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Iran Tag

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 15, 2016 1 Comment
On Wednesday the Iranian Central Bank argued before the United States Supreme Court that Iranian-owned assets in U.S.-based accounts cannot be used to satisfy judgments against Iran.  The narrow legal question in Bank Markazi v. Peterson is whether and to what extent Congress can dictate the outcome of a pending suit by statute, but the practical question is whether victims of Iranian terror can obtain payment for their and their loved ones' suffering and deaths.

Background

Plaintiff Deborah Peterson sued the government of Iran for the wrongful death of her brother, Lance Corporal James C. Knipple, who was killed along with 240 other Americans in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.  Numerous other Plaintiffs sued Iran either for their own or for loved ones' injuries and deaths in other Iranian terror attacks including the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. Airmen. Iran did not appear in court to defend these suits, and the various courts entered default judgments against it in 19 different cases in an aggregate amount of several billion dollars.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 14, 2016 14 Comments
With the news that Iran has seized two American boats and detained 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf just ahead of the State of the Union earlier this week, I'd like to go back to something that President Barack Obama said a little more than a year ago. Even though the sailors have been released, albeit under humiliating circumstances, the real story here, which the media is generally ignoring, is that they were taken prisoner in the first place. At the end of 2014, Obama gave an interview to Steve Inskeep of NPR. When explaining his rationale for the nuclear deal this is what Obama said:
So, when I came into office, the world was divided and Iran was in the driver's seat. Now the world's united because of the actions we've taken, and Iran's the one that's isolated.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 13, 2016 8 Comments
The US State Department is criticizing Israel's proposed "Transparency Law," suggesting that Israelis should not know when foreign governments are influencing their domestic politics. If enacted, the current version of the Transparency Law would deem an Israeli Non-Governmental Organization ("NGO") a foreign agent if it receives more than 50% of its budget from foreign government sources.  The NGO would then be required to disclose that it is a foreign agent in publications and political tracts, and to disclose foreign donors. The impetus behind the Transparency Law is Israel's increasingly hostile NGO community, such NGO's propaganda value to Israel's enemies, and their overwhelmingly non-Israeli financing.  Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University and NGO Monitor has explained the problem:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 13, 2016 54 Comments
Every confrontation with Iran has a phase which is much more important to the Iranians than the physical outcome. It's the humiliation phase, in which the Iranians get to exploit photos and video showing their opponents as weak and the Iranians as strong. We saw it throughout the U.S. Embassy hostage drama in 1979-1980, in which the hostages were paraded in front of the cameras and crowds. Iran Hostage Crisis The 10 U.S. sailors were released earlier today after Iran seized two small U.S. Navy boats yesterday. Iran demanded an apology and is claiming it got one, though the U.S. denies that. There is no doubt, however, that the pathetic and delusional John Kerry openly thanked the Iranians:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday thanked Iran for its cooperation in the release of 10 sailors who had mistakenly entered Iran's territorial waters, an incident that stoked international tension.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 12, 2016 34 Comments
Tuesday, the U.S. experienced yet another provocation from Iran who seized two U.S. Navy boats carrying ten U.S. sailors. Iran promised to return everyone and everything shortly. So, yay?

Posted by David Gerstman on January 07, 2016 23 Comments
At a time when tensions in the Middle East are rising, it is perhaps a time to once again review President Barack Obama's qualifications for office. To be sure his qualifications were fabricated, or at least oversold. This wasn't just the doing of the Obama campaign. Campaigns are supposed to do present their candidates in the best possible light. The problem  was that America's supposedly independent media boosted the first terms senator's prospects with little or no skepticism. This was certainly the case in reporting where most reporters bought into the historical aspect of Obama's candidacy as well was the rebuke to Republicans for the failings of the Bush presidency. (If not the failings, then the aspects that the liberal media disagreed with.) For the purpose of this exercise let's look at parts of The Washington Post's 2008 endorsement of Obama. I am using the Post as an example of what we saw so frequetly because even though the Post is a liberal paper, its editorial position regarding foreign policy is generally responsible. However in the Post's enthusiasm for Obama, all caution was disregarded and they promoted a man who did not really exist.

Posted by Miriam Elman on January 05, 2016 8 Comments
The fallout from the execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia on Saturday will roil the Middle East region for some time to come. Below, I review the recent developments since our last posts (see here and here) and discuss some of the lessons to be learned from this latest episode in the unraveling of the Muslim Middle East.

Saudi Arabia Cuts Ties with Iran

As we reported, Saudi Arabia has broken diplomatic ties with Iran. On Sunday afternoon, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir announced at a press conference that Iranian diplomats had 48 hours to leave the kingdom.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 04, 2016 0 Comments
CAMERA - the Committee for Accuracy in Middle-East Reporting in America - has released its Top Ten MidEast Media Mangles for 2015. There are some doozies, from all the usual sources: The New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, MSNBC, AP, The Guardian and Ha'aretz.  There's also the perennial phenomenon of media silence regarding Palestinian incitement that is the bedrock of the Israeli/Arab conflict.  In a first, Elle made the list as well (apparently terrorist chic is in style). CAMERA's full exposition is here, but in brief the top ten are:

1. Ignoring, absolving and questioning the spate of Palestinian knife terror attacks.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 02, 2016 15 Comments
This is one of those incidents which both cannot be understood in isolation and has the real possibility of escalating. Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including a prominent Shia cleric:
The Middle East braced for sectarian violence Saturday after Saudi Arabia said it had executed 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric responsible for anti-government protests. There were warnings of a backlash against the ruling Al Saud family after Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was named on list of prisoners carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Al-Nimr was a central figure in protests that erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, and his execution may spark new unrest among the oil powerhouse's Shiite minority.
This was not just typical Saudi brutality, it also was a reaction to Iran's relentless use of local Shia communities throughout the Gulf States and indeed throughout the Middle East to foment trouble for local Sunnis. So the executions don't stand in isolation. The Iranian reaction was, typically, to set the mobs loose in Tehran:

Posted by David Gerstman on December 20, 2015 15 Comments
Iran and its allies have taken a beating in Syria according to recent reports. Perhaps the most spectacular was the airstrike overnight that killed the notorious child killer, Samir Kuntar and eight other terrorists in a Damascus suburb. Prof. Jacobson rightly called Kuntar "among the most notorious and vicious terrorists," for shooting Danny Haran to death in front of his four year old daughter, Einat, and then killed her by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt. Needless to say Kuntar was treated as a hero by Hezbollah, who traded the bodies of IDF soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, to free Kuntar in 2008. He also received the Syrian Order of Merit from Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad shortly after his release. But Kuntar's killing is just a symptom of the recently reported problems plaguing Iran and its allies who are backing Assad.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 10, 2015 19 Comments
President Obama's willful blindness toward Iran's continued development of illicit weaponry is putting Americans and our allies in ever greater danger.  Obama's superficial detente with Iran ignores its deceits, dissimulations, and resolve to obtain a nuclear capability. In the latest instance, Obama is downplaying Iran's November ballistic missile test.  U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 provides, "Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology."  The November launch tested the long-range, nuclear-capable Ghadr-110 missile and was a clear violation of Resolution 1929. Nevertheless, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power merely called for “conducting a serious review of the reported incident.” This is only the latest instance of Obama withholding, distorting or ignoring information that might threaten his Iran policy.  Previously, Obama abandoned his promise that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA") would have "anytime, anywhere" inspections, agreeing instead to a drawn-out and inadequate system of notices and appeals. Caving on inspections exacerbated Obama's earlier failure to require Iran to completely disclose its preexisting nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency ("IAEA").

Posted by David Gerstman on December 02, 2015 6 Comments
Armin Rosen of Business Insider had a bombshell report on Monday about the Obama administration's diplomatic malpractice with Iran in the context of the nuclear deal announced earlier this summer. Citing a recently obtained State Department document, Rosen reported that the administration has no intention of ensuring that Iran provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with all the details of its past nuclear research. Though "extensive evidence" exists that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until at least 2003, the United States has so watered down Iran's requirements for answering questions about its past nuclear work, that the IAEA  will not have a complete picture of the extent of Iran's military nuclear program. As IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano made clear earlier this week, Iran is still stonewalling. The problem is that the United States is okay with that. Rosen reported:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 27, 2015 4 Comments
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R - Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R - Ark.) have a lot in common. Both are army veterans and both are graduates of Harvard Law School. And both have been doing a great job of exposing aspects of the nuclear deal with Iran that the administration would rather keep quiet. This week it was reported that an inquiry from Pompeo got the State Department to admit that the nuclear deal was never signed and is not "legally binding." Julia Frifield, the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, wrote in response to Pompeo's inquiry if he could see the signed agreement, in a letter reproduced at the congressman's website, that the nuclear deal was not binding and that it was not signed by any party. The key parts of the letter read:
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document ...

Posted by David Gerstman on November 12, 2015 17 Comments
In a look at the history of the tensions between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The New York Times several days ago started with an interesting anecdote.
For President Obama, it was a day of celebration. He had just signed the most important domestic measure of his presidency, his health care program. So when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived at the White House for a hastily arranged visit, it was likely not the main thing on his mind. To White House officials, it was a show of respect to make time for Mr. Netanyahu on that day back in March 2010. But Mr. Netanyahu did not see it that way. He felt squeezed in, not accorded the rituals of such a visit. No photographers were invited to record the moment. "That wasn't a good way to treat me," he complained to an American afterward. The tortured relationship between Barack and Bibi, as they call each other, has been a story of crossed signals, misunderstandings, slights perceived and real. Burdened by mistrust, divided by ideology, the leaders of the United States and Israel talked past each other for years until the rupture over Mr. Obama's push for a nuclear agreement with Iran led to the spectacle of Mr. Netanyahu denouncing the president's efforts before a joint meeting of Congress.
It's interesting because this is not at all how I remembered it. I remember that the lack of attention to the meeting was perceived as an intentional slight of Netanyahu. A quick check of the contemporaneous reporting confirmed this.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 09, 2015 10 Comments
Today Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Obama at the White House to discuss ISIS, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, and the continuing scandal that is the Iran nuclear deal. It was the first time the two men have met face to face in over a year, and the first time they have spoken since the passage of the Iran deal. During a private session with the press, Obama emphasized that both leaders are looking for "common ground," and condemned the latest wave of Palestinian violence perpetuated against Israelis; he backed the right of Israelis to defend themselves, but pushed Netanyahu for ideas on how to relieve the tension. Netanyahu continued his public support for a two-state solution, but insisted that a solution would only come when the Palestinians relent and recognize Israel as a Jewish state---which the Palestinians continue to reject. You can see the press briefing here:
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