What Israel Must Learn from President Obama

 

Lord Palmerston is reputed to have stated that, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” The truth is so rarely touched upon between politicians and especially leaders of nations. All too often two nations bond over a perceived mutual threat, real or imagined, as there be little difference in the end, and this arrangement continues for sufficient amount of time for many Prime Ministers, Presidents or even monarchs to pass through under the calm of the arrangement. Eventually the day comes when either their mutually perceived enemy is vanquished or under new leaders who alleviate any threat perceived or actual and the two presumed friends no longer have that binding fear. This allows for future minor annoyances to rise to some critical moment or prove to be a permanent wedge between the leaders over time eventually having one side or both deciding to end their “special relationship” and go their separate ways. All too often this kind of relationship has a senior and a junior party under which the senior party having greater resources had wooed the other with promises of weapons systems, troops, nuclear umbrella or other aid upon which the junior party becomes reliant. When they part quickly due to a radical change in leadership and views of the populace on the side of the senior partner, the dependent partner may find themselves without the necessary military or political insurance which they had grown dependent upon. This is even more true today with single weapons systems such as submarines, aircraft, naval vessels and other military necessities. This is the lesson the former strong and dependent allies of the United States need to take away from the Obama Presidency if nothing else. President Obama proved the United States to be less than trustworthy particularly for her former friends in the Middle East and especially to those who had attached their militaries to use and interface with the United States military equipment.

 

 

Lord Palmerston: Nicknamed “The Mongoose”
Statesman, Twice Prime Minister, Politician
began career as a Tory changing to Whig in 1830
and ending his career as the first Prime Minister
of the newly-formed Liberal Party from 1859)

 

 

This, it turns out, is particularly true for any nation which plans on integrating the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Jet as their staple fighter/bomber in the future. This was well described by Caroline B. Glick in her article The IAF’s Achilles’ heel. What Ms. Glick described was the dependency of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the aircraft Israel has based their future air superiority upon, has a serious compromising systems requirement in that it is required by its design and software to be constantly interfaced and updated before and after every flight via the internet with United States command and control systems which then decided whether the aircraft may safely continue in service. The implications of this are enormous but can be made so simple a child could grasp the problem. The United States can ground any particular craft or an entire fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters which would simply make them so much extremely expensive aluminum scrap metal. One has to wonder whether there exists a kill code which could take each aircraft out of the air mid-flight leaving the pilot with, hopefully, a still functioning ejection system so he too had not just been shut down, or shot down as there is little difference. Caroline Glick also implied that many of the United States next generation anti-missile and other advanced systems have a similar ask before use interfaces giving the United States actual veto over even self-defensive systems which would be traumatic and very vital thing to know before deploying any United States weapons systems. What is interesting is the choice of referring to the F-35 as the “IAF’s Achilles’ heel” by Caroline Glick as we used that same terminology, “Achilles Heel of the IDF” in our December 22, 2013 article Time for Israel to Diversify her Relations in the World particularly referencing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter specifically and all other armaments as well. We proposed Israel seriously relent on purchasing any future weapons systems and instead develop our own technology and weapons systems as I was as sure then as I remain today that Israeli designed and built weapons system would become the standard bearer in every industry.

 

That was why we referred to “the Merkava Main Battle Tanks are a blessing in so many ways as it is a fully capable modern main battle tank comparable to any other currently fielded or in production and the older models have been repurposed as personnel carriers and armored field ambulances thus providing systems necessary for the type of warfare Israel may face and supplying superior defenses when compared to other systems used by other nations, especially the armored field ambulances.” Even earlier, November 22, 2010, we had a short article, Israeli Best Hope for Air and Military Superiority, sometimes the best articles are short ones, where we advised Israel develop her future air force to be drones rather than piloted aircraft as using drones flown from stationary simulators or active but relaxed simulators which gave some referential feedback as to direction turned but not equal G-force as a drone can make a fifty-G turn while a piloted craft would render its pilot unconscious before fifteen-G and dead at fifty-G. As might be readily obvious, we saw the problem but so have many military advisors and a few rare gems of the political class. Just for argument’s sake, we would like to wager that people who saw this dependency thing as a problem would also believe in simply annexing the lands of Judea and Samaria and inviting the hard core members of the terror groups which includes the security forces of the Palestinian Authority to kindly take their troubles elsewhere. But the problem right before us is this new attached United States oversight which has the power to cripple any and all systems of any nation so blinded by low cost defensive weapons would face should make any nation shudder, let alone one as dependent on its military for its survival as Israel. If the United States is insisting on training operational readiness and through such systems riding shotgun on every mission including actually holding the keys to the kingdom in their hands by being able to, by a few key-strokes, turn off the majority and the best of the Israeli Air Defense is completely unacceptable. We should press IAI and RAFAEL to immediately start using the airframe of the Lavi fighter which was what started the United States air dependency as the United States saw the Lavi as a direct and worthy fighter aircraft system which they preferred not to face as a competitor in the sales to the world so they initiated a sweetheart deal of F-16s and F-15s and the guarantee that Israel could depend on the United States for all future fighter aircraft. Could we now? Not with the strings which the F-35 apparently carries with it.

 

Even if the F-35 JSF did not provide the United States with basically mission review before the aircraft could take flight as the F-35 JSF requires programmed specifics for each flight to optimize its systems or who knows what else without access to the code to decipher, and there is no manner to gain the code, the fact that it needs to transmit over the Internet to United States servicing systems is a real problem. Let’s take a look at an actual sortie flown over Syria a while back. The Israeli intelligence informed Washington that the Syrians were building a nuclear plant which was almost an exact copy of a North Korean nuclear weapons plant and the United States basic reply was not to be so paranoid and there was no way such could take place without the United States knowing about it. Israel gave them the exact position and even sent them pictures of the two sites and still the United States, particularly the state Department dismissed the allegations out of hand. Israel, over United States directives against and great threats should Israel continue in such a brutal and aggressive manner, sent squadrons of aircraft while shutting down the necessary Syrian air defense systems and radars and bombed the plant out of existence. It was after IAEA inspections that it became evident that the system actually was a nuclear facility and that it had a drawing of its water from over a mile distant just as Israel had described when the United States held that no such plant could be built that far from the closest water supply. So, now that ISIS would have gained control of the nuclear facility that the world should be ever so grateful that Israel removed what would have been an existential threat from over the world’s head. One little set of unusual events followed the removal of the Syrian reactor complex, complete and total silence from the Syrians and a complaint to the United Nations, likely the IAEA, over their loss of five nuclear scientists attending a summit in Syria.

 

 

Syrian Reactor Chamber and Support Structures
at Nuclear Processing Plant for Nuclear Weapons
Being Overseen by North Korean Nuclear Scientists
Before and After Bombing

 

 

Imagine the results if the Israeli Air Force F-15s and F-16s had been equipped with systems which were required to give their flight plans and mission intents to the United States CENTCOM at the Pentagon and over at Foggy Bottom and the State Department. It would have been a race between the Pentagon, State Department and CIA to see who would get the privilege of hitting the kill switch and turning off the entire Israeli Air Force. With such oversight the Iraqis would have kept their nuclear plant and had nuclear weapons by the time of Operation Desert Shield (August 2, 1990 – January 17, 1991) and Operation Desert Storm (January 17, 1991 – February 28, 1991) and these would have proven impossible as Saddam Hussein not only would have threatened and actually, at the first strike by the United States, would have nuked Tel Aviv, Israel and the Saudi Arabian oil fields and the Capital of Riyadh plus every last palatial domicile of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family and whatever else Saddam Hussein decided was involved with any assault on his sovereign nation. Imagine the Syrian Civil War with Bashir al-Assad and the Iranians with nuclear weapons. Imagine any conflict in the Middle East with one or both sides equipped with nuclear weapons and your view of the entire world changes. Guess what, that will soon become a reality and when that time comes, Israel cannot be reliant on Washington’s providing approval and also not warning the recipient of any Israeli airstrike. Iran would have had nothing to fear as first off they would have been nuked back to the age before Mohamad as soon as Saddam Hussein had decided the Iran-Iraq War was too costly and he was not winning, which would have been very early in what resulted ultimately in a decade long struggle. The world would be very different with Sadden Hussein ruling over the lands which we include today as Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, The Gulf Coast States, Yemen, and virtually anything other than Israel. Israel would have likely been forced to solidify her borders which would have included all of Judea and Samaria and there would have been no Palestinian Authority and almost everything across the Middle East would have been different if Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons in the mid-1980s. Can the world really survive a Middle East where Israeli wings can be easily and readily clipped by whoever in Washington is second guessing them on that day? We doubt it and doubt it very seriously.

 

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

 

Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Messy Middle East

 

We may as well write one summary of the different threats to war and actual wars in an all-in-one article. Apparently the Iran negotiations appear to have the most dire predictions of which business as usual is probably the biggest threat of them all. Thus far no final agreement appears to be on the horizon and would have been out of the question and all the sanctions and potentially more would be the current business as usual. It is abundantly obvious that United States President Obama and his Secretary of State Kerry are willing to roll over and accept whatever crumbs the Iranians will permit them and still pronounce the ‘it’s not a treaty it’s a Presidential arms agreement’ treaty, the peace in our time agreement which has Secretary Kerry’s and Iran Foreign Minister Zarif’s signatures on it promising that there will be no unnecessary or over hostile acts by the Iranian government and their work (not that there was any) towards the production of nuclear weapons for ten years, as a momentous diplomatic agreement which will place Iran on the road to international acceptance and into the world of nations. The signs that there will be an agreement, not treaty, completed by the deadline, or a few days, months, years later after more serious negotiations, of the end of June with a potential aligning ceremony in the Oval Office on the Fourth of July which will just be further evidence of the importance of the reaching an accord. Then there are the assurances and uncertainties all depending on your source as to whether or not the deal in progress is an advantageous or detrimental agreement with the numbers of sceptics steadily appearing to increase the closer we all get to an agreement. The only assurances we have is that this agreement will be beneficial to all and that the people telling us this belong to one of two groups, those reporting about the particulars that even the negotiators admit is uncertain if the agreement will encompass said assurance or are part of the providers of information who are attempting to make any agreement a positive no matter how many half-truths and outright-lies they have to shovel to a swarm of ever hungry media swarm all in an effort to further President Obama’s second greatest achievement in office after Obamacare. Such a comparison alone should worry even the greatest supporters of the President and this deal.

 

So, what can we know for sure? For one, it is that the sanctions will be lifted, all of them, or as many as President Obama can humanly bring to an end. This has been made evident through encouragements given to many leaders of industry, particularly the oil and gas industry. It has been reported that the White House has encouraged the chief executives of the Dutch Shell company, Total of France, Italy’s Eni and Lukoil of Russia to initiate talks to normalize and expand the Iranian energy sector of their economy. There have been signals, mostly in Russia, China and Europe and not-so-much in the United States (quite curious this is) to also put forth feelers and prepare the groundwork and even go so far as to agree on principles of agreements which can be made to go active the very second that any P5+1 and Iranian agreement is signed and in effect. This has been the message over the past two months and has yet to diminish in its optimism despite the negotiations appearing to crumble as Iran pulls back and refuses to agree on what one would think are some of the most vital necessities for an agreement which would be observed and have inspections of such a nature as to make such compliances enforceable. These overtures have been made while the White House continues to make statements purporting normal progress at the talks and a general sense of agreement on some of the most vital issues. President Obama has communicated through channels in the media that there will be an intensive inspection routine including snap without warning inspections while the Iranians continue to believe that the negotiations specifically forbade snap inspections nor allow inspections of what Iran denotes as military infrastructure and bases nor permit any inspection without ample and reasonable, to be determined by Iran on an individual basis, notifications before Iran will permit any single inspection. The White House insists that Iran will come forth on its previous military and nuclear procedures, accomplishments and other vital and necessary information even on particularly touchy questions which within the last week began its metamorphosis into a very different animal where suddenly the Administration claims that there is little to be gained by forcing the point of Iran reporting its previous work as we know where they have gone and what they have achieved and everything has been above board all while the Iranians remain quite intransigent on permitting inspections of military bases or revealing the information on all previous nuclear activities and military progress in related fields. From apparent media reports over the past few days the Administration appears to have become omniscient on all things concerning Iranian past progress, military research and development, military progress on missile technology (which to many observers to be directed on developing a reliable ICBM which will supplement their ballistic missile inventory adding the ability to directly strike the United States which some may find an odd direction for such intense research if one is not developing nuclear weapons to place atop those ICBMs) and possible work on a nuclear trigger mechanism which is vital to the production of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. This was supposed to settle the arguments that Iran may be hiding vital work which would include some very damning information casting the long shadow of doubt on Iranian denials to be researching the industrial development of nuclear weapons.

 

Still, the date of the presumed coming out party has been set. The final particulars of the United States surrender are being completed, the promise that after the agreement has been put in place that all sanctions will be removed has been given though not admitted and one of the latest individual pieces has been the apparent agreement that the P5+1 (read United States) will provide Iran with several light water reactors which produce plutonium which is useable for production of nuclear weapons at a far less aggressive rate than the heavy water reactor at Arak. Further, Iran shall be provided with other technologies for civilian uses of nuclear power and enriched uranium and lastly, recently leaked information indicates that the Fordo nuclear enrichment site, which was built into the heart of a mountain and is considered impervious to any bombing attack, shall remain operating with promises that it will not be utilized for enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons and instead will limit the enrichment cycles to keep them beneath weapons grade of over ninety-percent. Secretary of State John Kerry has affirmed that the United States has already relaxed several sanctions and has stated the sanctions will be lifted immediately after any signing of an agreement without having performed any steps for verifying Iranian compliance with whatever limitations and restrictions that President Obama would request as part of the agreement. This has made Senator Robert Menendez (D- N.J.) sufficiently perturbed and suspicious that he has introduced legislation to extend the soon expiring sanctions over the Iranian missile research and development on Iran for another ten years as Senator Menendez is far from convinced that any progress has been or will be made as part of the current negotiations. Perhaps this should be the position of everybody else as the reassurances from Secretary Kerry and the President and his spokespersons leave much clarification and even initial information on many subjects with missile development is chief amongst them.

 

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Iran are juxtaposed Saudi Arabia, Egypt and in a loose and unofficial manner including Israel. The problem is most obvious in Yemen where Iranian backed and armed Houthis are in an open civil war for the control of Yemen now mostly attempting to complete their takeover by solidifying their presence across the south-western third of Yemen, something Saudi Arabia is making particularly difficult. The Saudis are quite wary of permitting Iran from militarily threatening complete control and the ability to cause a severe blockage of trade around much of the world and particularly about European-Asian trade as well as almost one-third of the world’s oil supplies and much of Europe’s lifeline to Arabian oil. The first choke point is the Straits of Hormuz and the second is the straits named Bab-el-Mandeb that controls passage from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to eventually the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and which can be controlled from the south-western-most point in Yemen which remains just beyond Iranian reach for the time being. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have vested interests in the Bab-el-Mandeb waterway remaining open and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation nations have a vested interest in keeping the Straits of Hormuz clear and freely operating. Israel additionally has a vested interest in keeping Bab-el-Mandeb open as all trade out of Eilat’s ports in this southern-most city in all of Israel and major shipping point to Asia, something many believe is at the heart of the future of Israel, and who would even dare to challenge that. Further, having Yemen under the influence of Iran and with that, the potential of Iran to furtively place some special units from the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) into Yemen to spearhead an invasion into Saudi Arabia’s underbelly and then once the Saudis had dispatch troops to guard the southern border, then an Iranian led revolt by the Shiites who mostly live in the north-east of Saudi Arabia making that a second front likely tying up most of the Saudi forces making the nation susceptible to a mass Iranian assault timing all of this for during an announced exchange of forces thus allowing for Iran to at least have twice as many troops in southern Iraq than usual and also presenting a potential for turning those troops southward invading Saudi Arabia across the entirety of the border shared with Iraq where IRGC and other Iranian forces deployed to fight ISIS which has invaded much of the Syria and Iraq while making wild claims about being the heart of the next Caliphate. This would satisfy, if successful, one of the boasts Iran has regularly made about the Holy Cities, the most holy in Islam, of Mecca and Medina must be wrest from the hands of the deceivers and apostates, the Iranian Shiite name when referencing any Sunni Muslims. It would also be done in a direct challenge and risk infuriating ISIS which is also interested in the Holy Cities and would consider their being in the hands of Shiites as a moral imperative for ISIS and their Sunni Muslims to liberate them from the apostate hands of Iranian Shiites.

 

Now let us have a quick discussion of ISIS and their claims of being the next Caliphate. This claim at this early stage is a bit presumptuous though over-the-top bombastic claims such as the ISIS claim of being the new Caliphate are apparently part and parcel of the culture and thus should be read as such. Is ISIS a threat? Of course it is but keep in mind that it had originally served as the al-Qaeda branch in Iraq fighting the United States during the Second Iraq War under President George W. Bush where these al-Qaeda forces had been adequately eradicated that President Obama brought all the troops home declaring in a speech at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14, 2011 where he stated, “It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq–all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering–all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.” ISIS will remain as a problem for as long as the United States continues its little trip down memory lane returning to their isolationist roots but the sooner that there is a new President, hopefully one who realizes the role the United States played in the world as without American leadership who can the world follow? After World War II the United States dictated to its enemies as well as its friends in the world to lay down their arms as the world had to be made such that Europe would find some manner of non-belligerence and thus unable to start yet another conflagration which envelops the rest of the world endangering all. The United States was not going to allow Europe drag her into another conflict, especially when the toll for World War II was figured. Japan even went so far as to insist that they be deprived of a military force capable of attacking her neighbors be put into their new constitution. The United States also made sure to have a prolonged military presence in all of the western nations as are the Soviets in theirs behind the, Winston Churchill‘s coined phrase, ‘Iron Curtain.’ With what ISIS has claimed is their aim, perhaps a similar deal should have been placed on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) thus completely covering the lands which were affected by the war. Instead, the Middle East actually faced a difficulty forced upon them by the European powers of France, Britain, Russia and Italy after World War I named Sykes-Picot Agreement where states were carved out of the colonial areas which the European powers had controlled for over two centuries. These states looked, for all intents and purposes, as randomly drawn but further delving into the agreement it becomes obvious that where the lines were less important than was repaying certain promises and not others and leaving states which could never function as normal nations as their citizenry were from different factions which would require a strong and somewhat viscous dictator more than a caring leader. Iran was fortunate enough to remain unchanged as she had remained Persia and beyond the colonial disciplines of the European overlords. This is one area where ISIS has gotten things correct, Sykes-Picot was a disaster needing remedial action, though combining all into one homogenous Caliphate where the people, more likely subjects, would all need to meet a purity test or face death or reeducation. ISIS has risen to prominence largely due to the entirety of the MENA regions being unstable, surprise-surprise, which had come partially from the mess put in place after World War I. In many ways, by not arranging to have the nations covering individual areas such as an area for the Kurds even named Kurdistan, and unifying Sunni Areas separate from Shia areas, and place borders respecting tribal areas and allowing the people to make suggestions and using them wisely, not nearly random large nations which would be so consumed by inner strife that they would be unable to mount external troubles, which also did not work as we saw with the decade of war between Iraq and Iran. This entire false drawing of nations was doomed to fail and produce an even stronger order which would eventually reunite many of the Islamic Arabs into a larger and ready to conquer group, it is just ISIS will not be that group as it currently operates. There will eventually be a leader who will find the chord which will bring people to their cause far more willingly and not by force and threat of arms. First, the MENA must find their way through this current crisis and possibly agree to redraw the lines across the Middle East divided by natural lines which will produce a more homogeneous populace for each state so that it can function as an economic unit more than a military unit as the Middle East itself has for centuries been an area which thrived through trading between Asia and Europe which it could again find their niche as well as trading their own goods, especially petroleum which unfortunately will be a major factor in the redrawing should such take place.

 

The problem will arise due to there being vested interests and moneyed interests in controlling valuable assets, especially oil. A very large example would be Saudi Arabia which will never permit the taking of their oil fields just because the majority living there are Shiites nor would they ever release their ownership holding of Mecca and Medina even to an international Islamic trust. Iran would never allow its oil fields to be given to another group made up of Arab descendants because the major population is not Persian. Any future settlement in the MENA area is going to take some serious and strong Islamic leadership who are more interested in helping the people than they are in glorifying themselves in this life which will always have some basis in control of resources. As things stand right now there is no real nation of Syria nor is there any nation of Iraq, both are consumed in internal and external conflicts tearing them apart. There were those who called for dividing Iraq into three nations, one Sunni, one Shia, and one Kurdish. This still would not have been advantageous for the Christians and the Yazidi and other tribes with either minority Islamic sects or older religions such as those following a version of Zoroastrianism. Still, any plan was bound to hit some snags but such a division might have produced a better system that would have been better able to resist ISIS and their onslaught which currently has Sunni areas of Iraq either facing Shia vengeance or Sunni purist vengeance without any government in place of their own and no trained military as the Iraqi Army was currently majority Shia and has retreated to protect Baghdad and the Shiite south with large amounts of Iranian assistance and now apparently United States assistance in supporting the Shiite operations as the Iranian and United States troops are quartered together, have joint planning sessions and the United States arming and close air support is coordinated through the Iraqi government which is under the strict influence of the Iranian government which has left the Sunni and the Kurds out in the cold and on their own. This has produced much more serious consequences for the Sunni who had depended on the Iraqi government and military for their protection which has left them at the mercies of whichever force has control of their lives each hour while the Kurds far back even during the United States military occupation after removing Saddam Hussein from power had become a semi-autonomous region with their own militias and governance allowing them to survive without any assistance from the Iraqi government, military or otherwise. The Kurds have become a safe haven for the minorities and have provided better and more varied protection for minorities than the United States and their supported Shiite government in the south leaving the Sunni completely out in the cold. What can be done to settle the problems in the MENA regions will take somebody with a plan which answers the many difficulties such would involve and the means of enforcing such against vested interests that would be less than advantageous for the population. The people need to be the primary concern and their needs must be the overriding priority forcing the drawing of any future borders. There must not be any restrictions as to the number of states, their interactive cooperation and other concerns. It is likely that a loose federation will prove the best solution, I am just glad that I do not have to find the best solution though if I find the magical resolution, I will be pushing it here where unfortunately few of the really powerful people will find it, at least not as things stand or maybe I am mistaken. This will need to wait for a different time. The one other area we have yet to address will not make it into this article, but I have written much already on the difficulties within Israel and the need for another brilliant solution here where none can exist that both sides would agree upon as both sides believe they have the unassailable right to all of Jerusalem if not also all of the lands themselves.

 

Beyond the Cusp