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Elder of Ziyon
At least 235 dead in Sinai bombing, shooting terror attack
At least 235 people were killed and more than 120 wounded in a bombing and shooting attack against worshipers at a mosque in the northern Sinai after Friday prayers.After mosque massacre, Israel says it ‘stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Egypt’
Egypt's government has declared three days of mourning in response to the attack that struck the Al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed west of El-Arish.
Reuters reports that witnesses saw terrorists enter the mosque to kill worshipers during Friday prayers, when mosques see the largest attendance. The attack began around noon time. They also attempted to prevent rescue services from reaching the area.
"They were shooting at people as they left the mosque," a local resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters. "They were shooting at the ambulances too."
No group claimed responsibility for the assault but it was the deadliest yet in the region where for three years Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.
Photos posted online by a Twitter account that publishes news from Sinai showed the wounded being transported in the back of pickup trucks to hospital. It said the attack also targeted a kindergarten. Photos from inside the mosque showed at least thirty bodies laying on the floor.
Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has summoned a meeting of security officials to address the incident.
Israeli ministers on Friday expressed solidarity with Egypt following a deadly terror attack in a north Sinai mosque that claimed at least 200 lives, with one calling for “a regional front” against jihadists.Egyptian army strikes vehicles of terrorists behind Sinai attack — report
They also used the attack as a platform to attack Iran.
On Twitter, Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) offered “condolences to the families of the dozens of people murdered in the terror attack on a mosque in Sinai” and said the Jewish state “stands shoulder to shoulder with Egypt and other countries in region and the international arena in the war against radical Islamic terror.”
In a Hebrew tweet, he also said “Radical Islam is striking indiscriminately and murdering Muslims as well. It’s time to form a regional front against Iran’s Shiite terrorism and Islamic State’s Sunni terror.”
Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) offered condolences and said: “The murderous terror attack is testimony to the fact that a new world order is being created around us, in which the distinction is between terror supporters like Iran and [IS] and supporters of humanity.
An unconfirmed report in Sky News Arabia Friday said Egyptian military forces destroyed two vehicles carrying terrorists involved in an attack on a mosque in northern Sinai, in which at least 235 people were killed.
An unnamed army source told the TV station that unmanned drones had attacked two cars in a desert area called al-Risha, killing 15 jihadists. He added that the hunt for other perpetrators was ongoing.
There was no official word from Egypt’s military on the matter.
Armed attackers killed at least 235 worshipers in a bomb and gun assault on the packed mosque, state media reported, the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.
A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40 kilometers west of the North Sinai capital of el-Arish, before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.
Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside.
The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.
Caroline Glick: Portents of quagmires in Syria
Then president Barack Obama allowed Assad to commit a genocide of Syria’s Sunnis and foment the refugee crisis in Europe. He allowed Iran and Hezbollah to take over Syria and Iraq. He allowed Erdogan to organize an anti-Assad rebel force dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which over time morphed into ISIS. He allowed the Russians to use the war as a means to reassert their position in the Middle East 33 years after the Soviets were humiliated and expelled from the Levant.Melanie Phillips: IS ARAB REALISM FINALLY BREAKING OUT?
For his part, Trump has maintained Obama’s Syria policies in relation to Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Assad. He expanded US military assistance to the LAF. He permitted Iranian militias controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to cooperate with US-trained Iraqi forces in seizing Kirkuk from Kurdish forces. In so doing, Trump betrayed the Kurds, the US’s only reliable allies in Iraq.
If the Americans wish to maintain their record of failure, they have many options for doing so. They can abandon the Syrian Kurds. They can help Putin by underwriting Syrian reconstruction.
They can continue to arm the Hezbollah-controlled LAF. But the Americans do have an option to succeed, as well.
If Trump keeps US forces in Syrian Kurdistan, and if he refuses to help pay for Syrian reconstruction so long as Assad remains in power and Iranian and Hezbollah forces remain on the ground and if the US ends its civilian and military assistance to Lebanon, the US and its allies will be strengthened, and Russia and its allies will be weakened.
If the Americans do not interfere as Syrian “freedom fighters” defend against Iranian or Russian “aggression,” it won’t matter what terms the Iranians give Putin for gas, or oil or nuclear deals. He will seek a way out of Syria.
On May 1, 2003, then president George W. Bush landed a S-3 Viking fighter craft on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln dressed in a flight suit. Before an audience of cheering troops and against the backdrop of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” Bush declared: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
A month later, the real Iraq war started.
In the years that followed, probably not a day went by when Bush didn’t regret his victory dance on the USS Lincoln.
Putin, Rouhani and (to a much smaller degree) Erdogan are right that, as of now, they are the victors in Syria. But let us not empower them by believing them invincible. Their victory against ISIS – achieved with massive US assistance – is certainly an achievement. But it isn’t the end of the story. If the Americans do not save them, the situation on the ground augers quagmire, not triumph, for their axis and for their separate regimes.
Ad now yet another Saudi cleric has joined in. Dr Muhammad bin Abdel Kareem al Issa, former Saudi justice minister, senior adviser to the Saudi king and known to be close to MBS, has said, as reported in Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper, that “any act of violence or terrorism that tries to hide behind religion has no justification whatsoever, not even in Israel”.Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The US Betrayal of Kurdistan Is a Warning Sign for Israel
All of this obviously needs to be treated with a great deal of caution. Kuwait was always relatively liberal. Saudi Arabia has made a tacit alliance with the US and Israel only because the Saudis are locked in a desperate struggle against their mortal enemy, Iran. If Iran were to be defeated, wouldn’t Saudi Arabia merely revert to its prior hostility to Israel?
And it’s far from clear whether MBS, who it is said has formed a friendship with President Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, is reportedly supporting the new US peace proposals because they will weaken Israel or because they represent a bold new way to think out of the box to solve this century-old war – and that’s because we have no idea what these proposals themselves actually are. Or maybe he’s just supporting whatever Trump comes up with because he needs the US so badly.
Yet the genie is being let out of the bottle. The Arab masses are beginning to hear truths about Israel and Judaism that most of them have never heard before in their lives – truths, moreover, couched in terms of their own religious precepts. If MBS succeeds in driving through his reform programme – a big if, granted – this realistic approach to Israel will not be a flash in the pan. Nor would it be new – the picture at the top of this post shows Emir Faisal, who welcomed the Jews’ prospective return to their ancient homeland, with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann wearing Arabic dress as a sign of friendship in 1918.
Needless to say, none of this is being covered in the British media. Who can be surprised? How can Britain be shown to be more anti-Israel than the Arabs? Rub your eyes: that’s what might be beginning to happen.
There are two unassailable confirmations of this phenomenon. The first is Israel’s peace with Egypt. That peace was the result of Anwar Sadat’s need for economic assistance from the West, which insisted that peace with Israel precede the granting of aid to ensure that the money would not be squandered on wars.BESA: The Myth of the Deir Yassin Massacre
That peace treaty did not stand in Hosni Mubarak’s way when he allowed Hamas and its supporters to smuggle arms from Sinai to Gaza. It was in Mubarak’s interest to bring about a war between Israel and Hamas, because it allowed Israel to do Egypt’s dirty work with the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas). As soon as Sinai became a haven of jihadism and began fighting Egypt, the weapons smuggling from Sinai to Gaza ceased abruptly. In short, the peace between Israel and Egypt exists so long as it suits Egyptian interests.
The second confirmation is the peace with Jordan, which was the product of Yitzchak Rabin’s and King Hussein’s shared interest in preventing a Palestinian state from being established. This common interest prompted wide-ranging cooperation between the two countries. However, Hussein’s son, Abdullah II, changed his father’s policies and is a strong backer of the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank with its capital in East Jerusalem. He acts against Israel in every international forum, as if he were one of its greatest enemies. He relates to the peace treaty as an agreement to refrain from war and no more, while enjoying its attendant economic benefits.
The clear conclusion from the Kurdish, Egyptian, and Jordanian situations is that Israel must not jeopardize its existence, security, and interests by placing them in bankrupt Arab insurance companies. Israel must strengthen its position in the Land of Israel and create local governing “emirates” for the powerful West Bank Arab families while battening down Israeli control of the rural areas. No peace treaty can give Israel a lasting insurance policy. The sooner Israel and the world internalize this truth the better.
In the recently published Hebrew-language Deir Yassin: The End of the Myth, Prof. Eliezer Tauber of Bar-Ilan University gathered all the available testimonies related to the Deir Yassin battle from all involved parties, both surviving villagers and attackers, and provides a minute-by-minute analysis of the battle and the death circumstances of each victim.MEMRI: The Impossible Deal of the Century
According to Tauber, Deir Yassin was the first case of house-to-house fighting in the 1948 war, as the defenders did not run away. The attackers broke into the houses by blowing up their doors, hurling hand grenades inside, and storming in while shooting. This resulted in many casualties, including non-combatants. Yet except for one case in which an attacker shot dead non-combatants who had surrendered, all the rest were killed during house-to-house fighting.
The false accusations of civilian massacres appeared after the battle had ended, when forces of the mainstream Hagana entered the village, saw the many corpses, including women and children, and concluded that they must have been murdered by Etzel and Lehi fighters. Due to the bitter enmity between the Hagana and the two groups, the atrocity charges became widespread and hugely inflated. The Palestinian Arab leadership also inflated these charges to stir up public opinion in the neighboring Arab states to join the war against the Jews after the end of the British Mandate.
The Deir Yassin episode was unique because its pattern of house-to-house fighting did not recur on a similar scale. According to Arab claims, verified by most scholars, the mere mention of Deir Yassin brought about mass flight or hasty surrender of villagers elsewhere, which made house-to-house fighting largely unnecessary.
Those who speak of the Nakba inflicted by the Jews rarely mention that it was the Palestinian Arabs who waged a war of annihilation against their Jewish neighbors in the first place, in an attempt to prevent the creation of a Jewish state in accordance with the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947. Had this assault not taken place, there would have been no Nakba.
Also ignored is the fate of the 17 Jewish localities occupied by the Arabs in 1948. The surviving inhabitants of Kfar Etzion were massacred after their surrender. A total deportation of the Jewish population took place in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. The Jews let tens of thousands of Arabs stay in their homes under Israeli rule. The Arabs, by contrast, did no such thing, destroying entire localities and expelling their populations to the last person.
Last year, adhering to the infamous PLO Charter, PLO Chairman 'Abbas stated at the UN General Assembly (September 21, 2016): "The notorious Balfour Declaration in which Britain, without any right, authority or consent from anyone, gave the land of Palestine to another people. This paved the road to the Nakba of the Palestinian people and their dispossession and displacement from their land."[2]Before Any Talks, the Palestinians Must Move from Rejection to Recognition
The political significance of this statement is clear: Palestine was plundered from its sole legitimate owners, the Palestinian Arabs. In other words, the PLO cleaves to its fundamental ideological claim that the Palestinian Arabs enjoy the exclusive right to sovereignty in the whole of Palestine. Political recognition of Israel, such as in the Oslo Accords, or even declaring the acceptance of its "right to exist," (but not as the nation state of the Jewish people,as categorically reaffirmed by Fatah's Seventh Congress in 2016) do not contradict this ideology as long as this claim is being kept alive. Therefore, the PLO is unable – and indeed has refused – to sign a peace treaty with Israel that includes the essential "end of claims" declaration as long as a sovereign Jewish entity exists in Palestine.
This position is diplomatically awkward, so the PLO masks it by stressing another issue, that of the Palestinian Arab refugees. Some Israeli politicians and scholars amuse themselves by speculating on how many refugees would have to be admitted into the State of Israel as part of a peace agreement that would satisfy the PLO and allow it to declare "an end to all claims." In 2008 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed to accept several thousand refugees, but the PLO rejected this. Dr. Shaul Arieli[3] claimed that there is "an official Palestinian position, according to which the number of Palestinian refugees who would return to Israel – with Israel's consent – would be between 50,000 and 100,000." Professor Moshe Ma'oz claimed[4] that in 2008 'Abbas gave Olmert the figure of 150,000; Israeli peace activist Uri Avneri suggested[5] that the magic number that would satisfy the PLO would be 250,000 refugees.
This argument about the numbers is futile, because one essential preliminary condition cannot be met. Arieli asserted in his article that "there is need for a joint [Israel-PLO] formula concerning the narrative of the refugee issue." This need has never been met. Despite all the intensive efforts, the elusive "joint formula" has not been found. Following many discussions with PLO leaders over the years, Avneri recently described the required formula:[6] "The principle [of the right of return to Israel] cannot be rejected. It belongs to the individual refugee. It is anchored in international law. It is sacred. Any future peace agreement between the State of Israel and the Palestinian State will have to include a clause confirming that Israel accepts, in principle, the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants. No Palestinian leader will be able to sign a treaty that does not include such a clause." This is correct, but it is equally true that no Israeli leader will be able to sign a treaty that does include such a clause.
In 2014, at the height of the Obama administration’s attempts to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas scuttled any remaining hopes for progress by proclaiming his complete and utter rejection of recognizing Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo.Dore Gold: Any Future Security Arrangements for Israel Will Have to Be Far Stronger
While many will see Abbas’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish state as a relatively minor issue, to the Palestinians it is actually the baseline that has informed the conflict for more than 100 years.
Some still cling to the belief that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is purely or overwhelmingly a territorial issue that can eventually be concluded by marked lines on a map. However, a recent attempt by the Palestinian Authority to sue the British government over the Balfour Declaration demonstrates how seriously their rejection of any form of Jewish self-determination stands at the root of their position vis-à-vis Israel.
Abbas and his predecessors have repeatedly rejected any form of a Jewish state regardless of its borders. They rejected the Peel Commission recommendations of 1937 which would have given the Jews a tiny sliver of land, the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 that actually created two states for two peoples that the Arabs rejected, and several generous offers of statehood by former US president Bill Clinton in 2000 and prime ministers Ehud Barak in 2001 and Ehud Olmert in 2008.
Each of these and other offers or international attempts to give the Palestinians a state were rebuffed, not because of the generosity of the terms, but because the tradeoff would have meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it.
Palestinian rejectionism of Israel as the Jewish state, reaffirmed almost every day through their political, religious, education and media systems, remains the greatest obstacle to peace.
Amb. Dore Gold told the StandWithUs organization in New York last week,
We’ve had a lot of lessons we’ve learned from past diplomatic initiatives. The people of Israel really do want peace, but they want peace with security. Unfortunately we’ve learned the hard way that if our security interests are not protected, if our vital interests are ignored, we invite the next round of conflict.
Those of you who were in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv during the second intifada know what an exploding bus looks like – and those buses exploded when we had already signed peace agreements. We can never let that happen again, period.
So any arrangements we might make with our Palestinian neighbors, first of all, will not just be with them. It will have to be with Arab states as well. And second of all, the security elements in any understanding with our Palestinian neighbors are going to have to be far stronger than anything you’ve seen before in diplomacy. And I believe the Trump Administration understands that.
US envoy cancels appearance at memorial for slain American at West Bank outpost
US Ambassador David Friedman has cancelled an appearance at a memorial ceremony for slain American teen Ezra Schwartz in the wake of a media report that it would be taking place at an illegal West Bank outpost.'The UNESCO narrative is incitement'
Friedman had accepted an invitation from the Orot Yehuda Yeshiva in the city of Efrat, which is organizing the ceremony on Tuesday at the Oz V’Gaon nature preserve in the Gush Etzion bloc.
Schwartz, 18, an American yeshiva student from Sharon, Massachusetts, was shot by a Palestinian terrorist in November 2015 while on his way to help clear the new camping grounds at Oz V’Gaon as a volunteer.
A spokesman for Orot Yehuda told The Times of Israel that Friedman’s office did not provide a reason for the cancellation, but that it came less than 24 hours after a report in the Israel Hayom daily newspaper which cited the ceremony’s planned location.
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks during the 16th anniversary memorial ceremony for the victims of 9/11 attacks in a Memorial monument in Jerusalem Hills on September 11 2017. (Matty Stern/US Embassy Tel Aviv)
“We are very sorry that the Ambassador won’t be joining us to memorialize an American citizen,” said Yeshiva head Rabbi Eliyahu Eidelberg.
He insisted that ceremony was to be held at what was a nature reserve, not an outpost.
It is highly unusual for an ambassador to ask his superiors to attack the very forum where he serves. But Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Carmel Shama Hacohen, has done just that, and he says he has no doubt that Israel must follow the U.S.'s lead and quit UNESCO.World Council of Churches warns Israel, backs Patriarchate over land deals
According to Shama Hacohen, UNESCO has turned into a theater of the absurd, held hostage by the Palestinians and extremist countries. He accuses the institution of adopting political decisions that are unprofessional and borderline anti-Semitic.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the foreign ministry portfolio, will have to decide soon whether Israel remains a member of UNESCO. The timing is rather challenging: In recent months, after years of neglect, Israel launched a diplomatic assault on the automatic anti-Israel majority in the organization. The campaign has marked a number of successes, and the Palestinians are getting concerned.
In the last vote on the perpetual Arab resolution regarding Jerusalem, Israel managed to win the support of 10 countries, a number that only two years ago would have been unimaginable. But within UNESCO, the story is different and leaves Israel no choice but to quit due to the overt anti-Semitism. Not even the appointment of a Jewish director general, former French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay, as head of the organization will prevent the move since she lacks the power to stop the radicalization.
"We're waiting for the Foreign Ministry to finish drawing up its recommendations on the issue. Our delegation has submitted its recommendation, and we are saying unanimously: leave the organization along with the U.S.," Shama Hacohen tells Israel Hayom.
An organization that represents 560 million Christians in more than 100 countries called on the government of Israel on Wednesday to halt the progress of a bill aimed at clipping churches’ rights to buy, sell and lease their own lands as they wish and to intervene in a highly controversial set of property deals in East Jerusalem which is currently the subject of a Supreme Court appeal.IDF Arrests Terrorists Who Threw Bombs at West Bank Highway near Jerusalem
Following a meeting with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus lll in Amman, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches issued a strongly worded statement saying that it had “heard with concern from the heads of the churches in Jerusalem of the ways in which church institutions and properties in Jerusalem are threatened as a result of a combination of contracts of disputed legality, the efforts of radical settler groups, and policies of the Government of Israel.”
It warned that legislation aimed at giving Israel “the authority to override historic ecclesiastical landlord/ownership rights” should be withdrawn because it “would jeopardize the future long-term viability of the church and Christian community, in addition to provoking grave political reactions in local contexts.”
And it expressed “its solidarity and support for efforts to retain church ownership and control of properties in Jerusalem, including properties currently under dispute in the Jaffa Gate area, for the future survival of the Christian presence in the region.”
“The Executive Committee calls on the Government of Israel to stop and refrain from any such initiatives that may upset this important foundation for inter-communal relations in the city and region,” the statement said.
The IDF on Thursday arrested five members of a terror group who threw a number of improvised explosive devices into the tunnel road leading to Jerusalem from Gush Etzion in the West Bank in recent weeks.
There were no injuries or damage caused by the bombs.
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According to the army, when questioned, the five admitted to the incidents, and indictments against them are being prepared.
Although the explosives were thrown from the direction of the Arab village of Beit Jala, the army did not specify where the arrests had taken place.
The army released a video of the arrests via social media.
The army also confiscated vehicles used by the perpetrators to commit the offenses.
תיעוד ממעצר חמשת חברי החוליה שזרקו בשבועות האחרונים מטענים מאולתרים אל עבר כביש המנהרות המוביל לירושלים מכיוון הכפר בית ג'אלה במרחב החטיבה המרחבית "עציון" http://pic.twitter.com/lajaXr6t9w
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) November 23, 2017
Left-wing MK encounters hostile audience at Israeli-Palestinian debate
MK Zionist Union member Yossi Yonah was booed and interrupted by Limmud FSU attendees during a hotly contested debate with Rabbi Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Hebron community, on the possibility of a two-state solution.IsraellyCool: How Old Are You Jibril Rajoub? Twelve?
In a room of 200-plus people from the former Soviet Union, many of whom suffered under the Soviet regime, Yonah quickly discovered they had little room to even entertain the concept of a state for the Palestinians.
The debate in Oakland on Saturday began quietly enough, with both Yonah and Fleisher being given five minutes to state their case.
Yonah said he was looking at the dispute through both a Jewish and Zionist lens, and that both he and Fleisher are committed to the idea of the existence of Israel as a Jewish and a democratic state. “We have to figure out vis-a-vis the lingering conflict what would be the most effective way to maintain and safeguard our state as Jewish and democratic,” he said.
Yonah argued that the current separation between Israelis and the Palestinian people makes it impossible to keep Israel both Jewish and democratic, and that is why he is in favor of a two-state solution.
However, when he stated, “No one can dispute that [the Palestinians] are occupied people, and if you asked the majority of them if they would like to be under Israeli control they would say no,” the room erupted into a chorus of boos and jeers.
I have long considered the palestinians (or at least their leaders) to be like petulant children, especially when it comes to how they act when they don’t get their way. Although occasionally when they have a victory of sorts, they behave like boastful children. But children nonetheless.'Palestinian refugees' leaving Lebanon en masse
And boy, is it obvious from this interview published in Ynet, with Jibril Rajoub, Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Chairman, terror supporter, and former terrorist, following publication of the latest FIFA ranking, which places the Israeli team below the palestinian team.
When Chairman of the Palestinian Football Federation Jibril Rajoub was asked if his national team would be willing to meet Israel’s squad on the football pitch, he said, “I have no qualms about playing the Israeli National Team, but only as long as it’s under the Palestinian anthem and flag. We have no intention of following your judokas’ example, who forsook their flag in Abu Dhabi.”
“We’d never compete without our flag and anthem. (Sports) Minister (Miri) Regev and the chairman of the Israeli Judo Association may be willing to abandon their symbols, but I won’t abandon mine,” Rajoub vowed.
The Israeli selection dropped four places in the latest FIFA ranking published Thursday, placing them 16 places below the Palestinian team.
Who would win that game?
The number of “Palestinian refugees” in Lebanon has decreased significantly over the past few years and many are leaving for other countries to try to improve their situation.Saudi heir to the throne: Khamenei is Middle East’s ‘new Hitler’
In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Palestine on Thursday, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka said that some 260,000 “Palestinian refugees” had left the refugee camps in Lebanon to various countries in recent years because of the difficult security and economic conditions.
According to him, the figures he cited are based on a poll conducted by the Lebanese authorities and which indicates that there is a deliberate action to bring about the emigration of Palestinian refugees from countries bordering Israel.
"The Zionist enemy is working in this way to empty the refugee camps and to destroy the foundation for the right of return," Baraka claimed.
He further argued that this emigration should be dealt with through activities to improve the situation in the camps and through assistance from UNRWA to ensure stability in the camps prior to the return of the “refugees” to “Palestine”.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the “new Hitler of the Middle East” and must be stopped.Steve Forbes: Iran Nuclear Deal: Fix It or Nix It
In a wide-ranging interview, Mohammed bin Salman, known in the region by the English acronym MBS, told The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that he is working to build a coalition of nations to confront Iranian influence in the region.
Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” MBS told Friedman. “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.”
The young prince, 32, who is slated to take over the control of the desert kingdom after his father passes away or steps down, praised US President Donald Trump for his support, saying the controversial American leader was “the right person at the right time.”
Many Sunni nations, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are building an alliance to stand against Iran, which through its proxies wields influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, with Tehran’s critics saying it is helping to stoke instability in those countries.
The Saudi prince made no mention of Israel in the wide-ranging interview, which came amid increasing talk of warmed Israeli-Saudi ties. But his language about Khamenei and Iran echoed repeated comments by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has frequently made comparisons between Iran under the ayatollahs and Nazi Germany, and vowed to ensure that Iran does not attain weapons of mass destruction. “The democratic states made a terrible mistake” when failing to confront the rise of Nazism, “and they’re making a terrible mistake now,” Netanyahu told a Holocaust memorial ceremony in 2015, for example. World powers are “comatose” and “delusional” in the face of today’s Nazis, Iran, he charged.
Even under this deal, however, the U.S. has the right to blow the whistle if it finds that its security is at risk. And with decertification, the U.S. could impose new targeted sanctions for Iran’s numerous other offenses, such as its missile program.Islamic Republic’s New Navy Commander Looks to ‘Fly Iranian Flag in the Gulf of Mexico’
Congress has the right to do this, but given its inability to do much of anything these days (there’s a joke going around that if you want to stop the aging process, put it before Congress), it’s not likely Congress will act. The White House could then take action.
If our trading partners had to choose between access to the American market or access to the Iranian one, there’s no doubt which way they’d go.
Given the obvious crisis caused by North Korea, why would we not do everything possible to prevent a repetition with the Islamic extremists of Iran?
Regarding Obama’s ghastly deal with Iran, our motto should be clear: Fix it or nix it.
Fortunately, the Trump Administration, so far, is not taking the easy path of procrastinating and kicking this nuclear can down the road. The U.S. Treasury Department has just designated Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls almost one third of the Iranian economy, as a terrorist entity, which will enable us to impose hurtful sanctions on Iran. We must also follow through and impose crippling sanctions on Hezbollah. There are other measures, such as no-fly zones in Syria, that would help thwart Iranian imperialist ambitions.
A nuclear-armed, religiously fanatic and ambitious Iran is a far greater long-term threat than North Korea.
The new chief of the Iranian navy declared on Wednesday that the Tehran regime intends to “soon” send ships across the Atlantic Ocean to visit Latin American countries and “fly the Iranian flag in the Gulf of Mexico.”It's Not the Saudis Destroying Lebanon - It's Iran
Speaking to official Iranian media outlets, Rear Adm. Hossein Khanzadi said that the Islamic Republic plans to “unveil new vessels and submarines” that can operate effectively in international waters. The announcement comes following several weeks of Iranian military successes on the ground in Iraq, Kurdistan and Syria, all of which have boosted Tehran’s aim of securing an uninterrupted land corridor between Iran’s western borders and the Mediterranean coast.
Khanzadi was appointed to lead the navy on Nov. 6 by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At his inauguration ceremony on Nov. 8, Khanzadi’s predecessor, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, stated that “sailing in open waters between Europe and Americas should be the Navy’s goal, which will be realized in the near future.”
According to Sayyari, Khanzadi takes the helm of the Iranian navy at a time of visible expansion in its own region. Sayyari said that Iran has sent 47 warship flotillas into international waters since 2008. During that time, Iran has escorted more than 4,000 cargo ships and oil tankers in the strategic Gulf of Aden, located between Yemen and Somalia, and the Red Sea.
Sayyari has also urged the deployment of Iran’s 47th fleet as a security force for the entire Red Sea.
Far from a “Lebanese” power, it’s a Persian tool. When Tehran says jump, Hezbollah asks how high.
Every Shiite Lebanese family has lost someone in Syria, where for over six years Hezbollah has been fighting to achieve Iran’s goal of securing Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power. Hezbollah agents train and supervise Iraqi forces, building Iran-affiliated militias in their own image. They’re in Iranian outposts in Asia, Africa and South America. They even tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC.
In Yemen, Hezbollah supervises the Houthis’ fight against Saudi-backed forces. Recently the Saudis intercepted Iranian-made missiles shot at Saudi territory from Yemen. No wonder the Saudis are fed up with Lebanon.
True, Prince Mohammed is much better at diving into a crisis than at plotting a strategic way out of it. But it’s Iran, not him, that’s responsible for bringing us here.
And no, Israel isn’t being pushed by Saudis. Jerusalem has long known it one day might need to eliminate the estimated 150,000 Lebanese-based warheads Hezbollah has aimed at its urban centers. But Israel has long sought to postpone that war, knowing how bloody and painful it would be for both sides.
After ignoring Iran’s ruinous Lebanese-centered strategy for over a decade, it’s time America woke up, too: The Saudis aren’t an enemy. They just decided to stop financing, aiding and giving diplomatic cover to a state that endlessly acts against their interests.
Perhaps so should we.
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