August 9, 2016—The Iran Nuclear Deal Still Stinks!

“Like the leaders of other fascist states, the [Iranian] mullahs who have ruled the Islamic Republic have claimed universal authority in the name of their doctrine, not of their country. And they are prepared to die — along with their followers — to accomplish their mission. As Khomeini put it shortly after the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979: ‘We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah . . . For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say, let this land burn. I say, let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.’” ~ Retired Army Lt. General Michael Flynn and Dr. Michael Ledeen, The Field of Fight, St. Martin’s Press, 2016, p. 79-80.

Yousef Al Otaiba echoed Flynn and Ledeen in his August 3, 2016 Wall Street Journal OpEd, “One Year after the Iran Deal,” with an appropriate subtitle: “The Iran we have long known—hostile, expansionist, violent—is alive and well. Click here for his full article in which he observed that Iran, still the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a direct threat to the “Great Satan” America and the “Little Satan” Israel, has in fact doubled down on its posturing and provocations, and listed several:

In October, November and early March, Iran conducted ballistic-missile tests in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
In December, Iran fired rockets dangerously close to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, just weeks before it detained a group of American sailors.
In February, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan visited Moscow for talks to purchase more than $8 billion in Russian fighter jets, planes and helicopters.
In Yemen, Iran’s disruptive interference only grows worse. Last week, the French navy seized a large cache of weapons on its way from Iran to support the Houthis in their rebellion against the U.N.-backed legitimate Yemeni government.
In late February, the Australian navy intercepted a ship off the coast of Oman with thousands of AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. And last month, a senior Iranian military official said Tehran was ready to send military “advisers” to assist the Houthis.
So far this year, Tehran and its proxies have increased their efforts to provide armor-piercing explosive devices to Shiite cells in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A former Iranian general and close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for Iran to annex all of Bahrain. And Iran continues to deploy Hezbollah militias and its own Iranian Revolutionary Guard to prop up Syria’s Bashar Assad.

He also noted that Iran has orchestrated countless terrorist attacks against Americans: From the Marine barracks in Beirut to Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, to paying Taliban fighters $1,000 for each American killed in Afghanistan, to providing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that killed or maimed thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. And in recent weeks seven Iranian hackers were indicted in a U.S. federal court for a cyberattack against U.S. banks and critical infrastructure. (Click here for Peter Huessy’s comprehensive list of over 30-years of Iran’s attacks on America in his August 5 Gatestone Institute article, “Connecting the Nuclear Dots.”)

Yet, President Obama and his Secretary of State at the time — and now Presidential Candidate — Hillary Clinton have falsely claimed that the 2015 Deal with Iran was successful and is keeping us safe.

Al Otaiba notes that once the framework for the deal was agreed upon, Iran has increased hostilities in the region, so far without much response from the United States or the international community. Rather, we have promoted trade with Iran and largely ignored evidence of its past and current terrorism, ballistic missile developments and violations of the Nuclear Deal.

Saturday a week ago was the first anniversary of the announcement of the framework agreement for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Nuclear Deal with Iran. At the time, President Obama said this agreement would make “the world safer,” and he has repeated this claim often. This past week he and former Secretary of State Clinton doubled down on that claim.

But there is no reason to believe that Iran is further away from a nuclear weapon than it was a year ago, for the reasons discussed by many a year ago, and summarized in my High Frontier messages of September 1, 3, 8 and 15. (Click here for links to these messages and others related to the Deal.)

In particular, click here for our September 3, 2015 message that called attention to a letter to the President (Click here.) signed by some 56 former senior policy, technical and military officials, detailing our concerns, with copies to the leaders of both parties of Congress — all to no avail. Finally, click here for our October 20, 2015 message entitled, “Such a Deal . . . And A Hall of Shame,” which describes the terrible Deal in some detail and lists the Senators who voted to terminate debate against it — all Democrats (plus Socialist Bernie Saunders).

So, it comes as no surprise that, this past week — as if to add insult to injury, a $400 million apparent ransom became public. This payment was suspiciously part of a $1.7 billion deal (paid last January in foreign currency rather than U.S. dollars — Hmmmm) in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages — by Iranians waiting for the unmarked plane carrying the apparent ransom to arrive.

Apparently, the release of the $150 billion as part of the terrible Nuclear Deal was not quite enough to satisfy the Iranians.

Click here for the August 3, 2016 Investor’s Business Daily Editorial, “Paying Ransom to Iran Endangers Americans Everywhere.” And click here for an August 4^th CNN variant of the story that begins: “The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal . . .”

Moreover, CNN reported that Iran acknowledged that it was a hostage-ransom exchange the day after the $150 billion Nuclear Deal was signed last January . . . explicitly contradicting the Obama White House spokesmen claims.

“Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . .”

And Andy McCarthy, former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, argues it was more than paying ransom — it broke criminal law! Click here for his explanation.

In any case, paying money for hostages sets up more future hostage captures — and in fact more American hostages were subsequently taken.

A very bad idea, like in the story of our dealings with the Barbary Pirates in the early days of the American Republic, before Thomas Jefferson sent our Navy and Marines to halt our previous practice of paying ransom to free our trading vessels and sailors taken by the Barbary Pirates. That successful early Navy/Marine mission was the origin of “the shores of Tripoli” among the opening words of the Marine Hymn. Click here for a rendition ….

For those who like to point to the fact that Jefferson had a copy of the Koran in his library, I would emphasize that the context was he wanted to learn what his enemy believed, not because he thought Islam was a “religion of peace,” to quote the misunderstanding of recent U.S. Presidents. He knew better, and it’s time we learned our lessons as well.

And by the way, Mr. Khazi Kahn might do a little more homework to understand our Constitution — which he waved to taunt Donald Trump, actually with false claims. The Constitution is inconsistent with provisions of Sharia Law that I understand Kahn wishes to impose on us as being superior to the Constitution. (Click here for a pertinent discussion.)

But back to Iran’s Mullahs and their dedication to their mission, as summarized by Flynn and Ledeen in quoting Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini in 1979, “I say, let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

We are playing with fire as Iran develops nuclear weapons to attack the “”Little Satan” Israel and “Great Satan” America — if they don’t actually already have them. Click here for “Experts: Iran Now a Nuclear-Ready State, Missiles Capable of Hitting US,” a February 1, 2015 Newsmax article explaining in some detail why a prudent planner should assume Iran already — 16 months ago — had nuclear weapons.

Make no mistake, the Deal only legitimizes one path for Iran to get nuclear weapons, it does not block possible, even covert paths to a nuclear capability, especially in cooperation with Iran’s nuclear partner, North Korea, which can use some of the money released by the terrible Nuclear Deal.

Connect the dots . . .

Furthermore, Khomeini’s views quoted by Flynn and Ledeen should give pause to those who claim Iran would never attack us with nuclear weapons because we would destroy them in our retaliation.

This extension of the Cold War “Mutual Assured Destruction” — or MAD strategy should not be expected to work in the case of those who follow Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s “theology” that would accept such retaliation, “provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

Indeed, some of us have doubts that it really worked during the Cold War — we may have been just plain lucky.

And as we have repeatedly pointed out, we are vulnerable to an attack that could shut down the electric power grid for an extended period of time, with the consequent starvation, chaos and societal collapse leading to the death of most Americans within a year. Such an attack could come by a combination of physical, cyber and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) components.

We are currently vulnerable to all three — and in addition a major coronal mass ejection (CME), a solar storm, will one day envelop the Earth to create a natural EMP existential threat, the only uncertainty is when. Such a major CME missed the Earth by about a week a few years ago. And still we do little to prepare for this coming challenge to our existing electric power grid.

Time for action . . . don’t you think?

Even as we enter further into the quadrennial silly season of national elections, we should give careful attention to these urgent matters of foreign and defense policy, upon which our survival depends. Our future leaders need to do better.

Stay tuned . . .

What can you do?

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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.

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