The Real Problem Is Not the Mosque, but the Nukes

 IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Aug 172010
 

By Paul Hsieh
American Thinker, August 17, 2010

All the energy devoted to this issue of the Ground Zero Mosque is distracting us from the far more serious problem of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If this more fundamental problem is properly addressed, then the NYC mosque issue will become irrelevant. Conversely, if America doesn’t deal with this more fundamental problem, then any legal or political maneuvers to stop the NYC mosque — even if successful — will make little difference in the long run.

Opponents of the mosque argue that allowing its construction near the ruins of the World Trade Center would symbolize America’s weakness and would embolden anti-American, anti-Western Islamists around the world. While true, the reason why America is perceived as weak against the Islamists is because we are. And nothing illustrates this more than our current policy (or lack thereof) toward Iran’s nuclear program. Continue reading »

Boxing Iran: A Case against Containment

 IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 172010
 

The notion that a warmed-over Cold War policy will somehow “contain” Iran is ludicrous.

Clifford D. May
National Review Online, June 17, 2010

Mahmoud AhmadinejadPresident Obama’s policy of “engagement” with Iran can be viewed as an experiment. There was at least a chance that it was only President Bush — that swaggering, unilateralist cowboy — with whom Iran’s theocrats did not want to engage. But a year and half into Obama’s tenure, we should recognize the obvious: Iran is ruled by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. For them, there is what Andy McCarthy, in his distressingly clear-eyed new book, The Grand Jihad, calls “the imperative of Islamic domination.” For them, as a matter of principle, there must no engagement with America. The goal must be to challenge, confront, humiliate and, in time, Inshallah, defeat the Great Satan.

President Bush’s policy of “isolating” Iran — a policy President Obama did not discontinue — has also failed. Iran was never isolated in any serious sense, and today its masters strut across the world stage as never before. My colleague, Claudia Rosett, has documented Iran’s growing power at the United Nations and how both Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, are being welcomed in one foreign capital after another. Continue reading »

The Shifting Sands of the Middle East

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 142010
 

By Ted Belman
American Thinker, June 11, 2010

Shimon Peres, President of Israel, has, for the last thirty years, called for a New Middle East. In fact, he wrote a book by that title in 1993, the year of the Oslo Accords. He believed that economic cooperation in the ME was the starting point for cementing ties and reconciling peoples. The Oslo Accords, of which he was the main architect and instigator, were intended to lead in that direction. They failed miserably.

In those days, the main players on the Muslim side were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, all Sunni. And of course, we cannot leave out Arafat, also a Sunni.

All this began to change with the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. in 2003. Talk about unintended consequences. The defeat of Iraq created a power vacuum which Shiite Iran was salivating to fill. Although Iraq under Hussein was in the Sunni camp, its population was 60% Shiite. Luckily, the Iraqi Shiites prefer independence from Iran, perhaps due in part to the fact they are Arab and not Farsi — at least for now, but that could change. Continue reading »

The U.N.’s Iran Dead End

 IRAN TENSIONS, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Jun 102010
 

The Editors
National Review, June 10, 2010

The latest round of U.N. sanctions against Iran will not stop that nation’s rulers from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. It could in fact help them acquire one. That is the likely outcome if President Obama does not revise his Iran policy.

The resolution, approved yesterday, achieved the following. Forty persons associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the fanatical entity that oversees Iran’s nuclear program and is a power base for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei, had been targeted by previous sanctions; they, and a new 41st, will now face a travel ban and asset freeze. U.N. member states will be required to inspect planes and ships going to or coming from Iran if they suspect that these vessels contain banned cargo (yet the resolution provides no authorization for the forcible boarding of such vessels). Iran will not be allowed to invest — in any country — in uranium mines, enrichment plants, or similar facilities. And there will be a ban on the sale of many types of weapons systems, including any ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload, to Iran. Continue reading »

Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, GLOBAL, IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 082010
 

Contempt for Israel is contempt for Washington.

Mark Steyn
National Review Online, June 5, 2010

Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.

Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on — the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies — was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war — more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel. Continue reading »

Gaza blockade: Iran offers escort to next aid convoy

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 072010
 

by Ian Black, Middle East editor
Guardian.uk.co, June 7, 2010

Hojjatoleslam Ali Shirazi, an aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pledged Tehran would send Revolutionary Guard units to escort Gaza aid convoys. Photograph: Reuters

Iran has warned that it could send Revolutionary Guard naval units to escort humanitarian aid convoys seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza – a move that would certainly be challenged by Israel.

Any such Iranian involvement, raised today by an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would constitute a serious escalation of already high tensions with Israel, which accuses Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon and of backing Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces are prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys that carry humanitarian assistance for the defenceless and oppressed people of Gaza with all their strength,” pledged Hojjatoleslam Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s personal representative to the guards corps.

The threat came as the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, dismissed a UN proposal for an international commission to investigate last week’s commando assault on aid ships, in which nine people died. Another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, carrying Irish and other peace activists, was boarded peacefully by Israeli forces on Saturday, escorted to the port of Ashdod, and its passengers deported. Continue reading »

The Art of Seaborne Humiliation

 CHINA, ENEMIES OF AMERICA, GLOBAL, IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 042010
 

There’s just a chance that, if Israel doesn’t lose its nerve, it could restore a climate of deterrence against seaborne provocations.

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, June 4, 2010

A tiny flotilla of “peace ships” sets out to run an Israeli blockade of the Gaza coast. The Israeli strategy in response is intended to ensure that neither weapons nor terrorists enter the Hamas-held territory, at a time when Hamas is in a virtual war with Israel.

Once the ships neared the coast, the choices were not good. Either the Israelis could allow the ships through, rendering the blockade irrelevant and permitting dozens of unknown persons to enter Gaza, along with unspecified cargos — or the Israelis had to intervene, ensuring that at some point they might have to use force, perhaps against some passengers who were not entirely unarmed. Continue reading »

Parallels Between Present-Day Iran and Nazi Germany

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAN TENSIONS  No Responses »
Jun 032010
 

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” said Mark Twain, “but it does rhyme.”

R. James Woolsey
National Review Online, June 3, 2010

In 1933, a totalitarian regime came to power in Germany with the consent of at least a substantial minority of the German people. Its Nazi ideology was rooted in fanatic racism and resentment over recent history. Hitler and those around him preached that it was the destiny of the German race to dominate Europe and exterminate the Jews. One of the Nazis’ most bitter enemies from the beginning was a rival regime — the Soviet Union — whose ideology was rooted in class rather than race but was equally totalitarian.

Shortly after they came to power, the Nazis began a major arms buildup, in violation of their international treaty obligations. They enhanced their control of the instruments of power in German society by creating two new organizations, the SA and the SS, which took over many of the roles of the police and the military, dominating the streets and infiltrating the armed forces. They sought to subvert neighboring countries by using their intelligence service to encourage support for their regime among, for example, the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia.

German society was by no means monolithic in its support of the Nazis, particularly at first. Certain groups of clerics and segments of the Prussian officer corps were opposed to Nazi rule; it was from these latter circles that the nearly successful plot to assassinate Hitler came in the early 1940s. Intellectuals, student groups such as the White Rose, and much of organized labor also opposed the Nazis for some time. Continue reading »

 Older Entries