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

 

Islamic State, the Balance of Power, and the Imbalance of Refugees

 

Journalist, Jurgen Todenhofer, age 75, claims to have managed to be embedded within Islamic State in his newly released book “Inside IS – Ten Days in the Islamic State” and warns that the terror group, self-proclaimed as the new Caliphate and ruler of lands larger than the United Kingdom with borders across central Iraq and southern Syria is planning the most horrific religious cleansing in world history. The one thing which must be made clear is planning or even believing is a far cry from actually doing. As a child I dreamt about many unattainable goals including being the next King of Siam after watching Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in the King and I (imagine my upset when I realized that Siam was no longer a country and had become Thailand). The attack Mr. Todenhofer writes about, as disclosed in an excerpt released from his book, entails “the terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS.” This would be accomplished by Islamic State acquiring numerous nuclear weapons in order to unleash a “nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history.”

 

Speaking to his trepidations before spending time within the Islamic State Mr. Todenhofer relates that, “Of course I’d seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left.” Further comments told of how he had held intense negotiations with “the leadership of the Caliphate, via Skype, over several months, hammering out the security details.” Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John of beheading fame) oversaw Mr. Todenhofer on his visit and likely acted as translator and facilitator as well. The most unnerving part of the article told that this self-proclaimed war correspondent’s claims that the Islamic State “are supported by an almost ecstatic enthusiasm the like of which I’ve never encountered before in a war zone. Every day hundreds of willing fighters from all over the world come.” He went further stating, “They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life. I don’t see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic.”

 

If Mr. Todenhofer’s assessment that “Only Arabs can stop IS” is accurate then the world is in much worse shape than I had realized or even in my worst nightmares ever imagined. My bet is that Mr. Todenhofer is quite probably not a veteran of any armed services and has drastically underestimated the power and force a well-trained Marine or Army infantry company can apply on a battlefield and the horrific amounts of force they can project when backed by modern artillery, air support using helicopter gunships, A-10 Warthogs (I am likely dating myself but these are some ferocious and intimidating close air support and an infantryman’s most welcome sight against armor, even the stolen armor that IS currently uses) and other support features too numerous to name. Another contributing force multiplier is intelligence and battlefield awareness. Being able to see the entire battlefield using drones, satellites or even overflight with high altitude spy planes and knowing where the enemy is and in what numbers and with what resources is invaluable. Taking nothing away from Mr. Todenhofer assessments, a modern military attacking in force would dismantle the bulk of the Islamic State forces within six weeks if it even took that long and once that had been accomplished, the rest would disintegrate right along with their presentation of invulnerability.

 

What is more worrisome is the idea which appears to have infected much of the Islamic world that they have been chosen by Allah to rule over the world and to make all follow Islam or be subjugated as a second class human being or face the wrath of the Islamic sword, the beheading thing which Islamic State has shown such a great propensity to utilize as a weapon of fear. Equally depressing is the predisposition in the Western world that such an idea as world conquest had passed permanently into history and is no longer viewed as a viable goal. Where that is quite a valid assessment of the Western mindset, that is nowhere near universal truth and there are still many sources of thoughts for world conquest. We have seen numerous such thoughts ever since World War II starting with the Soviet Communists and followed by the Chinese Communists and also from Saddam Hussein, the Saudi Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Iranian Mullahs, Hezballah and now Islamic State and I am certain there are others. The one weakness the West suffers is their inability to view the world through the eyes of other peoples, places, religions, political ideologies, nationalities or any filter other than their own. Much of the Western world would have difficulty even seeing things through other Western national viewpoints. It is just such a weakness which makes the West vulnerable as they rule out any ability to see the potential ramifications of many of the threats they currently or may in the future face. We saw just such weakness with understanding what Hitler was planning and that he also believed he was destined to have his Reich rule the world and would have succeeded if not for some very fortuitous developments.

 

More precisely it will be necessary for Western powers, potentially partnering with such rivals as Russia and China, to develop the means and implementation of a monitoring of nuclear materials and especially those which can be utilized or have already been used to produce nuclear weapons, both atomic and thermonuclear weapons. There must be a network of detectors, be they space based or ground based, that will alert all parties involved whenever any such materials or weapons are moved from any point to another locations for any number of reasons. First and foremost it would reveal any potential intention to use such weapons either as a threat, or even worse, a first strike weapon. Such a system if deployed universally as a part of an international treaty similar or as an attachment to the NPT (Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty) where all nuclear armed states would be subjected to such monitoring equipment and those nations wishing to avail themselves of the protection of advanced warning of the movement of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials. Such would minimize the ability for rogue entities such as the Islamic State to achieve nuclear terrorism as they would be incapable of acquiring such weapons without their movement being detected. Further, any nations not a signatory to such a treaty would become suspect and with sufficient peer pressure be coerced into signing this treaty. It should be noted that this treaty would not be used as a method for spying and revealing the numbers or types of nuclear weapons any particular nation may possess and would only relate when such materials were moved without first informing the other signatories of such intents. Such would also be useful in tracking nuclear waste from power plants and the safety of any nuclear power fuel shipments thus making sure that such shipments were making their way as per their intended path for delivery.

 

In the meantime it would be worth noting the potential for the Islamic State to make good on their threats to use nuclear weapons or at the very least dirty bombs to lay waste to as many lives as they would have the capability must not be underestimated. The potential for the Islamic State to acquire the necessary weapons and managing to smuggle them into place must not be dismissed as impossible without detection as has been proven with every terror attack since the world received the massive and tragic wake-up call on 9/11 and the felling of the World Trade Center towers and striking the Pentagon and only by the brave actions of the passengers was a fourth far more serious calamity avoided as they sacrificed themselves rather than be used as a terror weapon. How many attacks, not just the main assaults such as London, Madrid, Mumbai or others but even the small “lone wolf” terror acts such as the much overlooked Trolley Square attacks in Utah reported in our article >a href=http://wp.me/pIou8-Z target=blank>Terror Attack at Trolley Square Mall, Utah. We could needlessly list other such attacks as well as the better known but it is already obvious that when it comes to preventing terror attacks the authorities have not been a full hundred percent successful. I would not dare to venture that they have not very probably done an herculean job of catching and preventing far more terror attacks than we will ever know about as such success is best guarded by keeping the unknowing, unknowing. Such efforts become all the more difficult when it becomes known how they attain their information thus we are not told when a terror attack was thwarted, or at least hopefully not every time as I am hopeful that there have been far more prevented than the paltry numbers we have been privileged to.

 

The real problem facing the Western world as its primary challenge and the rest of the world is simply due to the suffering and loss of life the current resurgence of Jihadi terror and militant actions of which the Islamic State and is the latest broad-frontal-threat the world is facing. The most tragic deaths and largest numbers slain by the Islamic State have been those of other Muslims and the minority who live in the immediate areas which have come under the Islamic States’ terror war victories. Mosul lost the entirety of their Christian population as they either fled or died within days of that city of over one and a half million people where the Christian population fled if fortunate and were otherwise converted or murdered or both while from surrounding areas of Mosul the Yazidis and Shabaks are kidnapped, converted, murdered or forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs while their cultural and holy sites faced destruction. Even were Islamic State to be utterly defeated and their will broke and forces killed or scattered, the ideas of Islamic supremacy and reforming the Caliphate to regain the glories of the seventh through fifteenth centuries would continue and be utilized by the next al-Baghdadi or Osama bin Laden in gathering a following and by winning a few high profile battles claiming to be the real deliverer to bring Islam back to the dominance it once knew would be in the making and potentially the next great threat. We need remember that al-Qaeda was presumably destroyed, the Taliban routed yet both have made comebacks though they are currently outshone by Islamic State and before al-Qaeda there was Hezballah, Hamas, the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the progenitor of Hamas, al-Qaeda, PLO and others, and before any of these were the Ottoman Empire and the original Caliphate which burst out from the Arabian Peninsula and spread as far as western France at one end of Europe and eventually to the outskirts of Venice in the east leaving Europe all but overrun.

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and threaten Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

 

The same driving force behind that expansion of Islam is being reawakened today and the only thing that lies between a similar expansion today is the military power of the West, in particular the United States, though one would be hard pressed to prove that at this juncture. As far as what will it take for the United States to use its forces to put an end to the Islamic designs on world conflict, which is not something which can be brought to an end by sheer force of arms; force of arms can only push it back into remission. The world has been experiencing one extremely long hudna, what is by strict definition a ceasefire of ten years length during which the Islamic forces regroup, train and achieve military superiority and as soon as the forces of Islam believe they have sufficient means to defeat their enemy they may break the ceasefire and attack without warning of any kind. Needless to point out that the other side is not afforded such advantageous terms and must abide by the ceasefire even after the ten years has passed as they have been told that this was a treaty in that when the power opposing Islam claimed they were signing a treaty the Islamic leaders are obliged to inform them that they call it a hudna. The opposition replies, treaty, hudna, what’s the difference and the Islamic leaders reply, think as you will or some such non-comment. Such deceit is called Taqiyya as defined in the graphic below. This prolonged hudna was entered into by the Ottoman Empire after their defeat during World War I. There have been treaties, or so treated by the signatories, with Islamic forces since then with the treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan respectively being the most obvious. The fragility of these treaties became all the more evident during the one year in which the Muslim Brotherhood through President Morsi ruled Egypt and there were almost daily calls for them to end the peace with Israel and to reopen warfare and finally and once more trounce Israel in a race back across the Suez Canal, assuming the results mirrored their previous encounters. President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood advisors did not perceive any advantage and the peace held solely due to the uncertainty of doubt of their ability to defeat Israel, nothing more.

 

Taqiyya defined in plain and simple easy to understand terms

 

 

There is yet another front where the religious war of Islam against everybody else is being played out and that is the infiltration and undermining of European governance and the slow Islamization of large neighborhoods in many of the European capitals and major cities where the Muslim areas are run under some form of Sharia and the police of the city or nation dare not tread. Even fire and ambulance service is often problematic at best with the fire department being either unable to respond to fires started during rioting or needing armed escort to extinguish the fires. Even under normal conditions there are doubts as to the safety of firefighters should they response to an alarm in one of these areas. Even people riding busses, trolleys or subways which pass through these neighborhoods often find themselves molested or otherwise terrorized. Women are particularly vulnerable to harassment and sexual intimidations and molestations or worse depending on the time of day or night. The current refugee situation and the floods of refugees from the east originating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and other areas of the Middle East plus the inundation of the beaches along the Mediterranean from origins such as Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Egypt, Cameroon, Morocco and other North African nations threaten to overrun Europe. These Muslim refugees very easily could produce a long term problem far more dangerous than the financial burden these refugees, many unskilled, not fluent in any European languages and traumatized by the situations which sent them fleeing seeking a better chance at life. If not already radicalized, the next generation or the one after could be easy targets for radicalization being sold the ideas that the Europeans are racist and have stolen their future and taken from their communities all the wealth and left them without hope or any possible way out other than to take back that which has been denied them. Once any riots start they will begin a cycle where the charges become self-fulfilling as security forces attempt to restore order which will simply be met with cries demanding that the police be withdrawn as they are simply reinforcing the message and oppressing the Muslims, especially the out of work youths and young adults. As many will have attended madrassa instead of public schools, they will have an excellent memorization of the Quran and will be capable of siting the Hadiths as well as the Five Pillars of Islam (see below chart).

 

 

 

With an idea coming to the fore and gaining adherents partially due to the flow of information proving to many that the world has a very slanted wealth curve and except for a small percentage, that wealth curve has been unfavorable to the Islamic world. Further, it has also been proven that grievance mongering and terrorism pay and pay very well. Further, as a leader of terror and being the mouthpiece extolling the masses about their having been cheated out of their share of the wealth which was gained often at the cost of the natural resources of the Muslim world, one never need actually do anything about the inequality beyond assuring their own place at the receiving end of the cash flow. Further, should one choose their targets selectively, they can rail against the inequality without any real fear of retribution; something which would come violently and swiftly should they attack the Western world instead of pointing the finger at those wealthy oil sheiks or the corrupt leaders who have stolen from the poor far more than the average Westerner despite the Western citizens having vastly more wealth. Additionally, there is money to be made trafficking humans to the “promised lands where the streets are paved with gold.” These refugees are not offered a home in any of the wealthy Arab states who have far greater wealth and space to absorb them but that might cost the leaders a trip to Monte Carlo and that would be a travesty greater than the plight of their brothers and sisters. The Europeans should demand that at the very least two-thirds of these refugees be accepted and cared for by their wealthy cousins in the oil rich regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Instead the leaders of the Islamic and Arab worlds are viewing this situation as their best hope for conquering Europe without firing a shot or having to spend any of their own monies. All they need do is point the refugees northwestward and then wait for the demographic change which will overtake Europe within three or four generations. Then the Islamic world will look more like the map below.

 

 

 

The choice facing European leaders at this juncture is whether they will leave a legacy that will bring an end to Christian Europe and all the advances of the Enlightenment or to find an alternative to permanently settling the refugees now streaming into Europe by any and all means at their disposal. What alternative you ask? One might be to set up camps at the entry points and through the European Union use funds to pay for the camps with the understanding that the refugees housed in these camps will be returned to their homelands as soon as conditions there improve. This means for some that end would be immediate as there is no war zone in Pakistan, Afghanistan or much of North Africa outside of Libya and in the Middle East the same applies except for Iraq and Syria. Another step the Europeans might want to look at is assisting in ending the Syrian civil war and end the bloodshed while also combating the Islamic State otherwise the fighting is not going to end. None of these options are pretty nor are any of them desirable. What the Europeans are facing is an unenviable choice of which evil is the least damaging and which side should face the damage. Asking for Europe to absorb the hundreds of thousands if not millions of refugees which could be aimed at them is asking for Europe to commit suicide. It is not financially responsible for the Europeans to attempt to care for, house, feed, educate and provide health care for any of these refugees which neither are not exactly their problem nor is the problem one caused by Europe for the most part. Europe has sufficient problems with their own poor and wretched underclasses which have stretched the majority of European national budgets near the breaking point. Adding even more on top would be more than most European nations could absorb, let alone pay for. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the eastern European nations are facing slow growth or no growth economic indicators and are at risk of defaulting if they have not already done so. The only nations currently having healthy, relatively healthy, economic outlooks are Britain, France and Germany, not necessarily in that order. Even the best of these three could easily be subsumed economically and dragged into the same quagmire facing Greece as an example. None of the European nations can absorb over a million unemployed and destitute refugees and expecting them to do so is next to lunacy, which is exactly why that is exactly what is going to happen. The real problem is what will become of such a situation where refugees take funds beyond their contribution to repay in the next half millennia the Europeans will themselves seek a solution in traditional European fashion and that will not be a pretty sight. Such may lead to the next great conflagrations as it spills over into the Middle East and perhaps beyond. This will not end well no matter how it initially shakes out and gets past the lockout and closed borders currently facing the refugees.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama May Have His Deal but Who Will Inherit His War

 

Thanks to the economic and other sanctions which have hobbled the Iranian economy to the point, about eighteen months ago, it resembled a dying man crawling on his belly in tattered pants and the shreds of his shirt, shoes scuffed to the point that their original color was indistinguishable and two vultures already discussing which would get which of the choicest remains, had Iran at the brink of civil revolt. That was when President Obama held back door negotiations where he released some of the most effective of the sanctions which brought the distant oasis to the parched lips of the Iranian economy saving them to make the better deal. It is that deal President Obama, the hero of the Iranians government, is claiming is the best deal and the only option outside of war. But is this claim of peace in our time really just peace for a while in our time? The comparisons between the Munich Accords of 1938 and now President Obama is desperately seeking the same adulation for this close relative to another situation of a nation spreading its tentacles and preparing for war and barely even concealing their arming and their aspirations which have been laid out in writing. The desires for world conquest and the elimination of the Jewish People was laid out step for step by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf and the Iranian Shiites (and also the Sunnis just to be fair and even; after all we would not want to take sides now, would we?) in the Quran and the Hadiths where the world is divided between ‘Dar al-Islam’ (Arabic: دار الإسلام‎) which translates to House of Islam and ‘Dar al-Harb’ (Arabic: دار الحرب) which translates to House of War. The followers of Islam are instructed to continue their struggle to spread their religion until it becomes the only religion practiced anywhere in the world. There are many Muslims residing in Western nations who refute any charges that Islam is to be spread ‘by the sword’ should more passive means prove unproductive and there remain some who adamantly refuse to accept Islam which is simply intolerable.

 

Then there is the Islamic State which has denuded entire cities and swaths of lands in which they have taken control of those who practiced any religion other than not only Islam but their very narrowly defined version of Sunni Islam. The marauders of the Islamic State may have been the Junior Varsity in the eyes of United States President Obama but are anything but the Junior Varsity when it comes to torture and coming up with ever more imaginative ways to ever more slowly murder their victims making sure that they suffered the most mental anguish, even if not the maximum pain, as they progressed from beheadings to burning alive to slowly being lowered in a steel cage into water to drown victims and other horrors and then posted their murderous ways using them as some form of sick recruiting tool. What is even more disturbing are the numbers of those who have rushed from across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the Western World to join the Islamic State. The only productive news concerning Iran is they oppose the Islamic State and desire to eliminate this horror from the world. But then one must ask themselves, is replacing the Islamic State horrors with Iranian, Syrian and Hezballah horrors really a step in the right direction or simply replacing one murderous and fearsome army turned government with another murderous government using its army.

 

These are the leaders of a nation of approximately seventy-eight-million-five-hundred-thousand largely Shia Muslims of which the vast majority are what are referred to as “Twelvers” with the remainder of the population being also largely Muslims following Sunni Islam. The remaining under one-percent of Iranians follows the following religions in order from largest to least; Bahá’í, Gnostic, Christian, Yarsanism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and least but with a very nice Synagogue, the Yusef Abad synagogue in Tehran pictured below, Judaism. Interestingly, there are more Jews of Iranian heritage residing in the United States than remain in Iran which according to the 2011 Iranian census stated this threatened populations of Jews at eight-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-six souls the majority spread between merely ten families, six of them related by marriage. There are those who inflate the numbers of Jews remaining in Iran to over one-hundred-thousand largely in an attempt to portray Iran as an accepting nation granting equal rights to non-Muslims despite the fact that the minorities walk quietly and taking care to be aware of their surroundings at all times and making sure to keep their heads bowed and their gaze fixates on the ground before them and to never under any circumstance stare any Shiite Muslim in the eyes and to always speak in hushed tones speaking in slow and respectful manners and subservient language never to sound challenging or to ever, ever appear as an equal lest one be reported to the police for such an affront and pay the price for challenging their superiors. There is a very good and solid description of life in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution for Jews and other minorities given by Karmel Melamed, an award-winning, internationally published journalist and attorney based in Southern California who writes the Iranian American Jews blog. This article titled ”The Iranian-Jewish Tragedy in Iran” which gives the chilling view which the Western World needs to understand before they permit the fascist, supremacist dictatorial leadership to once again, in the brief history from 1900 to the present, to allow a cancer which believes they have a right to destroy the world in order to save the world. The history of Iran in that same time period just might give people some pause to realize the direction Iran has taken since 1900 and the path is chilling.

 

 

Yusef Abad Synagogue (Persian: Kenise e Yusef Ábád کنیسه یوسف آباد‎, Hebrew: בית הכנסת יוסף-אבד‎) in Tehran as originally appeared during the 1950s before its restoration. The person who had just completed returning a Torah to the ark will stand as a reference to the size of the main hall. The main hall of the Synagogue was built and completed in the early 1950s. She was a very ornate and majestic house of worship which will soon fall silent after enjoying hearing prayers recited for almost seventy years.

 

 

Yusef Abad Synagogue (Persian: Kenise e Yusef Ábád کنیسه یوسف آباد‎, Hebrew: בית הכנסת יוסף-אבד‎) in Tehran as it appeared after its restoration work. It was with the help of local community leaders headed by Avraham Yusian, the construction of the new facade was completed in October 1965. She was a very ornate and majestic house of worship which will soon fall silent after enjoying hearing prayers recited for almost seventy years. The brightened tiles and golden hue will unfortunately turn a pale shadow of itself as there will be no prayers to give her the joys she had exalted in over her years.

 

 

Iran did not exist in the year 1900 as all the way back then it had a name that most will recognize and for the Jews had a varied history where it went from savior to creeping to the edge of committing genocide against the Jewish People except for the bravery of one Jewess, Queen Esther. All the way back as recently as March 20, 1935 the nation was known as Persia. This name of Persia could be traced back to Cyrus the Great, the leader of Persia who conquered Babylonia and granted the Jews the right to return to their homelands and rebuild their holy Temple which many Jews chose to do while some of their brethren remained in Persia. Years later when Persia was ruled by King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) the Grand Vizier, Haman the Agagite persuaded King Ahasuerus that the Jews were plotting against his rule and needed to be dealt with. This seems to be a repeating theme and almost always leads to someone coming up with the idea that murdering the Jews will make their nation greater, and the order was issued. The problem was that after the King created a vacancy after executing his wife for refusing his orders and generally insulting his authority for which he held a beauty contest, hopefully a contest which took into consideration more than beauty as that had worked so well with Vashti. Well, he chose Esther who the night before the order was to be carried out bravely entered the King’s court without having been invited, punishable by death, begged the King’s attention and broke the news that if his Grand Vizier Haman’s order was to be carried out they could start with her as she was also a Jew. Haman and his sons were executed on the very gallows they would have murdered the Jews of Persia. Haman, Hamas, I wonder, could there be a connection?

 

On March 21, 1935 Reza Shah Pahlavi officially renamed Persia changing the name to Iran. There are two very different theories for the change. One refers to numerous ancient references varying from the Sassanid, the Zoroastrianism, the Romans and other historical references mostly to deal with language. A more modern take takes the date and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and the theory of a master race, the Aryans, or the Persian word for the racial designation, Iran. The actual reason is likely was only honestly known to Reza Shah Pahlavi and he will not be giving us any hints. Another item while we are comparing modern day Iran and the Aryans from World War II as a potential enemy; the only war which Iran had fought directly was, to their credit, something which will seldom be found in these editorials in any source, was as a result of Iraqi initiated assaults as Saddam Hussein attempted to grab the Iranian oil fields. That war lasted near to a decade where some of the most horrific and destructive tactics were utilized by both sides. Despite the Iraqi military’s reputation as one of the largest and best trained and equipped in the Middle East outside Israel, Iran held them at bay and often made gains but eventually the war resembled a World War I trench warfare than world war highly mobile and technical war. The most remarked attack in this horrific war came when the Iranians needed to clear minefields and needed to do so with some degree of speed so a fairly brutish and head-on system was necessitated. The Iranians initially attempted to stampede mules and donkeys across the minefields but once the first animal struck a mine the others would scatter and run back the direction they had come from. This led to one of the most disturbing tactics where children were volunteered and upon their death their parents were financially compensated for their patriotic donation to the war efforts. The children were given plastic keys which they were told would unlock the door to heaven for them. In response to the condition of the returned remains led to the wrapping of the children in wet blankets so as to retain their parts when they hit a mine. Such fanaticism and willingness to sacrifice for the religious leadership was horrific and also showed a commitment almost beyond rational belief and which shows the length the Iranians might resort to against an enemy.

 

The question remains as to whether President Obama is saving the world from a war with Iran with his deal or allowing Iran to build up their military and potentially arm themselves with an arsenal of nuclear weapons, potentially thermonuclear warheads and the ICBMs with which to deliver them anywhere on the globe. They may even develop ICBM missiles capable of irregular flight characteristics making anti-missile systems near useless in preventing their striking their targets. Additionally, the Iranians could readily develop cruise missiles and master the ability to launch them from freighter container ships as they have done with some of their fifteen-hundred to two-thousand mile largely unguided rockets, or possibly a poorly guided missile. Of course, if the rocket has a nuclear warhead, exactly how accurate does one need to be? I mean, as long as you strike within a few miles from the intended region and, just as with hand grenades and horseshoes, close counts. What is most worrying is how the situation came to this juncture with the sanctions being weakened by President Obama allowing Iran to continue to limp along while the President and the State Department Team, which included a number of the same people who were responsible for the agreement with North Korea which led directly to their becoming nuclear armed nation, and Secretary of State Kerry appeared to trip over each other seeing who could surrender point after point and succumb to Iranian demands the fastest. The sign that Iran is about to use a fair amount of funds which will represent but a drop in the bucket of the one-hundred-fifty-billion-dollars being unfrozen and gifted to the Mullahs and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as they have already made arrangement to purchase Russian S-300 anti-aircraft-and-missile systems, one-hundred-fifty Chinese Chengdu J-10 sophisticated jet fighters with Israeli avionics and finally, two-hundred-fifty highly-advanced Russian Sukhoi-Su-30MK1 heavy-fighter-bombers as well as one-hundred IL78 MKI tanker aircraft; or simply put, Iran is purchasing an entire air force and air defense systems taking them from almost no air power worth mentioning to air superiority by comparison and potentially air superiority over the Kurds, Islamic State, and almost every nation in Northern Africa and many European nations as well. As the nations which Iran is most likely to face if they decide to expand their borders and acquire the airfields and staging areas of southern Iraq, as it appears that President Obama is fully supporting the IRGC forces and eventually other Iranian military forces to operate from within Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State with the United States providing air strikes and air support operations one has to wonder how President Obama might react should Iran decide to turn their forces southward and strike across the Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian oil fields in response to what they could claim was mistreatment of Shiite Muslims by the two nations after incidents were instigated.

 

The other front we can expect to come from Iran is for their expanding the influence of Shia Islam across formerly Sunni strongholds spreading their control over Madrassas potentially replacing Wahhabi Madrassas after they have swarmed across the oil fields, complete their control through the Houthis of Yemen and then using a pincher attack from the north and the south in order to capture Mecca and Medina and thus controlling the heart of Islam. This would also complete Iranian control of the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandab Strait. From that jumping off point it would not be difficult for Iran to then establish a beachhead from which to operate starting in Somalia and spreading from there through Eretria and Djibouti in order to spread through the Sudan and from Iraq and Saudi Arabia into the Sinai thus being on Egypt’s southern and eastern borders. Should Iran also desire to place a substantial force injected into Syria to assist Bashir al-Assad retaking the lands he has lost and using Hezballah to cement their control over Lebanon then Iran could have a northern and southern fronts on Israel and even more troubling should they also gain access to Gaza supplanting Hamas and Islamic Jihad in controlling the area. We can also expect that Iran will fortify their ground forces with purchases of armor most likely light armor to facilitate fast swarm style attacks overwhelming any defense an opponent would be likely to have at any front relying on lighter resistance and by overwhelming the initial positions and driving deeper into any nation they intended to strike thus appearing unstoppable and gaining a perceived position of strength which would also give the Islamic State considerable challenge especially when one considers that Iran will have a very well-armed air force, something completely missing in the Islamic State’s arsenal of abilities. The likelihood that President Obama would take any position opposing any Iranian moves in the entirety of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) as such would be viewed as Iran simply doing exactly what President Obama desired, Iran stabilizing the entirety of the Islamic world, and what better way of being the hegemonic power than to also control all of the valuable lands and suppressing every potential adversary.

 

It would not be a complete surprise if should Iran manage to take control in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood might ‘see the writing on the wall,’ so to speak, and decide they had been in error about the lineage and correct successors of Muhammad and turn to back a Shia Islam. The truth is that there will either be a war with Iran or Iran will bring the war to each and every corner of the world one site at a time. The only question is at what point will their expansions be one bite too many and at what disadvantage will the world be in when facing the Iranian threat. History will point to the past decade and a half as the period when Iran could have been collared with minor losses and as being an opportunity squandered placing the world at risk. Once again, it appears the greatest threat building in the world is being left to Israel to stop. Let’s hope that Israel gets the necessary support of those others facing the same dangers or be willing to take on the task themselves. This is one time we can know that the United States has nobody’s back or if they do, then it is the worst of all possible scenarios placing Washington solidly behind Iran as President Obama had tilted his entire time in office, even with his efforts to place the Muslim Brotherhood ruling Egypt or turning a blind eye to Erdogan suppressing Turkey turning it into a Sharia state and potentially joining with Iran. At the very least, a combining of the regions and its people into an alliance of Israel, the Kurds, the Druze and the various Christian strongholds be brought together and aided to eliminate the Islamic State, thus putting Iran on notice that they should carefully consider their next moves as they will make all the difference in the world. As a result of removing the Islamic State, regions of Syria and northern Iraq will now be known as a state for the Kurds in the area originally promised the Kurds for Kurdistan at the end of World War I but not fulfilled due to the Mosul oil fields and politics as usual. The Druze will likely be granted some degree of autonomy within those areas in Syria where they reside and the refugees should attempt to put their lives and country back together and learn to live with a multi-ethnic nation. Further, as Hezballah has shown so much concern for Syria perhaps they can live there and maybe the Bekaa Valley but the rest of Lebanon is to be a Christian refuge free and resolute to act with favor on the Christians of the entire area and make a nation from the ruins left by Hezballah. Such a solution would be so nice and clean which is why it is unlikely to come into fruition. As Winston Churchill told the British Parliament “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” and additionally from his writings from “The Gathering Storm,” “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds are against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.” May some heed the warnings that many in the leadership positions in Israel be joined by those in Europe, in France, in Germany, in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and even Greece raise their voices and call for those who cherish the G0d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not succumb to the forces of those of Abraham, Ishmael and Mohammad, Amen.

 

Beyond the Cusp