Iran Warns Trump to Obey Nuclear Deal While Breaking Deal Themselves

 

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, fired the initial salvo at Trump insisting, “We are not much concerned about the statements made by Trump’s advisers. The US president-elect Donald Trump cannot neglect the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and it has to abide by.” This has been further backed by senior officials in Tehran who have dismissed the recent election of Donald Trump and warned his incoming administration against taking a firmer stance against the Islamic Republic’s continued military buildup. All of this bluster was thrown to cloud the air and muddy the waters in an attempt to draw the President Elect into a battle of words while they make deals with the Russians and seek deals with China in breach of the agreement themselves. Of course Iran has countered that all of their weapons systems purchases have been for a defensive force. In the meantime Iran is seeking to purchase T-90 series tanks, computer guided artillery systems and the most advanced modern fighter aircraft from Moscow and are looking to Moscow and Beijing to keep Iran armed with the most advanced weapons systems for the foreseeable future. The immediate talks with Russia are for an arms deal costing in the neighborhood of ten billion, with a ‘B’, dollars. This all comes on the heels of acknowledgement by Obama Administration sources of payment of additional tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars which the media was assured were not to be used for terror operations or weapons purchases. Apparently these purchases must be being paid for with billions of dollars other than the billions just admitted to having been sent and from the billions of dollars which accompanied the main nuclear deal or the billions of dollars from the cancelled arms deal from the Carter Administration where President Obama condoned and approved the payment of those funds from the Shah’s times plus all the interest and penalties decided as mitigation by some third party, we believe it must have been the United Nations. There have been so many separate and disparate payments to Iran in the past year that it is difficult keeping up a running tally but we figure the amount has to be approaching if not passing one trillion dollars. All that matters is that the United States is fully funding the arming of Iran making them the big bad bully of the Middle East and potentially beyond.

 

Security Council Resolution 2231 restricts Iran to purchasing solely defensive weapons; specifically it bans the sale of “battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, and warships amongst other weapons of a similar nature. These purchases being negotiated with Russia might easily be seen as contradicting the restrictions of the United Nations Resolution but then any deal need be voted upon for approval by the Security Council where the United States could potentially use their veto power to theoretically block any such sale. Is it that we are just so untrusting and jaded by all things Iran that should such a deal pass before the Security Council in the final months of the Obama Presidency that Ambassador Powers will be instructed to simply abstain. One would hope that there would be a stoppage of such a sale to Iran but as long as the deal seeks approval before the coming Inauguration Day this January, it will probably be permitted to pass by unopposed and such will not likely draw any rebuke or even reporting by most if not all of the media. All one need do for proof is look at all the front page top of the fold coverage these arms negotiation are receiving from the paper of record, the New York Times, or any of their surrogates found in almost every major city. If you are thinking you must have missed that day, fear not, so did our intrepid reporters for these exalted journals of record. The story if being covered has thus far been buried well inside if reported upon at all. We would not have known, though we have long suspected, unless we had received a report in our e-mails from one of our sources. Of course the reality is that whether or not the Security Council approves such a sale of whether or not the United States uses their veto power, nothing is going to be heeded which comes between Russia and the cash for their bare treasury or the Iranians and their desired military equipment. We cannot even expect the delay such as was the result of opposition to the sale of the S-300 Series Anti-Aircraft Batteries replete with a stock of missiles beyond those needed to arm the system so Iran has a reserve and fully capable deployment of radar vehicles which lie at the heart of the system. The current deal claims a four year wait for delivery but one can assume the armor and artillery will be transported as soon as a deliverable number has been reached and the deal will easily span the four years with the systems initially arriving with a trickle which after two years would have become a torrent.

 

T-90 Series Main Battle Tank

 

Even should the deal be reached after Inauguration Day, as noted above, there will be no means of preventing these deliveries and purchases being consummated as Iran and Russia share a border as well as the Caspian Sea such that there are various means for delivery. Even President elect Trump would not risk a war with the Russians just to prevent the early delivery of arms which is questionable under Security Council Resolution thus Iran will receive the arms as they become available and Russia will pocket ten billion dollars. The particular fighter jet the Russians are offering is the Sukhoi Su-30SM multi-role fighter jets. According to the Russian TASS news services, Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense and security committee in the Russian upper house of parliament, stated, “These negotiations are being carried out, the road has been paved. The order book, discussed today, [meets] the needs of Tehran and amounts to some ten billion dollars.” He further intimated that these deals would not be a one-time delivery, but a series of transfers over a number of years and these arms deals would respect a U.N. moratorium on Iran obtaining offensive weapons which is in place until October 2020, thus Moscow would need to seek and obtain approval from the U.N. Security Council.

 

Su-30MK Multirole Fighter Aircraft

 

This information about arms deals and the intention by Russia to maintain a level of modern warfare equipment within the Iranian military is unsurprising considering their close cooperation in keeping Bashir al-Assad not only alive but as a definite threat to regain control of much if not all of Syria as it was before the Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter and Syria was turned into a multi-front killing fields where the major brunt of the fighting has impacted the civilians. This has led to a refugee flood into Europe and the rest of the Western World wherever these refugees could gain entry. These people fleeing the violence in Syria ended up representing at best half of the refugees with the remainder arriving from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Eritrea ,,,) and other impoverished and undeveloped nations within MENA (Middle East and North Africa) nations. Many of the refugees are men of fighting ages between fourteen and forty-plus fleeing the fighting in order to avoid being drafted and impressed into serving in any one of the terror armies. There have been reports that amongst the refugees is a secreted army from the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Hezballah, IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and other terror entities for the purpose of organizing terror cells, training them and unleashing Jihad throughout the Western World. These infiltrators are intended to set up theaters of operations and work together and plan simultaneous strikes such that anti-terror forces will be stretched thin and thus more easily out gunned and facing threats beyond their training levels and abilities will allow their providing adequate protection for the public. Their next step will be to step up such attacks that liberties and freedoms will need to be curtailed, or at least this is what the governing bodies will tell the people. Once this starts there is no stopping these nations becoming police states run by strong leaders who will suspend normal government functions with martial law proclaimed and fascist governance arriving throughout the West. This is a large part of the call by President elect Donald Trump to stop Muslim immigration until a proper vetting process can be implemented and put in place. Despite the hysterical reporting by the mainstream media, Trump is not xenophobic nor is he anti-Muslim; he simply desires for the refugees who desire to stream into the United States are who they claim and not terrorist pawns, organizers, trainers and experts at varied skills such as bomb making. The backing of the Assad regime by Iran was problematic but with Russia opposing the terrorists supported thus far by the States there is a need for dialog and compromises to be reached and implemented. Add in Turkey and the desires of Erdogan to decimate the Kurdish people and claiming the northern half of Syria and much of Iraq including Aleppo and Mosul and Turkish troops having already entered and infiltrated both Syrian and Iraqi territories and you have the perfect storm for a Russia-NATO war as Turkey is a NATO member state and the United States is already supporting a side which is fighting against the Assad regime and its remnants of the Syrian military, Iraq, Hezballah and, most of all, Russia. This makes for a potentially dicey situation with multiple fronts which could drag the West against Russia reigniting the tensions of the Cold War.

 

The final interest which need play its hand carefully but still with finesse and some brazen boldness is Israel. The news as far as Israel is concerned has its beneficial components and its components which are to her detriment. So as to end on an upbeat theme, let’s simply get the bad news out of the way. The biggest problem is the fact that Iran has transgressed the nuclear agreement at every turn and is now prepared to buy themselves a completely modern offensive styled military force. The planned aircraft are to include Ilyushin Il-78 four-engine aerial refueling tanker from Russia along with the longer ranged Su-30SM, which already could have flown the roundtrip necessary to launch an attack on Israel and have fifteen minutes loitering time all without refueling. With refueling capability, the range of these multi-use jet fighters has become anywhere on the globe. Add the assistance in their nuclear research received from North Korea in exchange for missile technology, China in order to counterbalance the power of the United States by adding a new threat on the horizon and by Russia for similar reasons as China plus the cash-flow so needed now by the Russian economy and government and there will be no preventing the full rearming of Iran and its hegemonic designs. Israel ends up with a heavily armed foe who is currently engaged in a brutal war right on the border with Israel’s Golan Heights which overlook southwestern Syria including Damascus. Additionally, Iran arms and trains Hezballah and has in the past provided arms for Hamas in Gaza including longer ranged rockets which can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The rockets and missiles provided Hezballah are an even greater threat as there are estimated some one-hundred to hundred-fifty thousand rockets and missiles of varying ranges and payloads. The largest of these carry two thousand pound warheads and are capable of carrying a nuclear payload and can reach any point in Israel including the southern port of Eilat all from well within Lebanon. The next war initiated by Hezballah will not be a limited engagement as the past wars were fought. Because of this additional firepower capable of crippling Israel both financially and in lost souls with the second being the greater blow, Israel will be forced to counter-attack with virtually everything she has in order to prevent a second barrage from correcting for any misses thus all but guaranteeing Israel pay dearly for not mitigating this known situation. What is amazing is that there are more missiles and rockets pointed at Israel than any other nation and the count is not even close. If one were to add to the Hezballah numbers the rockets stashed in Hamas and the numbers which are hidden in the areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority plus Iran and it might be reaching a total near or higher than two hundred thousands. Being the first most targeted nation on earth is not exactly the number one rating Israel strives for, nor is it at all desirous; she is just the result of belligerence and hatreds of the nations in her neighborhood. Add modern Russian equipment for the Iranian military as well as their special IRGC troops whose responsibility is to export the Iranian revolution throughout the world, we will see increased terrorism and even revolutions in Northern Africa. Israel even gets special targeting from the IRGC which includes a special force called the “al-Quds Force” which trains exclusively to attack and take Jerusalem and hold especially the Temple Mount and Kotel denying Jews access to their holy sites in their capital city of Jerusalem. Hezballah, al-Quds Force, IRGC, Syrian open war zone, Hamas, Islamic State, Iran and now being backed, trained and armed by Russia and China all paid for by the United States with a few extra tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and the Obama Presidency still having a little over two months to go, who knows what mischief they can get into and how much of such will be placing Israel in a tighter and tighter spot which will only increase the possibility for war. History has proven that when a nation arms up and modernizes their military and triples their credible force projection, these new guns and jets and missiles and everything else possibly including as many as twenty deliverable nuclear devices and Iran just sitting on all that hardware just does not fill me with confidence in the status-quo. There have been rumors of an Israeli defensive system which will make most of rocketry and missile technology obsolete and also scores excellent kill ratios on even the finest of the latest eccentric missile trajectory technology. Let us pray that they never be required to be used and may the words of Isaiah come true in our day and in a near time and the world reach the point which truly calls the Messiah to Jerusalem where they will set things as Hashem has decided.

 

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Why We Think Trump Had Said NATO is a Problem

 

Donald Trump is doing something of which very few of us will ever understand the difficulty. For people used to blurting out whatever is on their minds, damn the consequences, it becomes even rougher row to hoe. Being of a similar mold and having attempted a run for office you quickly realize that there are some truths you hold close and can never reveal as they are one of many blocks of Kryptonite. The problem arises at some point where your natural nature breaks through and you start to speak one of those truths which must not be spoken and as they start to slip your lips you recover just short of the hidden nugget within which is the real poison to your campaign, so you quickly and abruptly end your sentence as smoothly as possible. The media, the darling little devils, are a devious lot and when they smell an opening, they are like jackals on carrion tearing at the carcass of the bedeviled thought seeking that hidden nugget. When Donald Trump complained about NATO, I got the sense that his problem was not the financial costs as he maintained upon further pressure from many media types. As Trump is closer to a third party candidate where there is no Republican running, he has been pestered and hammered from both ends of the media and his rather combative nature tends to allow for more unforced, though coerced or due to carefully laid traps, misspeaks and half-speaks leading him ever further down the rabbit hole, and wonderland is the worst place for a politician to end up as there it most certainly ends with the Red Queen screaming, “Off with his head,” pointing at them. And who wants to be executed by a horde of red animated playing cards? Such has been the NATO issue and the reason is far more potentially intriguing than the answers we have been giving, not that we disagree with having those nations incapable of providing the troops required to field NATO adequately to its demands having to pay the United States for making up the difference.

 

Thinking of what else Donald Trump might have been told which could include NATO it became obvious when it leaked into our ears, well, before our eyes really, the answer to the riddle and it concerns one of our pet problems with the world, Kurdish independence. The plan is to make Syria a collection of autonomous cantons with the Syrian government responsible solely for those items which cross the borders such as main roadways, money, national defense and others. The first canton mentioned was for the Kurds in the north and northeast of Syria. This was leaked as part of a report by respected Turkish journalist Mahmut Borzarslan who gave information we received in one of our memos from American Center for Democracy concerning a plan being brought forward initially in Syria by the Russians. The initial laying out of the plan while receiving all-out support by the Kurdish representatives was roundly dismissed as pure fancy with no hope of acceptance by the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad be their position less tenable than they may yet realize. What makes this all the more interesting is that the Kurds would be natural allies to the United States as they have proven extremely helpful in Iraq allowing American forces to concentrate on the bigger problems while they basically ruled and kept straight the entire northern third of Iraq and assisted with the pacification of Mosul. Further, the Syrian Kurds, with assistance from their Iraqi cousins, have had the greatest success against the Islamic State defending their own held areas while liberating other areas with some of the toughest fighting coming for control of the city of Kobanê, which they accomplished with some assists in the form of targeting Islamic State positions with bombings, and a remarkably few at that. The Russians will soon point out that if Bashir al-Assad desires to remain among the living and rule over anything he will need to realize two things, he can only hope to rule an Alawite Canton and only that with the second, Russian assistance and if he desires the second he will need to accept the first. This he will understand even if the Russians need ground their planes, silence their artillery and retreat their forces to hold only Latakia and protect their naval instillations there.

 

There is no means on Earth which would make this idea acceptable to President Obama as his new best friend forever and darling of the Muslim Brotherhood since the fall of Egyptian President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government has been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The removal of Morsi and his gang of undesirables proved the Egyptian people more knowledgeable than the United States President and State Department, the latter not that difficult a feat as it takes minimal common sense and does not require literacy, calling on even the military to retake power as they would be a kinder and more beneficent master. The added problem is where Donald Trump and NATO come into the picture. Turkey is a member of NATO due to their geography. They hold the southern front on Russia, formerly the Soviet Union and the reason for NATO, and control the Dardanelles, the waterway and series of straights leading from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and the world and also the Russian access to a warm water access to the Atlantic Ocean (see map below). Being a NATO member, Turkey could claim and likely verify terrorist threats against her by Kurds being aided and secluded by Syrian Kurds making a case for it being an act of war. As attacking Kurdish region of Syria would place Turkish fighter aircraft in space over Russian zones and might even draw Russian assistance to the Kurdish side as the Kurdish actions have aided Russian interests, they could demand military assistance under the NATO Charter. Should the United States enter such a conflict in even the smallest of means; one could bet the Kurds would have no alternative but to request Russian assistance even simply to provide air cover to prevent bombings as the Kurds have no air forces and likely minimal if any air defenses. Remember that Turkey has already downed a Russian fighter jet under somewhat questionable conditions and Russia is not a nation to forget such and jump at an opportunity to repay in kind and then some. This could quickly get out of hand with Russian and NATO, potentially including United States, aircraft in combat against one another. Does any rational person really want to see where such could lead?

 

From the Sevastopol Docks and Shipyards
Across the Black Sea then
Through the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles
to the Mediterranean Sea and thus the Atlantic Ocean

 

For this reason and numerous others, it will be best left until after the United States Presidential Elections and the late January inauguration before any serious negotiations on such a solution can have any hope to progress. This is where Hillary Clinton can claim that Putin would prefer Donald Trump as both she and dear Vlad know theirs would be a tumultuous relationship at best and adversarial at the very least. If there is to be any cooperation between the United States and Russia on Syria and a host of other areas, then Donald Trump need be the next United States President. Hillary Clinton has already made it clear that her foremost foreign policy objective will be to humble and force Putin to bow before her will from the very first moments of her reign. This is also one of the main unspoken fears, dare we say horrors, many foreign policy theorists and experts foresee. The guaranteed irritant on so many trouble spots and potential disasters would result from a continuation of an American shirking of international responsibilities. Should America continue leading from ever further behind soon to never even arrive, added to a focus on pressing only Russia and President Putin frustrating him while continuing to arm “rebels” in Syria, could lead to an ever greater set of conflicts. Add the blindness to Islamic pressures and subversions would bring much of the ensuing violence down initially upon Europe and soon thereafter on the United States as well. As learned, or not, from both world wars, the United States sitting on the sidelines refusing to lead the powers of democratic governance, freedom and liberty against the powers of darkness and human bondage; be it physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise; only prolongs the insufferable carnage and adds, nay, multiplies the numbers of combatants and innocent civilians slaughtered and can even place the final outcome in doubt as was the reality in World War II where had the Nazis broken through Stalingrad and connected to the Arabian oil fields the outcome may have been very different. Of course should Donald Trump become complacent concerning the possible designs Vladimir Putin may be considering for Eastern Europe and many of the former Warsaw Pact nations, that too could lead in a very threatening and dangerous direction. Oh the trials and tribulations of trying to run the world with so many other actors filling the stage. The solution in Syria will never resurrect the visions of Bashir al-Assad and he may become the sole obstruction to an agreement all the other groups agree with once the Islamic State has been vanquished, an inevitability no matter who wins the election. Such a position would make Assad a problem for Russia, and even worse, for Putin which would make Assad no longer desirable. That would be a very nasty place to be standing surrounded by Russian military and special agents and further, Bashir al-Assad is not unreplaceable with a new and compliant Alawite leader and there are likely quite a few just waiting for such an opportunity. Assad should remember the Arab Code, “Me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Potentially Imminent Syria Sinkhole

 

First please allow a small personal note. I had a senior moment two weeks ago today and am now typing left-handed as the right hand resembles a plaster club and is even less usable than normal. Surgery was performed on the one finger I was unable to set; so physicians, surgeon types, were employed. Now back to our regularly scheduled editorials and other stories.

 

There is way too much talk about Syria and what the Western nations, particularly Europe and more-so the United States must do to address the problems being exasperated by the horrific five years of the ongoing warfare. Much of the talk centers around seven major topics: refugees, no-fly-zone, safe-zone, containing Russian expansionism, ending the rule of Bashir al-Assad, strengthening the Iraqi government’s hold on central Iraq, and establishing America’s position, standing and unrivaled hegemonic superiority across MENA (Middle East and North Africa). On concluding the discussion of the pitfalls and awaiting disasters surrounding each and every one of these subjects, we will carry them to their inevitable conclusion if any of these paths are followed and then pinpoint exactly where things went off the tracks leading to each of these now end alternatives, disastrous alternatives. Let us simply start with some of the best of news for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the initial starting point for much of these situations were initiated during the President George W. Bush Administering of the area and even stretch back to principally French, British, Italian as well as the rest of the Allied Powers from World War I and particularly Sykes-Picot Agreement and the underhanded meddling for fifty years on average after a thousand years and more of Arab and Islamic rule. Let us look at what all this has wrought.

 

The Sykes-Picot Agreement is the underlying deceit which set the Middle East and eventually North Africa into a situation where the untenable borders set levels of internal intra-tribal rivalries vying for supremacy once the borders were released as independent nations. There are two dirty little secrets as to why to this day the nations which constitute MENA are a cauldron of explosives always roiling and why Europe is blamed. Europe gets the blame as they were the ones left holding a region where borders were traditionally meaningless and each tribe ruled by the oasis and wells they controlled. For over a thousand years either an Arab, Kurd, Alawite, Tripolitanian, Cyrenaican, Fezzan, Wahhabi, Houthis or a dozen others and this is indicative of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and throughout MENA and beyond (see map below). There are multiple clans, tribal and even nation of origin divisions throughout the “Palestinian” populations in Hamas controlled Gaza, Fatah controlled areas of Judea and Samaria and within the “refugee” population (a fair number of which are now also Syrian refugees or Islamist rebels in various groups including al-Nusra and Islamic State presumably fighting against one another). The warring tribes rapidly led to one tribe being the dominant leader often through favor and arming by the departing Europeans or due to historic realities from the Ottoman Era or the Caliphate and even back to the Byzantine and even the Cyrenaic Greeks. These tribes ruled each country as drawn out by the Sykes-Picot Agreement often requiring an iron fist style dictatorship. The nations surviving the best, a relative term, would by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, the Gulf Oil Sheikdoms and Israel. The world of MENA is very much in flux and it will take quite some time and a great potential for violence beginning within and having a strong predisposition to drag much of the world into the coming maelstrom if the world leaders continue on their current course.

 

Sample of Potential Tribal Influences which
Could Decimate the Borders of Saudi Arabia and
Has Split the Borders of Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya

 

Let us look now at the pressing seven problems starting with the refugees now streaming into the West from all across the MENA nations and beyond into the Horn of Africa and Central Africa. Other than Jordan and Turkey there are no other Arab States taking in refugees and Jordan is keeping them in camps with the intent of their returning to whatever remains of Syria if and when the war ends. Turkey is either placing their refugees in camps, largely women and children, or passing the men mostly with sufficient women and children, around fifteen percent on a good day, for Western media to have their touching pictures to pluck heartstrings. The reality is the flow of selected refugees is an infiltration and when their population breaks ten percent they become bold and past twenty percent they turn belligerent and start demands backed by violence to force their religious edicts and demands on the rest of what has now become a victim population. Once the Islamists pass thirty to forty percent the war begins and continues until the Sword of Islam has submitted the population or the prey of Islam grew in strength and found their reason to stiffen their backbones and stand breaking the Sword of Islam. There will be no middle ground as Islam, in its current Islamist form, allows no middle ground. Either all will be Islam or few to none can be Islam. That is why Europe, the United States and the rest of the world taking in Muslim refugees need demand changes before allowing another refugee to enter. First, the numbers of women, children and the elderly must outnumber the numbers of fighting age men. Second, the refugees will be required to pass a rigorous vetting process which validates their standing past, present and, with hope, future. Third, and possibly most important, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and other stable Islamic nations must collectively take in twice the numbers of refugees than the rest of the world. Forth, the refugees must take an assimilation program and allow them to be placed outside of the Muslim concentrations taking work and show true assimilation efforts or be returned from whence they originated. These refugees have long not been from Syria as they are from failed nations lacking order or a working economy as well as infiltrators, organizers and training personnel from various Islamist organizations and terrorist forces including but not limited to the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hezballah, IRGC (Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; Persian: سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), Hamas, al-Nusra Front (which left al-Qaeda according to the United States State Department and has been cleared to receive weaponry, training and other assistance –cash- and is a favorite of the Clintons) and numerous less or even unknown terror groups. The entire refugee system and assimilation of Muslims needs to aid them in learning, understanding, experiencing, appreciating freedom and finding the higher self-worth which comes from an independent life which once existed within Islam in their Golden Age. This could be the last hope of kindling the spark of freedom and liberty of the soul deep within Islam and perhaps finding a path to mutual acceptance instead of perpetual conflict.

 

The remaining six problems have no solution other than a hope and a prayer. They are all the result of grievous errors in judgement, poor planning, a foreign policy based in defeat, the removal of American presence and a total and singular White House policy to destroy the American influence and assistance in building a world based on mutual respect, liberty, freedom and basic human rights and instead encouraging tribalism and fracture of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and all other Western influences which were seen as an unwanted and negative influence over what was believed to have been the peaceful influences Islam had initiated during the years of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate before that. Someone making these decisions apparently must have missed the five hundred years of Arab and Islamist conquest and the intertribal violence which necessitated numerous severe crackdowns on such problems over the reported thousand years of peaceful existence. The problem was where it oft arises with Western nations who become tired of winning demanding their forces be brought home leaving a vulnerable and usually untenable situation so unstable that if things actually do not deteriorate immediately, then some unfriendly force has likely replaced the Western presence. This time the United States got some of both, Iraq became Iran West and Syria collapsed into a war with more fronts than a strip mall.

 

The premature withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq has had the actual desired effect permitting Iran to establish their presence in southern Iraq and the opportunity to expand into central Iraq permitting Iran to soon establish a second front in support of their interests in Syria, namely Bashir al-Assad. Talking about Syria and Bashir al-Assad; the United States has lately been claiming that their interest is in working out a change of power in Syria but whining that the Russians interests are interfering with any progress. Has anyone ever wondered and remembered how and why Vladimir Putin got his oversized Russian foot in the door. If our collective memories are still firing on all cylinders, then Vlad the Invader (as opposed to Vlad the Impaler as pictured in their element) was all but invited into Syria when President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to issue the “Red Line in the Sand which Bashir al-Assad would pay dearly from United States decisive and determined military action should chemical weapons be used back in 2012. That broad and definitive line got thinner and thinner and faded and faded turning pinker and pinker until it completely faded. Then came Vladimir Putin to the rescue and he has remained guarding Bashir al-Assad and his Mediterranean Sea military ports. Then there was Libya.

 

Vlad the Invader vs Vlad the Impaler

 

Libya was the culminating point where the Arab spring was going to be revitalized. Instead there was another power vacuum created and the nation fell back into its tribal factions while the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood backed terror organizations set up shop. One such group was in Benghazi where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her inner circle made the deal of a lifetime procuring Stinger Missiles for al-Nusra or who knows. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith were to arrange the transfer. The deal went sour resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods all were murdered. There were reports that Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods held their position for eight hours before being subdued in a swarm of mortar fire. For reasons never made overly clear, there were no military or other assets available to ride over the hill and save the good guys. This is how we all got to this point and we are supposed to forget the past eight years of foreign intrigue and foreign affairs which have lighted so many fuses any one of which could be the initiator of the war of Gog and Magog while others lead directly to World War, which one are we supposed to be on, three, four, five or twelve? Those are the easy items to trace but then one must figure on a nuclear armed North Korea with a few more nuclear weapons than the CIA wants to admit, say maybe a cool fifty or hundred more with more than half either thermonuclear weapons or bombs made using the Soviet Union’s plans for their super EMP device. Additionally there is the little problem of Iran also building their own nuclear arsenal probably using the identical weapons plans they received from the North Koreans in exchange for advanced rocketry designs and testing of the North Korean ICBM designs. Well, we really need to continue with this foreign policy direction just to see if aliens are going to drop from the sky and save Earth. The coming ride is going to be interesting; as in the Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, it will be interesting.

 

Beyond the Cusp