Iran
August 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
When the Iran nuclear deal was being debated, much attention was paid to the question whether Iran would cheat on the agreement. My position was that they likely would, but they certainly didn’t have to. Iran got what it wanted up front–relief from sanctions and something like $1 billion. Having gotten what they wanted, Iran’s rulers could simply walk away from the agreement at whatever time they chose. Iran’s President,
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August 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was asked three times today by Chuck Todd whether he can work with Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist. Three times McMaster refused to say that he can. Each answer was more embarrassing than the last — to McMaster, to Bannon, and ultimately to their boss. You can read the details here. It is the job of every member of a president’s staff to work
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August 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster came in or criticism after he fired three staff members, all of whom are strongly pro-Israel and forceful opponents of the Iran nuclear deal. I gave voice to some of that criticism here. McMaster’s supporters are pushing back. Among them, at least for the time being, is President Trump. Hugh Hewitt characterizes McMaster’s critics as “a tiny slice” of “the alt right” and a
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August 3, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has fired three staff members in recent weeks. The three are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence; Derek Harvey, the NSC’s top Middle East adviser; and Rich Higgins, director for strategic planning. All three were aligned with Steve Bannon. Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard discusses the purge here. Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker of the New York Times discuss it here. Neither the Standard
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July 21, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Did President Trump certify to Congress on Monday that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal? This is what virtually of all of the reporting on his action says he did. We wrote that, early in the day, National Security Council director H. R. McMaster indicated the administration would certify Iranian compliance. The next day we reported, per Eli Lake, that Trump had balked at providing certification and came close
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July 18, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Eli Lake reports that President Trump came very close yesterday to not certifying Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal. Eli writes: On Monday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was supposed to certify Iranian compliance again. Talking points were sent to columnists. Senior administration officials briefed analysts on a conference call. The Treasury Department was set to announce new sanctions against a number of Iranians to soften the blow for the
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July 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Iran nuclear deal requires that the administration certify (or decline to certify) to Congress every 90 days that Iran is in compliance and that the agreement is in the vital national security interest of the United States. The next certification is due today. Earlier in the day, National Security Council director H. R. McMaster indicated that the administration will so certify. McMaster added plenty of noise about how the
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June 20, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Over the weekend, a U.S. fighter jet downed a Syrian warplane after Bashir al-Assad’s troops attacked positions of U.S. backed forces fighting against ISIS. The confrontation took place near the one-time ISIS stronghold of Tabqa, not too far from Raqqa. Like the recent U.S. attack on a pro-Assad convoy in Southeastern Iraq, the downing of the Syrian jet should not be viewed as intervention intended to topple Assad, Rather, it
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June 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Omri Ceren writes from The Israel Project to draw attention to the AP story “Iran calls missile attack a wider warning.”: Last week the Senate voted 98-2 to pass new Iran sanctions targeting 1st, Iran’s ballistic missile program and 2nd, the IRGC [a]. The Treasury Department had already been ramping up some measures against both: in February OFAC issued ballistic missile and IRGC designations, and in May it issued additional
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June 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Susan Crabtree of the Washington Free Beacon reports on explosive testimony from David Asher, who served as an adviser to Gen. John Allen at the Defense and State Departments. Asher told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that, in the lead-up to and during nuclear negotiations with Iran, top officials across several key law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Obama administration “systematically disbanded” law enforcement activities targeting the terrorism financing
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June 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
On Thursday the Department of Justice announced the arrests of “New York man” Ali Kourani and “Michigan man” Samar El Debek as Hezbollah agents. They have been charged with providing material support to Hezbollah. They were on the prowl looking to do damage in the United States and elsewhere. Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim made the announcment: Today, we announce serious terrorism charges against two men who allegedly
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June 7, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that gunmen stormed two major sites in Tehran today. They killed at least 12 people and wounded another 42 in gunfire and suicide blasts in parliament and at the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini (the Post calls this a “revered shrine”). ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. According to the Post, this is the first serious terrorist attack in Iran. Past attacks have been confined to minor
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June 2, 2017 — Scott Johnson
It is hard to comprehend the casual malice of the New York Times toward the national security of the United States. Today, with a little help from “current and former intelligence officials,” the Times’s Matthew Rosenberg and Adam Goldman call out Michael D’Andrea, the CIA officer newly appointed to run the agency’s Iran operations. The Times explains its perfidy: The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. D’Andrea’s role, saying it
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May 22, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, U.S. planes attacked a pro-Assad convoy in southern Syria. The convoy had violated a restricted zone around a base where United States and British Special Forces train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. I wrote about the attack here, noting that the area in question is of strategic importance to Assad, Syrian rebels, Iran, Russia, and the U.S., and hence a likely future battleground quite apart from the fight
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May 21, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
That’s the headline of Eli Lake’s story on the victory of Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani’s in this weekend’s election. Lake calls the election fake because the Iranian president lacks anything like the power we ordinarily associate with a president: As anyone who pays attention to Iran knows, the real power in the country resides with the unelected supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and the security services, which operate more like rival
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May 21, 2017 — Scott Johnson
President Trump just concluded his speech to the assembled leaders of 50 Muslim countries assembled to hear him in Riyadh. The ever popular New York Times quotes a bit from the speech in the course of reporting and opining on it in the story by Peter Baker and Michael Shear. I can’t find either a transcript or video yet. Here I would like briefly to offer a few preliminary impressions
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May 19, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats are trying to make a scandal out of the fact that representatives of the Trump campaign communicated with Russians, even though those communications were 100% appropriate. I had forgotten about this post, which I wrote in March 2015, until Rush Limbaugh read from it on his program yesterday. It reminds us what a REAL scandal involving a presidential campaign and foreign policy looks like: In 2008, the Bush
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