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Iran Nuclear Deal Tag

Iran has been making repeated attempts to acquire nuclear-, chemical- and biological weapons technology from Germany, reveals the annual domestic intelligence report published by the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) last week. According to the report, last year Iran made 141 attempts to illegally secure technologies related to [nuclear, chemical, biological] proliferation in the state of NRW alone. This indicates an almost 100 percent rise compared to 83 such attempts in 2014. If this intelligence report is to be believed, than German government was aware of Iran’s continued efforts to acquire Nuclear and WMD technologies while it was pushing for a Nuclear Deal with Tehran 0n the world stage. Chancellor Merkel’s Government enthusiastically backed Obama-sponsored Nuclear Deal and was one of the six countries that worked out a nuclear agreement with Iran last year.

As the U.S. disengages from Latin America as part of President Obama’s broader policy of reducing American presence in the world, Iran is moving in fill parts of that geopolitical vacuum, says a report published by Washington D.C. based Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS). The report used documents and legal wiretaps related to the circumstance surrounding the death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman who died of a bullet shot on January 19, 2015, a day before he was going to testify before Argentina’s Congress about Buenos Aires Jewish community center bombing carried out by Iranian terrorists. The report cited by the Wall Street Journal shows how the death of Argentine prosecutor “paved the way for [Iran] to move into a new phase of its information and intelligence operations in Latin America.” WSJ concluded that unfettered access for international financial system and assets worth $150 billion given to Iran as the result of Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal “will increase Iran’s penetration of the Western Hemisphere.” The revelation comes just days after a senior Israeli diplomat in New Delhi warned of a concrete threat of Iran-sponsored terrorism targeting Israelis in India and abroad. In February 2012, Iranian terrorists carried out a bomb attack targeting Israeli mission in New Delhi.

In a brutal report on the administration's dishonesty regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, CNN's Jake Tapper last week concluded that Americans "have a right to know who lied to us." Tapper walked us through the basics, but let's review. The story began in February 2013, when Fox News reporter James Rosen asked then State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, "There have been reports that intermittently, and outside of the formal P-5+1 mechanisms the Obama Administration, or members of it, have conducted direct, secret, bilateral talks with Iran. Is that true or false?"

President Obama press advisor Jen Psaki attacked Fox News after reporter James Rosen asked for clarification over her statement about deleted footage from a 2013 press briefing about secret Iran and U.S. talks. Rosen asked then-State spokeswoman Psaki about the meeting in 2013, a year after the department denied such talks existed. Psaki admitted they took place, but Rosen found someone deleted his questions from the old video:
The department acknowledged Wednesday that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing – at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki appeared to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal – had been intentionally cut. The order apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified.
Fox News published their complete email exchange, where Psaki berates Rosen for politely asking for an explanation after Psaki referred to the transcript and not the video.

Singling Out Jews in Yellow

Shortly before the Senate vote on the nuclear deal with Iran was supposed to take place (but was filibustered by Democratic supporters of the deal), The New York Times *helpfully* provided a list letting everyone know which Jewish lawmakers were against the deal, with the names highlighted in yellow.

New york times congressional jew tracker iran deal senate

The New York Times, after the expected (and deserved) outrage, removed the "Religion" column from the list but acknowledged no wrongdoing, "[under] Times standards, the religion or ethnicity of someone in the news can be noted if that fact is relevant and the relevance is clear to readers." Nonetheless due to readers' outrage, it adjusted the list.

How's the Iran nuclear deal working out? I'm not asking the broader foreign policy question that Tom Nichols just addressed, but how is the nuclear aspect of the deal by itself working out? According to Jonathan Broder of Newsweek, the deal is unraveling. And it is the fault of the United States.
Probably the biggest source of friction is a U.S. law that bars Iran from using the U.S. financial system and the American dollar, even indirectly. The law, enacted in 2012, was aimed at punishing Iran for a variety of alleged sins: the country’s ballistic missile program, human rights abuses and state-sponsored terrorism. Because these issues haven’t been resolved, there is virtually no chance Congress would repeal the law in the foreseeable future, experts say. As long as that statute remains in place, foreign banks holding Iran’s funds in dollars will be wary of doing business with the country.

In his testimony last week before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, concerning the grand Iran deal deception described in a recent New York Times article that was carried out by Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, laid out five areas where the White House deceived the American people. First, Doran in his testimony established that even before he became president, Obama had expressed an interest in rapprochement with Iran. He cited former CIA chief and Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, from The New York Times expose on the echo chamber saying that the administration knew that "They’d have gotten “the [expletive] kicked out of them,” if they had been upfront about their intention to engage Iran. Doran summed it up:

There continues to be fallout from the profile of Obama adviser Ben Rhodes that appeared in Sunday's New York Times magazine last week. Much of discussion of the article has surrounded who demonstrated bad faith, the Obama administration or Samuels. There are two targets of the criticism. In the MSM and left-leaning media the villain is David Samuels for writing a hatchet job on the administration. In the right-leaning media the villain is the administration for lying about the nuclear deal with Iran. But the question of dishonesty or bad faith is less important than the system Samuel described. From the administration's view, the article was, according to Lee Smith, "a victory lap," a boast of how they bested their political opponents and mastered the media. Little attention has been paid to exactly how the "echo chamber" Ben Rhodes boasted about actually worked.

One year after the Obama-backed Nuclear Deal came into effect, Islamic Republic of Iran remains the leading sponsor of international terrorism, says a policy paper published by British policy think-tank Henry Jackson Society. According to the report released on Wednesday at the House of Lords in London, Iran maintains a large and lucrative illegal financing network to bypass the remaining sanction that are in place to stop Tehran from funding terrorist outfits and regime. The report quotes an economist close to current Iranian regime describing the extent of the network, stating that “between 5,000-10,000 people worked in the [illicit financing] network, handling deals worth between $300 billion and $400 billion over the past decade.” Even after easing of sanction by the U.S. and the West, Iran seems to have no intention of giving up this illicit financing network which also acts as a lucrative source of income for the members of the military and the regime.

The White House said people should not view President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima, Japan, as an apology after they announced he will become the first sitting president to visit the city since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on it in 1945. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that if anyone does "interpret it that way, they'll be interpreting it wrongly." Wrongly? So Obama won't say the word "apologize," but is it effectively an apology?

Iran's Tasnim agency reported the regime tested a ballistic missile, but the defense minister denied the claims.
“Two weeks ago, we test-fired a missile with a range of 2000 kilometers and a margin of error of eight meters,” declared Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi. "We can guide this ballistic missile."

Perhaps the most famous person on the internet right now is Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser. Rhodes is profiled in a The New York Times Magazine cover stroy that rips to shreds both the story line sold to the American public and the notion that we have independent media in the age of Obama. Rhodes' job was to message and ensure that the White House's narrative of the nuclear deal with Iran was the media's. Rhodes, in the profile written by David Samuels, displays no shame about his job; in fact he seems quite pleased with himself.

Terrorist group Hezbollah is using the conflict in Syria to prepare for a war with Israel, reveals a report published by the UK-based research group BICOM. In 2015, Iran funnelled a billion dollars to the Lebanon-based terrorist group. According to a strategic analysis released by Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (BICOM) on Monday, Iran-backed Hezbollah's missile stockpile is now estimated to be around 100,000-150,000, with large portion of it hidden among Lebanon's civilian population. Hezbollah entered the Syrian civil war 5 years ago to fight on behalf of Iran-backed dictator Bashar Al Assad. Since then 5,000 of its 20,000-strong fighting force is pinned down in Syria. The terrorist militia now controls territory within Syria, creating a base for Iran -- a fallback option in case Assad regime were to collapse. The Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal gave Iran a signing bonus of  $150 billion. Flushed with fresh cash, regime in Tehran is making up for the past cuts it had to make in funding its proxy terrorist group across the Middle East including Hezbollah.

Last July, we responded to President Barack Obama's challenge to read the nuclear deal he made with Iran and concluded that it was awful. One of the worst parts of the deal was language (appearing twice) that said, "Iran has stated that if sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part." Or in the words of Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, this is Iran's "nuclear snapback."

Remember the famous ‘snapping back’ of sanctions that President Obama promised last year if Iran were to violate the Nuclear Agreement? The New York Times had hailed the ‘snap back’ as a diplomatic masterstroke, writing “snapback mechanism [to reimpose sanctions on Iran] is one of the most unusual parts of the deal. In the event that Iran is perceived as violating it, the agreement allows the full raft of penalties to resume automatically.” Well guess what, Iran continues to violate the Nuclear Deal and President Obama’s ‘full raft’ is nowhere to be seen. Obama Administration has instead responded reluctantly to Islamic Republic of Iran’s repeated testing of ballistic missiles capable to carrying nuclear warheads by blacklisting a handful of Iranian companies.

In another demonstration of President Obama's inability to formulate a coherent policy in the face of fresh Iranian violations of missile test bans, the United States both imposed new sanctions on and eased trade with Iran on the same day on Thursday. Iran's renewed aggression is unmistakable even to those whose willful blindness wrought the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA").

New Sanctions In Response to Iranian Missile Tests

Earlier this month, Iran conducted two days of tests in violation of UN resolutions.  At least one of the missiles had "Israel must be wiped of the face of the earth" written on it.  These violations prompted many lawmakers to call for new sanctions on Iran, including Hillary Clinton and a number of Republican Congressmen.

It seems that Iran is having trouble getting the Obama administration to understand just how little it respects or fears Obama's America. They do keep trying, though.  They bully and cajole the Obama admin while dangling empty promises and outright lies before them, and they repeatedly declare that their goal is, first, the destruction of Israel (wipe Israel off the map), and second, the destruction of the United States (we're the "big" Satan after Israel's "little" Satan.). That's okay, the Obama admin assures us, Iran doesn't mean what its leaders say (there may be a certain amount of projection here).  Iran does love and respect—if not America then—its fearful leader. Iran's theocratic leadership shakes its head in disbelief  . . . and pure joy.  How weak! How malleable! How ineffectual!  Iran loves a weak American president as Jimmy Carter found out to the detriment of his second term dreams.

John Kerry’s Iranian “partner for peace” has spoken again. This time calling for an all-out war against Israel, the only trustworthy U.S. alley in the Middle East. Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, who also negotiated the now-infamous Nuclear Deal, seems to enjoy a great personal relationship with Kerry and they both even call each other by their first names. According to Financial Times, Javad and John are “two affable men who struck a relationship that transcended the stubborn enmity between their nations.” President Obama too has a great regard for the Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khamenei, or as he likes to calls him, the “Supreme Leader.” President Obama praised Ayatollah's Fatwa or religious edict against nuclear weapons.