nearby. Please click here to learn more and to reserve your tickets!

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage, www.highfrontier.org for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. Yes, we also remain vulnerable to the EMP caused by a major solar storm that will one day surely create this threat condition—and we are not dealing with it either.

I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages. Click here to make your tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it to 500 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

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