War of Words Escalating Between Iran and America

 

We wish to first cover the story of the IDF rescue of the eight-hundred White Helmets (Syrian civil organization of emergency responders) and their families from southern Syria war zone. Coverage by Arutz Sheva with a short video can be viewed here. This operation was carried out by Israel in response to pleas from President Trump, Canada and other European countries. One can only wonder how long before the same Europeans claim that Israel is not a nice nation as is their usual.

 

United States President Trump and Iranian President Rouhani have been exchanging verbal threats with President Trump adding in a social media Tweet just for good measure (see image below). President Trump even went so far as to use “caps lock” just for emphasis. President Rouhani promised in his retort to something President Trump stated which he found upsetting, that, “Peace with Iran would be the mother of all peace and war with Iran would be the mother of all wars.” We seem to remember a neighboring country’s ruler promising an American President the “Mother of all Wars” once before and that did not end all too well for Saddam Hussein. The reality is that Iran very well could be speaking from a position of relative strength unlike Saddam Hussein. We thought we would play with some thoughts, fears, and potential realities which should be taken into consideration and all intelligence gone through with a fine tooth-comb before stepping into the void.

 

President Trump Warning Tweet to Iranian President Rouhani

 

Iranian President Rouhani could have the ability to back up much of his threat with very real actions. Iran has been researching nuclear weaponry in various forms since the late 1980’s or, at best, the early 1990’s including specific research into EMP devices and miniaturized warheads. For argument’s sake, we will pretend that Iran had no real urgency about their research, something of which we actually believe they likely had a great deal, and their research proceeded at a leisurely pace. The Manhattan Project started in 1942 and developed the atomic bomb within three years and the United States tested their first hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear bomb, within ten years of the start of the Manhattan Project. The United States had to start from scratch while the Iranians had knowledge on the architecture for both atomic and thermonuclear devices almost from the start. Their main difficulty was the processing or manufacturing of sufficient Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 for the core of their devices. One item which is well known to those who have been paying attention to Iran is that they have been developing more and more advanced centrifuges capable of separating out enriched Uranium-235 at a fairly well advanced pace. Further, it can be assumed that their cooperation with North Korea has permitted them to test at least one or two devices over the years if not numerous more. They also would probably have exchanged information back and forth both on nuclear weaponry and guided missile technology which explains both nations’ fairly rapid advancement in both areas. Lastly, as the Chinese very likely had stolen or otherwise received the complete schematics and machining and design specifications for the United States W-88 warhead, it can be assumed that both North Korea and Iran have had access to that same information, though one could hope such is not the case. We are attempting to avoid using hope as our main argument in this instance.

 

So, it is painfully obvious that by the year 2000 Iran would easily have built sufficient processing facilities to produce the fissile and fusion elements for the production of thermonuclear warheads and the sole question is how many devices might they have produced. This is where estimates have been all over the board. According to sources reported and quoted by the Times of Israel, “Tehran has crossed all points of no return and already has its first nuclear weapon, and maybe more.” The same article also reports that the IAEA has assured the world that Iran in no way could have conceivably developed and built a nuclear bomb. We recall that the IAEA are the same people who claimed Saddam Hussein was not working on nuclear weapons, that Syria had no nuclear weapon dreams, that Libya had no nuclear program and that North Korea was years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon days before their first nuclear test. The IAEA has not been the most reliable source on nuclear proliferation as they are presumed to be preventing it and have decided that if they see no evil and hear no evil then they are able to speak no evil. Below we have included an artist’s rendition of two IAEA inspectors and one spokesperson. The evidence is that should Iran have desired to construct nuclear weapons, then the only question remaining is exactly how many of them have they produced, what are their projected yields and how distant can their missiles deliver them. These are serious questions which deserve answers which should be made known to the world through the United Nations or by the nation who knows the reality making the knowledge more generally known. This means if the CIA has solid evidence proving that Iran has nuclear tipped missiles, they should be producing such evidence for the world to see and reveal the perfidy of the Iranian claims of innocence and having no desire to become a nuclear-armed nation.

 

Three monkeys of “See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil”

 

As things currently stand, it would be more prudent to assume that Iran has nuclear tipped missiles in the ready and that these missiles are capable of striking anywhere on the planet. It should also be assumed that they would have such shorter-range missiles stored within what appear to be normative cargo vessels as they have developed such vessels to use to strike at cities along the shores of the United States and Europe should hostilities become to their advantage. These missiles would be extremely difficult to intercept, as their targets would be struck within minutes of the missile launching, as the ship would be only one-hundred miles offshore or closer. Iran has tested these systems finding them to be accurate and an efficient and difficult to deter system for delivering a warhead. The cargo ships they would utilize would more than likely be registered with a country other than Iran making them all but invisible unless the warhead could be detected. Iran is also rumored to have developed a non-nuclear EMP device which is capable of destroying the electrical grid for a city and surrounding region depending on the level of hardening the electrical grid has had installed. One can pretty much expect that at least the streetlights and traffic signals would be affected and stop functioning for a period of time. The real problem is if transformers are destroyed and the larger the transformer, the more serious the outage. The largest transformers can take up to two years to produce in sufficient numbers should an entire grid region be destroyed.

 

The truth is that both President Trump and President Rouhani are playing with fire and their bellicose threats can escalate potentially leading to one or the other taking the decision that the insults have reached a level beyond that which they are willing to accept and in order to save face they must act. This could lead to problems and further escalations which could end further than desired from the starting point. The Iranians including Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari has promised that should the United States prevent Iranian oil sales, they will prevent all oil from traversing the Straights of Hormuz. According to Xinhua, Jafari stressed, enemies can understand the meaning of Hormuz Strait “either for all, or for none.” The United States has promised that they will protect the use of the Straights of Hormuz for the oil shipments of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so should President Trump prevent Iranian oil shipments and Iran act on their threat, there would necessarily be a confrontation. Iran today is not the same Iran which fought Saddam Hussein during the 1980’s. They have more potential and are well practiced at their swarming tactics which create a great deal of difficulty against which to defend. Any naval confrontation within the Arabian Gulf and especially the Straights of Hormuz would also include Iranian shore batteries which would take time, short as it may be, to render inoperative which would also be seen as a further escalation. One can readily see how any confrontation over the free movement of oil in and out of the Straights of Hormuz could very quickly spin out of control. One can only guess as to how the United States would react should one of their nuclear aircraft carriers be attacked and actually sunk. Such would lead to reprisals which would provoke reprisals in return and back and forth until something inevitable and regrettable resulted. Wars have started over far less; take World War I for example. How many people died over a single terrorist act murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie the Duchess of Hohenberg. So, now we are at the point of which leaders lower their level of vitriol, and let us pray one of them sees the wisdom in doing exactly that.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iran Deal Delivers Donations for Disaster in Death

 

The one-hundred-fifty-billion dollars of unfrozen funds which will near instantly over-fill the coffers beyond their capacity and even beyond Iran’s wildest imaginations. Oil and pistachio sales will assist in keeping those coffers healthy with a steady influx of monies. Proof of the extents to which this sudden wealth has provided Iran becomes obvious with the sales of arms made viable to Iran even before the ink dried on the papers. The set of sales, when taken at their entirety, reveals that Iran has just purchased the equivalence of an entire Air Force minus pilots. This set of deals comes replete with one-hundred tanker aerial refueling aircraft, one-hundred-fifty sophisticated air-combat jet fighters with Israeli avionics and finally the two-hundred-fifty highly-advanced heavy-fighter-bombers already set for delivery to Iran by Russia and China. Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Iran herself will suffer from the results of this deal. All the predictions of gloom and doom are purported to be in this deal come from the publically released deal. As horrific as the realities of the publically declared sections of this deal have proven to be as their ramifications are flushed out and deciphered may be, these predicted disasters are simply the results of the publically released Iran Nuclear Agreement 7/14/2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, yet there exists another wholly secreted away part of the Iranian deal made without Secretary of State Kerry’s knowledge or participation and has been secreted from review yet will be put into enforcement simply as a result of the signatures placed on the publically revealed deal. How many more disastrous consequences will come into review as our focus becomes fixated on the inferences, implications and machinations resultant on the secreted deal which for all we know will include as yet undetermined and yet to be decided terms left to be fulfilled as the needs arise and simply left to Iran or the IAEA to make future decisions independent of review. If we are to be honest, the reality is that we have absolutely no idea of exactly the deal made with Iran defines and what restrictions on inspections or implications which make even developing nuclear weapons immediately and while remaining a member of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) as the secret deal might even permit Iran to have their determination altered and defined as a Recognized Nuclear Weapon State Acceders, with equal or potentially superior rights to China or France, within the framework of the NPT definitions pertaining to nuclear powers.

 

The reality is that the revealed and awful deal we and even the members of Congress, the Ambassadors of the nations in the Security Council of the United Nations, the other sitting members of the P5+1, and even the negotiating team from the United States including the Secretary of State, very likely the State Department and everybody other than the selected leadership of Iran and whoever was the negotiator of the secret treaty and a remote possibility President Obama actually know what is included in the super-secret deal made with Iran. Now for our little bit of conjecture; this editorialist, if forced to make a guess, suspects that United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Presidential Security Advisor Susan Rice and Special Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett whose assistance in such matters is unmeasurable as she was Iran born and speaks Farsi and thus may be the only people from the United States Administration of President Obama and only person outside of Iran and the top members of the IAEA, if even them, who knows what was included in what we suspect is a massive giveaway super-secret agreement with Iran which will remain concealed with portions becoming known as their results are felt. Beyond altering the standings of Iran pertaining to the NPT there is likely little which could have further reaching ramifications, but that prediction too is made while in complete ignorance of the actual terms which are hidden within this ancillary section of the treaty which the world is discussing despite the unknowns of the hidden agendas and stipulations. It is entirely possible that the secretive parts of the agreement actually nullify the publically released portions and that the only knowledge Secretary of State Kerry has about the treaty equals yours or mine. The briefing that Secretary Kerry received may have been simply telling him he would be better off not knowing and that he had no determined need and that for security reasons he was not to be trusted with such knowledge and Secretary Kerry would interpret that as being an in depth discussion of the secret treaty of which he knows little to nothing.

 

 

General Amano, IAEA Secretariat, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, President Rouhani aka Smiling Cheshire Man, Lead Negotiator Zarif and Da Bomb from Dr Strangelove

 

 

In all honesty, the unknown and concealed dealings between some Administration official or team who have President Obama’s complete trust, some official or officials from the IAEA and the Iranian leadership reached and somehow is tied to and included in its entirety to the P5+1, Iran deal thus receiving ratification alongside the P5+1, Iran nuclear agreement. All of this is performed despite being without any discussion except for those discussions before the United States Senate where its secrecy and existence were stated, and nothing more, with Presidential Security Advisor Susan Rice, who testified to have read, if not assisted in shaping, and Secretary Kerry, who claims he has been told of its existence and has been briefed but is either unable or unwilling to share his extent of knowledge on the secret agreement. The concept of secretive agreements in which most of either government and next to none of the nations’ peoples have any knowledge or are thought to even have the need to know or right to know is anything but an original concept. This situation was the norm in all the history of nations where the people even having rights without title was also unknown until quite recent times. Most of the world today lives under governments which operate in just this manner and it is appearing that none exist where such is not the case.

 

What sets the United States apart is that the people have the right to insist to be included and be knowledgeable of all the workings which take place within the government with the exception of those limited items deemed so sensitive that the people may be kept in the dark for the time being but even those items come into the light eventually. What may be found distressing is that the United States, the supposed bastion of freedom and citizens’ rights has slowly but inexorably been sliding down that slippery slope to the bottom where all the dealings of the government beyond the dictates of laws imposed on the people are kept in secret as the people are deemed of such limited capabilities that they are better off allowing their bettors, those in the government and working as enforcement officers for the government to run things and take care of the weighty issues that the government and only the government is permitted to be privileged. Should this be continued to progress and the United States fall into the darkness of tyrannical governance, then what hope does the rest of the world have where tyrannical governance has been the norm for as long as history had been written and before? There is one simple reason such a state of affairs takes hold of governance, and that is size of government. Apparently when any government reaches a certain size it then expands its scope and domain, often at the expense of lower decentralized governances such as the individual states of the United States. As the central government grows and assumes more and more powers the state, municipal, and local governments suffer and eventually become enforcers for the central government and nothing more. This is where the every size fits all governance becomes the norm and anybody who has resided in one of the major metropolises such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas or the others and also lived in a small, and I do mean small town such as Paw Paw, Mich; Emmetsburg, MD; Loveland, Colo; or any of the hundreds of thousands spread blanketing the United States knows, one size never works well in the smallest of places where some of the best and nicest people live and where most people actually know their neighbors. We can only hope that the flame which when it shines brightest allows the individual person to have rights and the government to be at their beck-and-call and never looming over the ‘little people’ as in a true and good governance there are no little people, only little government, as little as proves to be absolutely necessary. Nowhere has such existed successfully where there are sufficient people spread over an area such that they know not those who run their governance and many have become so dejected and separated from their governance and believe it to be beyond any real and actual control that they do not participate or care who their representatives may be. There were stipulations in the original government set up by the constitution of the United States which need being returned as with this modern age such is actually and finally doable and perhaps such could be an article coming to you soon right here at Beyond the Cusp. Until them, hang in there friends.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is the United States Allied with Shiites Against Sunnis?

 

This must be a question fermenting and fomenting minds across the Middle East and beyond into North Africa and around the world where Muslims reside, meet, mingle and discuss the political intricacies of the hour. The evidences could be actual tactics and planned policy or it could be only innuendo and hyperbole caused by the situational ethics, policies of the moment, sole remaining available alternatives, or the preferences of the man in the White House, President Obama. The truth is that come later January of 2017, a potentially long eighteen months plus a week give or take a few days and the foreign policies of the United States could take as violent a swing as they did when President Obama set out to be the most un-Bush-like President in American history. Will we see a return to the dull and predictable and similar policies as we had with George W. Bush? Not very likely. The one consistency in the Presidency is the lack of consistency in the Presidency. One would be hard pressed to find two consecutive Presidents whose policies and mannerisms in any manner or way resembled their predecessor which often is considered a good thing. Even after a popular President who often served two terms, a full eight years, at some point usually early in the second term the media finally starts to turn and from there it goes directly downhill and by the time inauguration day both the American people and the President themselves are anxious for them to leave Washington far in their wake never to return. With time the opinions of a President begin to average out between their high points and their lowest lows to somewhere which will resemble their standing in history. So, whether President Obama has chosen to support Shiite Islam over Sunni Islam is an intentional policy or the result of situations and a culmination of events leading him without his realizing how his actions may be perceived, in the end it really does not matter. Still, there will be those who will assign great importance, as has already graced many an article and editorial, both supporting and critiquing the President’s actions with both sides and assigned credit or blame all being pretty evenly split such that I have no idea which side of this is brilliance and which should be taken for buffoonery.

 

What we outside the world of Islam think, feel, argue or critique is of far less importance than what is the opinions of the leaders of the Sunni and Shia Islamic worlds; the Imams, the national leaders and the Muslim peoples themselves are where the consequences will be formed and fall. The thing the rest of us should fear is should alliances in the Muslim world start forming either favoring, fearing or targeting the United States become reality and end up forcing future policy alternatives and resulting in a United States firmly stuck on one side of this divide and because of such the rest of the world choosing up sides accordingly and then not only will the Muslim world be split in adversarial camps but the rest of the world also aligning down the very same divides as that is the thing that world wars are made of. It was the alliances which caused the spread of what should have been a quick skirmish and within a few months the scores settled after the assassination of Duke Ferdinand but then the two sides began calling in allies and those nations sympathetic and before one knows what was actually happening the entirety of Europe and Japan and all the respective colonies around the world were at war and World War I was born and before it died it eventually including the United States whose entry will be debated as to whether it was manufactured and if so by whom. World War II might have been far shorter had the British and French honored their commitments with Czechoslovakia and not given Hitler the Sudetenland or even after that foolishness had at least honored their subsequent promises to Czechoslovakia when Hitler marched through the now unprotected passes and gobbled up the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Instead they waited until after Czechoslovakia fell and Hitler had added much of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire from World War I vintage to his side before finally striking at Poland still feeling sure that surely after all their previous gutlessness that the French and British threats were still as empty as before. For those still wondering, the French and British honored their treaties with Poland not that this was of much use to Poland who was swallowed in halves to Hitler’s Germany from their west and Stalin’s Soviets from their east and a few scant weeks until the two armies met in the center and Poland was divided between the two temporary allies. Eventually Hitler turned on Stalin as well making one of the two largest mistakes of the war with the other contender was not following the British across the Channel immediately after Dunkirk. If this reference troubled you, look up “mosquito armada World War II Dunkirk” and read about one of the strangest and most noble acts by the British people without requiring anything other than a call to arms, or at least to assist.

 

Should the Muslim and also the Arab worlds neither one decide that the United States has taken sides in their centuries old conflict between the Sunnis and the Shiites and thus one side have closed off all relations with the United States, then the next President will have the luxury of mending fences and restoring balance in the United States Middle East policy. In President Obama’s defense, he was and still appears to be a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood which is as Sunni as Islamic organizations get. The President has a couple of suspected Muslim Brotherhood affiliated or at least sympathizers in the administration as well as in high profile positions in the State Department and there are not many accusing him of being a sympathizer and solely allied with the Sunnis because of these facts. Certainly such is an easy match for his lack of bombing Assad while bombing the Islamic State despite Assad having murdered vastly more peoples all of them Sunni or non-Muslims while the Islamic State has murdered far fewer Shiites and non-Muslims. The problem with such reasoning is it takes a sophomoric view that numbers of fatalities and casualties is the sole reason for policy and ignores other influences such as perceived threat that one group or nation may present over the threat of another plus the reactions of the people of the United States who also have influence over decision more often than politicians or media care to admit, though the media goes to great lengths to influence the populace and their political conversations and should anybody likely be behind the apparent Shiite support over Sunni Muslims than anything else could ever hope to possess. Of course you will never hear the media taking the blame for the reactions from the people driven by the mainstream media which in turn influences the elected officials thus potentially changing the policies of the United States including foreign policies and position taken by a President. That is both the blessing and the curse of a free society which has open and supposedly transparent elections despite much of what some conspiracy theorists claim to have proof is untrue to which we should simply tell them to file their evidence with the courts of the FED (Federal Election Commission) and let the world, or at least the rest of the United States, settle these claims and force remedial action and a higher level of scrutiny and enforced compliance with security providing for honest elections.

 

The claims by some are likely part of a concerted effort to pressure the United States to alter its foreign policies in some manner probably more favorable to the Sunni Muslim and potentially the Sunni Arab states. The main reasons being given dance around one major foreign policy currently being pursued by the United States which is hugely obvious by the omission we have read claiming that the United States policies are highly anti-Sunni and pro-Shiite; that omission is the ongoing and ongoing and ongoing negotiations with Iran and the seeming falling all over themselves by the United States negotiating team which appear to be leaving Iran able to breakout and make nuclear weapons on an industrial scale within six to ten months from deciding whether they want to announce before or after they leave the restrictions from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or after as North Korea did before announcing their first nuclear weapon test after breaking their agreement which was negotiated by many of the same team members as are members in these negotiations as well. The main difference is the Secretary of State where one may not have great amounts of faith in Secretary Kerry’s abilities for a multitude of reasons most likely starting with his testimony about his fellow soldiers from his service in Viet Nam where he served with distinction even if not entirely with honor as he managed to receive three Purple Hearts and an immediate trip home with great haste and ease only to give the following testimony before the Senate here in transcript of the complete two hours and forty minute excerpt from his testimony where the below can be heard roughly between 5 minute 45 seconds through 7 minute mark:

“They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”

 

By now I believe almost everybody other than those so sold on the theory that President Obama is the smartest and most knowledgeable person to walk the halls of power in the history of the universe have realized that when it comes to foreign policy his expertise is that of the level of a neophyte and that is being generous. President Obama has done damage to the United States that may never be rectified as he has broken promises made by former Presidents whose guarantees were ratified by both houses of Congress with levels which if the letter of intents and promises given a certain leader of Israel where no such treaty was feasible without harming the standing the United States cared to retain with the Arab world thus a “mere letter which is not binding on any who followed President Bush” was really much more, but then again the bust of Winston Churchill was not given to any particular President to be an ornament that he found pleasing but a gift to the people of the United States and a gift he had not the authority no matter what his position to demand the British take away as he found it odious, many Americans including most of the ones I have ever known would have objected loudly and strenuously and offered to proudly house that gift in their own home just to retain it and offer it to a new President when such a gift might be more appreciated. That was also the treatment President Obama showed the Saudi Arabian Royals when he discounted their preferences and warning about Iran and simply gave them what in their culture would be considered a scolding for getting out of place for having the audacity to not only oppose him but to doubt his intentions, his intelligence, or his expertise as President Obama knows.

 

I guess one of the worst of all things one can ever commit would be holding any doubts about any and everything President Obama says or does as he is, in his own words we quote from a September, 2008, New York Times profile of Obama where he reportedly told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker,

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Well, guess that tells us all we need to know, the rest of us are in a second class league in any expertise we may have because there is a man who likely would meet us and in casual conversation at some point tell us we need not try to inform him on any subject as he already knows twice as much as any of us do on everything. It is little wonder that it has been reported that President Obama often has his daily morning intelligence briefing either told to be given to somebody else or simply waved it off completely often for weeks maybe months at a time and often when he does receive it interrupts to do personal affairs and appears to be distracted and not actually paying attention. I bet he really hears it all and has likely absorbed it all out of the ether and finds such reports unnecessary. According to the Washington Post article By Marc A. Thiessen from September 13, 2012, titled Obama alone: This president does not need intel briefers we quote from almost half the way down,

Vietor’s reply is quite revealing. It is apparently a point of pride in the White House that Obama’s PDB is “not briefed to him.” In the eyes of this administration, it is a virtue that the president does not meet every day with senior intelligence officials. This president, you see, does not need briefers. He can forgo his daily intelligence meeting because he is, in Vietor’s words, “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.”

 

Though I really should just let this lie as is, I just am unable to resist a little more fun. I am willing to bet that President Obama does not know better than I what I am thinking right about now, nor likely what your reaction has been either. Imagine being the candidate’s political director at the start of the campaign and have the candidate say to your face, “And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.” How does one not just get up and silently walk out the door and simply not return, how? I would be incapable of even supporting such a boorish and ignorant person who is so involved with themselves that they are a more narcissistic egomaniacal megalomaniac than I imagine I am in my wildest dreams, which is why I gave up dreaming long ago as I can dream while awake better than my subconscious can dream when I’m asleep, so top that President Obama.

 

Beyond the Cusp