Iran
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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May 18, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times reports that American warplanes in Syria attacked a pro-government convoy today, after it ignored warnings and violated a restricted zone around a base where United States and British Special Forces train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. American officials say that more than 20 vehicles drove within 18 miles of the al-Tanf base in southern Syria which houses the American and British Special Forces. This constituted a
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May 7, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Politico reports that the House oversight committee has launched an investigation into whether the Obama administration, in trying to win support for a nuclear deal and prisoner swap with Tehran last year, undermined an ambitious U.S. counter-proliferation effort to thwart Iranian weapons trafficking networks. In addition, 13 Republican senators have demanded answers about whether the Obama administration jeopardized U.S. national security as a result of its protracted top-secret negotiations with
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April 26, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Tucker Carlson invited Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to discuss the Iran deal in the context of Josh Meyer’s bombshell report for Politico. Meyer shows that Team Obama had a whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on. Where’s the outrage? Swalwell is not inclined to look back. It’s all ancient history. The video below from Tucker’s Fox News shows last night reflects Swalwell’s struggle to keep his Obama era talking points straight. Ben
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April 26, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Here and here, we noted Josh Meyer’s 7300-word investigative report for Politico on the odious hostage deal we arrived at with Iran last year further to the even more odious JCPOA. When it comes to the approach of President Obama and his flacks to these deals, let me adapt the song made famous by Jerry Lee Lewis: whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on. If the Democrats’ mainstream adjunct has its way
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April 24, 2017 — Scott Johnson
At the time the rotten Iran deal was announced in January 2016 reader Don Burden wrote to comment on one of the convicted Iranians released by the Obama administration in exchange for the four or five American hostages who were returning home. We posted Mr. Burden’s message in “A note on the hostage deal.”. Mr. Burden wrote, he said at the time, because “this is something I have a lot
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April 24, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Politico has just posted Josh Meyer’s investigation of concealed dimensions of the Obama administration’s giveaway to Iran in the hostage deal further to the rotten Iran nuclear deal. It is a long and intensely reported piece that warrants the closest attention. Here Meyer reports on the reaction of law enforcement authorities to the release of eight Iranian-born prisoners and the shutdown of previously undisclosed cases: When federal prosecutors and agents
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April 20, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Secretary Tillerson’s tough talk on Iran prompts a look back to the time when the Obama administration entered into the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Under the JCPOA, Obama claimed to have “blocked” Iran’s paths to nuclear weapons. This was the “narrative” disseminated by Obama soulmate Ben Rhodes to the Democrats’ moronic media adjunct. The JCPOA, it should be noted, is not a treaty. What is
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