LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
August 17/15

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.august17.15.htm

Bible Quotation For Today/Jerusalem, How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing
Luke 13/31-35: "At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem." Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." ’

Our partnership is with God And with His Son Jesus Christ
First Letter of John 01/01-10.: "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

LCCC Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 16-17/15
Lebanon's demonized historical battles/Dr. Walid Phares/August 16/15  
To Those Predicting Changes in the Middle East/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
When Obama Adopts the Mullahs’ Style/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
Column one: American Jewry’s fateful hour/By CAROLINE B. GLICK/J.PostAugust 16/15  
Turkey's Racism Problem/Uzay Bulut//Gatestone Institute/August 16/15  
Turkey's Multiple Wars/by Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/August 16/15  
Why Are Londoners Uncomfortable with a Muslim Mayor?/Raheem Kassam/Breitbart/August 16/15  
When Multilateralism Met Realism -- and Tried to Make an Iran Deal/James F. Jeffrey/Foreign Policy/August 16/15  
There Is a Path to a Better Deal with Iran/Robert Satloff/The Atlantic/August 16/15  
No One Talks About Liberating Mosul Anymore/Michael Knights/Foreign Policy/August 16/15  
How did ISIS obtain mustard agent in fight against Kurds?/Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/August 16/15  
The Qatari Offer to Mediate between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood/Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15  
Analyzing new diplomatic activity in the Middle East/Raghida Dergham/Al Arabiya/August 16/15

LCCC Bulletin titles for the Lebanese Related News published on August 16-17/15
Lebanon's demonized historical battles/Dr. Walid Phares
General Prosecutor: Asir to Undergo DNA Test, Trial Will Be Public
Two Wounded in Shooting at Anfeh Resort
Syrian Freed after July Abduction in Arsal
Raad Says Forces 'Unable to Resolve Waste Crisis' Can't Have Say in War Decisions
Young Man Freed for Ransom after Kidnap by Syria-based Gunmen
Geagea Hails Asir's Arrest despite his Disguise 'while Known Killers Run Free'
Ibrahim Says No Foreign Role in Asir's Arrest
Arrests as Security Forces Carry Out Sidon Raids following Asir Confessions
Families of Arsal Captives Fear for Sons' Lives after Asir's Arrest
Sami Gemayel Says Christian Rights Not Hinging on Aoun or Roukoz

LCCC Bulletin Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 16-17/15
Iraq PM Scraps 11 Cabinet Posts in Wide-Ranging Reforms
Pakistan Provincial Minister among 14 Killed in Suicide Attack
82 Dead, 200 Hurt in Syria Regime Raids near Damascus
Israel Government Approves Major Offshore Gas Deal
Iraq Probe Finds Maliki, Others Responsible for Mosul Fall
Head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Israel intelligence desk, Seyyed Ahmed Dabiri is executed as Israeli spy
Trump claims he is the only candidate that is a true supporter of Israel.
Pakistani counter-terrorism official killed in suicide blast

Links From Jihad Watch Web site For Today
Iran’s Supremo “not satisfied” with nuke deal, wants even more concessions
|Tens of thousands” of Muslims in Southeast Asia support the Islamic State
“Brutal and ruthless” Muslim gangs terrorize streets of European cities
Islamic State takes Libyan port city
Obama Willfully Supporting Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood — on The Glazov Gang
Pat Buchanan stands up for Obama against that mean Netanyahu
Shocker: Biden calls Chattanooga jihadist a “jihadist”
UK Muslima who joined Islamic State now “desperate to come home”
UK theatre self-censors, cancels play about Muslims joining jihad groups

Lebanon's demonized historical battles.
Dr. Walid Phares
Sunday, 16 August 2015
During the month of August we see many Lebanese, veterans from the Lebanese Army and from the militias of the Lebanese Front, remembering their own tales during battles fought during the Lebanon war between 1975 and 1990.
They are reminiscent of stories of survival and wounds received, stretching via oral history the remembrance of battles so that their sacrifices are not forgotten. In other nations, even in defeated ones, battles are remembered even if they were lost and even if the wars those battles were a part of were not won. The history of battles and of sacrifices remains alive and is taught in classrooms. But this is not so in Lebanon, or at least not in the camp of the defeated.
When former fighters celebrate the battle of Tal el Zaatar, fought against the PLO which was blockading East Beirut, they do not realize their politicians have gone silent on its history. They do not realize that the "agreement"—imposed by Assad's tanks in 1990—that ended the war, ended their own history as well. The war of 1975-1976 was erased as a "filth to be eradicated from history books." Fighters continue to celebrate inside their homes or, now, online, but the official Lebanon, including the political establishment that represented their camp has been calling these "faits d'armes" an "ugly phase of Lebanon's history." Tal el Zaatar deeds were sold out, along with those of other battles, against seats in the parliament and in cabinets. The veterans have not yet made the link because their historians are silent. Worse, these military acts have been identified in Western media and academia as the acts of "barbarians, fascists, Zionists, and criminals." And for a quarter of a century politicians allowed this dirtying of the so-called Lebanese resistance to spread unchecked. And the vets continue to believe that the world sees them as heroes, even while their bravery is coined with massacres. Every battle in the world has done abuses, every army has committed horrors, including the Christian militias of Lebanon. Where ugliness has been committed, justice must prevail, from the woods of Poland to Abu Ghraib to Sabra and Chatila. But in the case of Lebanon, the warriors who saved half a million urban Lebanese from the snipers and jails of Tal el Zaatar armed terrorists have been lumped with the dozens of psychopaths across the sectarian lines in Lebanon who committed war crimes from the Chouf to Damour to the streets of Chekka. The fighters of Tal el Zaatar were a liberation army fighting on their own land against a terror organization. Taif or not, these are facts which have been erased from history books, and the politicians are the first to be blamed for the eradication of their people's history.
The Lebanese Army fought a titanic battle in Souk el Gharb in August 1989. It faced off with the Assad Army and its allies at a ratio of five to one and won a proportionally major victory. The various army brigades and units, after five months of ravaging exchanges of artillery, demonstrated their ability to stop any offensive by the expeditionary corps of the Syrian regime in Lebanon. In short, it established red lines. Today, veteran soldiers and officers, some are still serving, celebrate this Mount Lebanon victory. But alas the celebrants are alone. Their government does not celebrate Souk el Gharb. It can't. Because their government and politicians were on the other side. For the Syrian Army and its follower cohorts who were beaten up in August 1989 by the Lebanese Army, crushed the Lebanese military in October 1990, invaded Lebanon's Ministry of Defense, and created a new pro-Syrian government since then. The following twenty-five years eradicated the high victories by the Lebanese Army against the Assad forces and Hezbollah allies. You can't celebrate Souk el Gharb in 2015 if you were its winner in 1989.
Had the non violent Cedars Revolution been allowed to fully win in 2005, Tal el Zaatar and Souk el Gharb would have become national history celebrations. Perhaps the military history of Lebanon would have been written in its entirety, with all parties inscribing their own parts. Today, the camp that had opposed the Syrian occupation and its terror allies has been abandoned by its own leaders and politicians. The veterans celebrate alone as the new and younger generations are disoriented regarding their own interpretation of history. They hear say about the heroic stances of their fathers and grandfathers, but cannot read about it in books. Veterans are proud of the wounds in their bodies, the last evidence of their courage in the trenches. But the country dodges their pain and forsake their sacrifices.
A quarter of century has gone by and historians are still silent. It is time for them to write.
****
Dr Walid Phares is a professor of international relations and the author of the NGO draft that introduced UNSCR 1559 resolution
http://www.cedarsrevolution.net/jtphp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3820&Itemid=2

General Prosecutor: Asir to Undergo DNA Test, Trial Will Be Public
Naharnet/August 16/15/General Prosecutor Judge Samir Hammoud revealed that detained Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir will be subject to a DNA test to confirm that it really is him after he had undergone a number of plastic surgery operations to alter his appearance, reported the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday. He told the daily: “I asked the state commissioner to the military court to perform the test.” Moreover, he said that an indictment had been previously issued against Asir, meaning that his file is “complete” and it will only be a matter of time before he stands trial. “A preliminary investigation is necessary however and a warrant should be based primarily on an interrogation of Asir,” Hammoud explained. The trial will be public, he told Asharq al-Awsat.
Asir was arrested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport on Saturday as he attempted to leave the country to Nigeria through Egypt. The firebrand anti-Hizbullah cleric is wanted for his involvement in the clashes against the army in the southern city of Sidon in 2013.

Two Wounded in Shooting at Anfeh Resort
Naharnet/August 16/15/Two people were injured Sunday as a dispute erupted into gunfire at a resort in the northern coastal area of Anfeh, state-run National News Agency reported. “Two private security guards were hurt as a dispute with young men from Arab al-Talleh escalated into gunfire at a touristic resort in Koura's Anfeh,” NNA said. In the wake of the incident, an Internal Security Forces patrol staged raids in the area in search of the shooters, the agency added.

Syrian Freed after July Abduction in Arsal
Naharnet/August 16/15/A Syrian man was released Sunday in the northeastern border town of Arsal after he was kidnapped last month, state-run National News Agency reported. “Syrian abductee Salah Fares was freed in Arsal and handed over to the army intelligence department in Ras Baalbek,” NNA said. “Fares was nabbed outside the building of the Arsal Municipality last month,” it added. Arsal lies 12 kilometers from the border with Syria and has been used as a conduit for weapons and rebels to enter Syria, while also serving as a refuge for people fleeing the conflict. Jihadists from the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front groups, who are entrenched in the outskirts, stormed the town in August 2014 and engaged in deadly battles with the army following the arrest of a top militant. They withdrew from Arsal at the end of the fighting, but kidnapped a number of troops and policemen. A few have since been released, four were executed, while the rest remain held.

Raad Says Forces 'Unable to Resolve Waste Crisis' Can't Have Say in War Decisions
Naharnet/August 16/15/Head of Hizbullah's Loyalty to Resistance bloc MP Mohammed Raad noted Sunday that political parties that are not being able to “resolve the waste management crisis” cannot ask to have a say in the country's war and peace decision. “It is reasonable that a country in the world cannot find a solution to its garbage crisis?” asked Raad rhetorically during a speech he delivered in the southern town of Ain Qana. “The crisis only exists in Lebanon, and the reason is that there is a crisis of splitting shares and the presence of greed and rottenness inside state institutions,” the MP added. “The state is too weak to be able to address a garbage crisis,” he underlined. The lawmaker said certain political parties in the government are asking the people to grant them “an authorization for deciding war and peace with the Israeli enemy.”“If you can't resolve a waste crisis, how will you be able to resolve a war crisis or to confront the enemy that is backed by all countries in the world?” Raad asked.
Ever since Israel withdrew its forces from south Lebanon in 2000, a lot of political forces in Lebanon have accused Hizbullah of maintaining an “illegitimate” arsenal of arms and of monopolizing the decisions of war and peace. The party argues that its military might has deterred Israel from launching new attacks against Lebanon. The unprecedented waste-management crisis erupted in July after the closure of the Naameh landfill. It saw streets overflowing with waste and the air filled with the smell of rotting garbage in the capital Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The government pledged last year that Naameh would be closed on July 17 and an alternative site be found, which never happened. A temporary deal was found later on to begin taking trash to several landfills in undisclosed locations. The chosen locations have filled with trash in light of the absence of a substitute for Naameh, triggering a major concern. Last week, three private companies submitted bids to manage Beirut's waste without declaring a disposing ground.

Young Man Freed for Ransom after Kidnap by Syria-based Gunmen
Naharnet/August 16/15/A kidnapped man was released Sunday for a ransom after a two-day abduction ordeal in Syria near Lebanon's border, state-run National News Agency reported. “Mohammed Rifaat Yehia, who hails from the town of Maaraboun, has been released for a $50,000 ransom, two days after he was abducted by gunmen in the Syrian town of Rankous,” NNA said. On Friday, the agency said unknown gunmen nabbed Mohammed and his father from their cherry grove in Maaraboun's outskirts near the Lebanese-Syrian border. “When they reached Syrian territory, the captors released the father and told him to secure a $150,000 ransom within 24 hours or face his son's death,” NNA reported on Friday.

Geagea Hails Asir's Arrest despite his Disguise 'while Known Killers Run Free'
Naharnet/August 16/15/Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea praised on Sunday the security agencies for their arrest of Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir, deeming it a “major achievement.”He wondered however: “How is it that Asir was arrested, despite his full disguise and fake passport, while the same agencies have failed to arrest the killers of Hashem al-Salman and Sobhi and Nadimeh Fakhri even though they never wore a disguise?”He made his observations via his Twitter account. “How is it that these same agencies have not been able to stop street, drug, and kidnapping gangs in the Bekaa region even though they are well-known and are free to roam the country?” continued Geagea. Asir was arrested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport on Saturday as he attempted to leave the country to Nigeria through Egypt. He was using a fake Palestinian passport and had underwent a number of plastic surgeries and was dressed as a woman to alter his appearance. The firebrand anti-Hizbullah cleric is wanted for his involvement in the clashes against the army in the southern city of Sidon in 2013. Salman was killed in 2013 in a scuffle between supporters of Hizbullah and protesters near the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The demonstrators were holding a sit-in near the embassy to protest Hizbullah's involvement in the war raging in Syria. Sobhi Fakhri and his wife Nadimeh were killed in 2014 in a crime committed by fugitives from al-Jaafar clan in the Baalbek town of Btedei. The gunmen were fleeing raids carried out by the Lebanese army in the Dar al-Wasaa area when they entered the Fakhri house with the intent of taking their vehicle. The family refused to meet the demands of the armed men, which prompted them to shoot the couple and their son. None of the perpetrators in the crimes have been arrested.

Ibrahim Says No Foreign Role in Asir's Arrest
Naharnet/August 16/15/Foreign intelligence agencies did not help Lebanese authorities arrest fugitive Islamist cleric Ahmed al-Asir, the General Security said on Sunday. “All claims of a link for foreign security agencies in Asir's arrest are baseless and the operation was entirely carried out by the General Security,” agency chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim told MTV. Denying reports that a retinal scanner was behind Asir's capture, Ibrahim clarified that the General Security does not have such a device, vowing that the agency will continue its efforts to “preserve security and stability in Lebanon.” Asir was arrested Saturday morning at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport. The cleric, who had shaved his beard and changed his appearance, was trying to fly to Nigeria by way of Cairo, using a fake Palestinian travel document that had a valid visa, the General Security said. He had been on the run since June 2013, when he and some supporters fought a deadly battle with the army outside the southern city of Sidon. The army seized his headquarters after 48 hours of clashes that killed 18 soldiers, but Asir was able to escape with several of his followers. He continued to issue audio statements while on the run, and various rumors circulated as to where in Lebanon he was hiding. In 2014, prosecutors sought the death sentences for Asir and 53 others, including singer-turned-fundamentalist Fadel Shaker. They were accused of having formed armed groups that attacked the army, killing officers and soldiers, and of having explosive materials, light and heavy weapons that they used against the army.
Asir, a native of Sidon, was virtually unknown politically before the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011. He began making headlines after the conflict erupted by criticizing Hizbullah and its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Arrests as Security Forces Carry Out Sidon Raids following Asir Confessions
Naharnet/August 16/15/Security forces carried out a number of raids in the southern city of Sidon in the wake of confessions of detained Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmad al-Asir, reported the National News Agency on Sunday.
It said that a unit from the General Security intelligence branch raided at noon the area of Sirob east of Sidon following the confessions. The sweep targeted a car repair shop belonging to a Lebanese supporter of Asir, it clarified. Locals revealed that the owner was not seen in the area ever since news of Asir's arrest broke out. NNA said that the security forces are seeking to arrest as many of the cleric's accomplices as possible before they flee in anticipation of his confessions in detention. TV reported that he had named several of his accomplices during his interrogation. Later on Sunday, LBCI television said the General Security arrested a man in the Sidon suburb of Jadra. “A General Security force raided an apartment in Jadra belonging to Abdul Rahman al-Shami, following confessions by al-Asir,” LBCI said. “It also raided his shop in Sidon, where his son, Mutassem Billah, was arrested,” LBCI added. It said the father went into hiding “the moment news broke about al-Asir's arrest.” “He is suspected of having offered him (al-Asir) refuge and help,” the TV network added. Asir was arrested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport on Saturday as he attempted to leave the country to Nigeria through Egypt. The firebrand anti-Hizbullah cleric is wanted for his involvement in the clashes against the army in the Sidon's Abra area in 2013.

Families of Arsal Captives Fear for Sons' Lives after Asir's Arrest
Naharnet/August 16/15/The relatives of the servicemen abducted by the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front extremist groups voiced their concern that the arrest of Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir will “negatively affect” negotiations on the captives' release, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday. Hussein Youssef, father of hostage Mohammed Youssef, told the daily: “The state's announcement of Asir's arrest will negatively affect negotiations if there even are negotiations.”“The state has the right to arrest a fugitive or suspect, but why did it have to announce it?” he wondered. “Do they want to hinder negotiations in our file?” he asked the daily. Another relative noted: “Matters have become more complicated after Asir's arrest.”He expressed concern that the captors will once again resort to threatening to kill the hostages. The servicemen were kidnapped in the wake of clashes with the IS and al-Nusra Front in the northeastern border town of Arsal in August 2014. A few of them have since been released, four were executed, while the rest remain held. The kidnappers are reportedly demanding the release of a number of Islamist prisoners from Lebanese jails in exchange for their release. Asir was arrested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport on Saturday as he attempted to leave the country to Nigeria through Egypt. The firebrand anti-Hizbullah cleric is wanted for his involvement in the clashes against the army in the southern city of Sidon in 2013.

Sami Gemayel Says Christian Rights Not Hinging on Aoun or Roukoz
Naharnet/August 16/15/Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel on Sunday rejected the “isolation” of any party in Lebanon while noting that the rights of Christians are not hinging on the election of MP Michel Aoun as president or the appointment of Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz as army chief. “There is no doubt that there is a problem in partnership in this country that started with the Taef Accord and everyone knows this,” Gemayel acknowledged during an interview on al-Jadeed television. “Amid this decaying situation, the presidential vacuum, the parliament's paralysis and the threats on the border, is this the time to tackle the minor issues? Will the rights of Christians be restored through this appointment?” Gemayel asked rhetorically. Pointing out that Aoun is “right in principle,” Gemayel noted that the chief of the Free Patriotic Movement is “mistaken in the topics that he is reducing the problem to.” “The rectification of the political situation must go first through a new electoral law,” he said. “We're not convinced that the Christian situation can only be rectified through Aoun's election as president,” Gemayel went on to say. But the Kataeb chief underlined that the election of a new president must precede the drafting of a new electoral law. “The future of Christians is not hinging on a single person,” Gemayel stressed. He also said the rights of Christians will not be “undermined” if Gen. Roukoz – commander of the Commando Regiment and Aoun's son-in-law – does not become army chief. Asked about Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's allegations that there is an attempt to “defeat” and “isolate” Aoun, Gemayel underscored that Kataeb rejects the isolation or defeat of any party in Lebanon. Aoun has recently mobilized his supporters to hold street protests against what he terms as the violation of the rights of Christians and Defense Minister Samir Moqbel's decision to extend the terms of top three military officers, including the army commander. The FPM has also accused Prime Minister Tammam Salam, who is close to al-Mustaqbal movement, of infringing on the rights of the Christian president in his absence. The movement's ministers want to amend the cabinet's working mechanism to have a say on its agenda. Prior to Moqbel's move, Aoun had been reportedly lobbying for political consensus on the appointment of Roukoz as army chief.

Iraq PM Scraps 11 Cabinet Posts in Wide-Ranging Reforms
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 16/15/Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the removal of 11 cabinet posts Sunday in the first concrete step of a reform drive aimed at curbing corruption and streamlining the government. Abadi scrapped three deputy premier positions and four ministries, and merged four more ministries with others, a statement from his office said, reducing the size of the cabinet by a third. He removed the human rights ministry, the ministry of state for women's affairs, the ministry of state for provincial and parliamentary affairs, and a third ministry of state. And he merged the science and technology ministry with higher education, environment with health, municipalities with reconstruction and housing, and tourism and antiquities with culture. Abadi rolled out a reform plan on August 9 in response to weeks of protests and a call from the country's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and parliament approved the program along with additional measures two days later. Sistani, who is revered by millions of Shiites, then called for judicial reform on Friday, and Abadi echoed that call later in the day. One of the most drastic of Abadi's proposals was the elimination of the vice president and deputy premier posts. While Abadi may be able to do away with the deputy premiers, the constitution would need to be amended to fully eliminate the post of vice president -- something unlikely to happen at this time. Amid a major heatwave that has seen temperatures top 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit), protesters have railed against the poor quality of services, especially power outages that leave just a few hours of government-supplied electricity per day. Thousands of people have turned out in Baghdad and cities in the Shiite south to vent their anger and pressure the authorities to make changes. Their demands were given a boost last week when Sistani called for Abadi to take "drastic measures" against corruption, saying the "minor steps" he had announced were not enough. Various parties and politicians have sought to align themselves with the protesters apparently to benefit from the movement and mitigate the risk to themselves. Even with popular support for change, the entrenched nature of corruption and the fact that parties across the political spectrum benefit from it will make any efforts extremely difficult. Abadi warned Wednesday that the reform process "will not be easy; it will be painful," and that corrupt individuals would seek to impede change.

Pakistan Provincial Minister among 14 Killed in Suicide Attack
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 16/15/Two suicide attackers on Sunday killed a Pakistani provincial minister, who had campaigned against militants, and at least 13 other people, after detonating a bomb at a meeting the minister was attending. "Punjab Home Minister Shuja Khanzada has embraced martyrdom," said chief rescue official Mohammad Ashfaq. Khanzada, 71, had been holding a meeting with local people who had come to express their condolences on the death of his cousin. He was trapped with several others under the rubble after the blast brought down the roof of the building in the village of Shadi Khan in Attock district. "There were two suicide bombers, one stood outside the boundary wall and the second one went inside and stood in front of the minister," Mushtaq Sukhera, provincial police chief, told reporters. "The blast by the bomber standing outside ripped the wall which caused the roof to fall flat on the minister and people gathered there," he said. Sukhera added police were investigating whether the attacker inside the building detonated a bomb. Sukhera said that 14 people were killed and 23 others were wounded in the attack and added that he could not rule out the involvement of banned sectarian militant outfits against whom the government had launched a crackdown. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Khanzada had been active in crackdowns on sectarian militants and Taliban insurgents in Punjab. Khanzada, a retired army colonel, had been a member of the Punjab assembly since 2002 and an active member of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the party of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The prime minister, along with President Mamnoon Hussain and army chief General Raheel Sharif condemned the attack and expressed their resolve to fight terrorism.
"Such dastardly coward attempts can't dent our national resolve to eliminate the menace," said army spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa in a statement.
"Khanzada Shaheed (martyr) was a bold officer whose sacrifice for the greater cause of cleansing Pakistan won't go to waste."Punjab's government announced a three-day mourning period in the province starting Monday. Officials said there were up to 40 people in the compound when the suicide attack took place, causing the entire roof slab to fall in one piece -- complicating rescue efforts. A specially-trained team of army rescuers with modern equipment was working with civilian rescuers to lift and cut sections of the fallen roof to reach the victims. A police spokeswoman said two police officers were also among the dead in the attack, 70 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of Islamabad. In the past year Pakistani authorities have cracked down hard on the myriad insurgent groups that have plagued the country for a decade. The offensive intensified after Taliban gunmen slaughtered more than 130 children at a school in the northwest of the country in December. Last month the leader of an anti-Shiite group behind some of Pakistan's worst sectarian atrocities was killed in a shootout with police, along with 13 other militants. Malik Ishaq was shot dead along with fellow Laskhar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants, including senior commanders, in Punjab. LeJ, long seen as close to al-Qaida and more recently accused of developing links with the Islamic State group, has a reputation as one of Pakistan's most ruthless militant groups.

82 Dead, 200 Hurt in Syria Regime Raids near Damascus
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 16/15/ At least 82 people were killed in Syrian regime air raids Sunday on a town outside Damascus, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least 200 people were also injured in a string of 10 strikes on the rebel-held town of Douma. Civilians accounted for most of those killed, it said, and the death toll was expected to rise further because many of the wounded were in serious condition. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said locals had gathered after a first strike hit a market in the town to help evacuate the wounded when the additional raids hit. At least six raids hit the market, with the others striking nearby in the center of town, Abdel Rahman said. A video posted online by activists of the aftermath of the attacks showed an intersection strewn with rubble and twisted metal. The fronts of several buildings nearby appeared to have been sheared off by the force of the blasts, and many cars lay overturned and crumpled. Douma lies in the rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta, a region outside the capital that is the regular target of government air strikes. Eastern Ghouta has been under government siege for nearly two years, with regime forces tightening the blockade since the start of 2015. Amnesty International earlier in the week accused the government of committing war crimes in Eastern Ghouta, saying its heavy aerial bombardment of the area was compounding the misery created by the blockade. The group also accused rebels in the area of war crimes for firing rockets indiscriminately at the capital. Elsewhere, fierce fighting raged in rebel-held Zabadani, near Damascus, and rebels rained rockets on two government-held villages in northwestern Syria after the collapse of a ceasefire. On Saturday, a 48-hour-old truce for Zabadani and the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya collapsed after negotiators failed to reach a long-term deal. Government forces have been trying for weeks to capture Zabadani, the last rebel bastion in the area along the Lebanese border. In response, rebels have fired hundreds of missiles at Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite-majority villages that are the last regime-held civilian areas in Idlib province. Meanwhile, a U.S.-trained rebel group said in a statement that al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front had freed seven of its members kidnapped two weeks earlier. "We welcome this noble initiative and urge the brothers of al-Nusra and hope that they will release in the coming hours the group's commander and other fighters," the statement stamped by the group's command said. Division 30 is among the units receiving training as part of a U.S.-led program operating from Turkey that is intended to create a force to fight the Islamic State jihadist group. But after the first 54 members of the force entered Syria in July, al-Nusra kidnapped 13 of them, including a commander, and at least three more killed in clashes with the jihadist group.
Al-Nusra accused the force of serving U.S. interests.

Israel Government Approves Major Offshore Gas Deal
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 16/15/The Israeli government on Sunday approved a major deal with a consortium including U.S. firm Noble Energy on natural offshore gas production in the Mediterranean, the prime minister's office said. The agreement, which was announced on Thursday and is expected to face a parliamentary vote, aims to end months of uncertainty and set a framework for the exploitation of gas discoveries. It is expected to raise major new government revenues and could provide Israel with strategic leverage in the region if it becomes a gas exporter. "This money will benefit education, health, social welfare and other national needs," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ahead of the cabinet vote, which passed 17-1. Noble and locally based firm Delek have since 2013 produced gas from the Tamar field off the Israeli coast. They have also teamed up to develop the offshore Leviathan field, considered to be the largest in the Mediterranean. The agreement stipulates that Delek sells its 31 percent share of Tamar within six years, and Noble decrease its holdings there from 36 to 25 percent to no longer be the largest shareholder.
It also contains amendments to an earlier version, such as linking the price of gas to an energy index, which is meant to lower costs for consumers. The consortium committed to invest $1.5 billion to develop the Leviathan field over the next two years. Israel has agreed not to change fiscal and regulatory rules related to the gas industry for a decade as long as the consortium abides by its commitments. The talks have been controversial, with many fearing the deal would overly favour the companies involved. The agreement notes that Israel's anti-trust authority objects to it on the grounds that it does not allow for sufficient competition. To circumvent that obstacle, Netanyahu's inner cabinet in June declared gas production to be linked to national security, thus allowing the government to override laws related to monopolies. Netanyahu has pushed hard to speed up gas production in the Mediterranean, drawing criticism from political opponents who accuse him of not ensuring sufficient benefits for the public in the negotiations. "The true interests of the state of Israel require the approval of this outline as quickly as possible," he said on Sunday, while declaring he was "not impressed by populism." Dov Khenin, a lawmaker from the Joint List, was one of the opposition members to speak out against the agreement, listing a series of reasons why it was tantamount to a "concession agreement" to Noble and Delek. Khenin on Thursday noted the lack of a mechanism to control gas prices, which would enable them to rise. He also said the government agreed to put off the deadline to developing Leviathan until 2020, and pointed out that Israel was not insisting on another pipeline to lead the gas from Tamar being installed, as many had hoped would be the case.

Iraq Probe Finds Maliki, Others Responsible for Mosul Fall
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 16/15/An Iraqi parliamentary investigation found ex-premier Nouri al-Maliki and other officials responsible for jihadists overrunning second city Mosul, in a report being sent for possible legal action, lawmakers said Sunday. While various top commanders and political leaders have long been blamed for the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group's disastrous takeover of the capital of Nineveh province, the investigative committee's report is the first time they have been named officially. Committee member MP Abdulrahim al-Shammari said that Maliki, who was prime minister from 2006 until last year, was among those named, as did another member who declined to be identified. The inclusion of Maliki's name -- who is now vice president -- was a source of controversy on the committee, with his Dawa party pushing for it to be left out. Various former senior officials were also named in the report detailing the committee's findings, which has not been publicly released.An MP on the committee said these include defense minister Saadun al-Dulaimi, army chief of staff Babaker Zebari, his deputy Aboud Qanbar, ground forces commander Ali Ghaidan, Nineveh operations command chief Mahdi al-Gharawi and the province's governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi. The report was presented Sunday to parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi, who said it will be sent to the prosecutor general for legal action. No one is above the law and the questioning of the people, and the judiciary will punish those" responsible, Juburi said in a statement. IS launched a devastating offensive on June 9 last year, overrunning Mosul the next day and then sweeping through large areas north and west of Baghdad. Multiple Iraqi divisions collapsed during the initial assault in the north, in some cases abandoning weapons and other equipment which the jihadists then used to further their drive.
Possible Ramadi prosecutions
Maliki is widely viewed as having exacerbated sectarian tensions between the country's Shiite majority and its Sunni Arab minority. Widespread discontent among Sunni Arabs, who say they were marginalized and targeted by Maliki's government, played a major role in aggravating the security situation in Iraq, culminating in the jihadist rout. He also appointed commanders based on personal loyalty rather than competence, and was commander-in-chief of the armed forces during two years in which the Iraqi military did not carry out necessary training, leading to a decline in skills. Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office announced that he had cleared the way for the military prosecution of senior commanders responsible for a military disaster in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad. IS seized Ramadi in May, after government forces had held out against militants there for more than a year. Abadi approved "decisions of the investigative commission on the withdrawal of the Anbar operations command and units attached to it from the city of Ramadi", his office said in a statement. Those include "referring a number of the leaders to the military judiciary for leaving their positions without orders and contrary to instructions (and) despite the issuance of a number of orders not to withdraw," it said. Abadi previously said that forces in Ramadi "had to resist, and if they had resisted, we would not have lost Ramadi."And a senior British military officer in a U.S.-led anti-jihadist coalition, Brigadier Christopher Ghika, said the city "was lost because the Iraqi commander in Ramadi elected to withdraw.""In other words, if he had elected to stay, he would still be there today," Ghika said.

Head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Israel intelligence desk,  Seyyed Ahmed Dabiri  is executed as Israeli spy
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 16, 2015
highly credible Iranian exile sources in Europe have revealed to debkafile that the Director of the Israel Desk of the Revolutionary Guards clandestine service was executed by a firing squad in late June or early July after he was accused of spying for Israel.
Aged 46, Seyyed Ahmed Dabiri was his codename. His real name is not known. The sources report that he was tried by a Guards martial court and found guilty of tipping Israel off on classified information, including the movements of Iranian military commanders in Syria, Iranian arms shipments to Syria and arms convoys bound for Hizballah in Lebanon. Suspicion first fell on Dabiri after the Israeli air force struck the convoy of Iranian and Hizballah commanders that was on a top-secret visit to the village of Mazraat Amal near the Golan town of Quneitra on Jan. 18. They were there to survey the terrain preparatory to planting a Hizballah rocket position just across from IDF’s Golan outposts, a mission which ended in disaster. Killed in the attack were the Iranian general in charge of the Syrian front, Gen. Mohammad Ali Allah-Dadi, the high-ranking Hizballah intelligence officer Ali al-Tabtababni, who was in charge of liaison with the Iranian Guards, and Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the iconic Hizballah commander in chief, the late Imad Mughniye. He had been assigned command of the Hizballah Golan base whence to launch a new offensive against Israel. After the air strike, the plan was abandoned, a setback with devastating effect on the Iranian and Hizballah high commands. Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah announced at the time that the gloves was now off against Israel and that “rules of engagement” with the Jewish state were no longer in force.
No more than a handful of big shots were privy to the Golan tour in the highest Revolutionary Guards highest echelon and the inner circle of Nasrallah. The IRGC’s chief Gen. Ali Jafari and Iran’s Middle East commander in chief Gen. Qassem Suleimani ordered an all-encompassing investigation to find out who was responsible for leaking to Israeli intelligence the secret of the Golan tour. According to the Iranian exiles, the high Hizballah command and the Guards headquarters in Tehran were exhaustively investigated.
debkafile’s sources point to the fact that on Jan. 5, two weeks before Israel’s deadly air strike, Nasrallah’s deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem, complained that “Hizballah is battling espionage within its ranks and has uncovered some major infiltrations.”
A short time earlier, in December 2014, Mohammad Shawraba, 42, the deputy chief of Unit 910, which is responsible for external terrorist operations, was arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel. So in the weeks leading up to the Israeli Golan attack, Hizballah was buzzing with Israeli spy fever. Yet the Guards probe failed to discover the source of the leak either in Beirut or Tehran. When no Israeli mole was identified, the Guards intelligence chief Gen. Hassan Taeb set a trap and baited it with a false piece of intelligence.
On April 25, Israel air planes struck what they believed to be Syrian and Hizballah bases and arms dumps in the Qalamoun Mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border. Middle East media carried confused reports on this attack – some claiming it targeted an arms convoy heading into Lebanon from Syria; others cited missile stores or even the Syrian army’s 155th and 65th Brigades. Israeli sources declined to confirm or deny any of those versions. The cause of the mix-up was that the target was a red herring. But the attack enabled Iranian spy catchers to narrow down the source and discover that Ahmad Dabiri was the mole who had tipped Israel off..

Trump claims he is the only candidate that is a true supporter of Israel.
JPOST.COM STAFF/08/16/2015 11:15
Donald Trump, speaking to a crowd in Iowa on Saturday, vehemently re-emphasized his disapproval of the Iran deal crafted by Secretary of State John Kerry last month. "Well you're going to have to be forceful action, very, very forceful action," Trump said. "You cannot let Iran-let me tell you this-nor can Israel. Israel was sold out by Kerry and Obama. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You can't have it. When they march down the street saying death to Israel, death to the United [States]. You can't let it happen. It will not happen. Believe me, it will not happen here." This is not the first time that Trump has utilized pro-Israel rhetoric, or mentioned Israel's defense during his venture to win the Republican primary. Referring to Obama as "one of the worst things that has happened" to the Jewish state, Trump has attempted to position himself as the only solution to repairing the Israel-America relationship, which he argues has been ruined by the Obama administration. In a recent interview to a Jewish news outlet, he stated that he is the only true supporter of Israel in the 2016 presidential race. His candor may be a bit confusing, however, as nearly all 13 GOP hopefuls have been vociferous in their commitment to Israel and have all condemned Obama's policies towards Israel, as well as the president's treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Speaking to JNS.org, Trump said: "The only [candidate] that's going to give real support to Israel is me. The rest of them are all talk, no actions. They're politicians." "I've been loyal to Israel from the day I was born," said the budding politician. "My father, Fred Trump was loyal to Israel before me. The only one that's going to give Israel the kind of support it needs is Donald Trump." In an effort to highlight his long-term support, Trump listed off various plaques and awards he has received over the years from Jewish organizations commending him for his commitment to the Jewish State. He reminded JNS.org of the time he acted as grand marshal for the Israel parade in New York City and noted that he had given Netanyahu a celebrity video endorsement during the 2013 Israeli election campaign.

Pakistani counter-terrorism official killed in suicide blast
Shuja Khanzada/Los Angles Times/August 16/15/A senior Pakistani official was killed along with at least 14 others Sunday in a suicide bombing at his office, according to police and rescue officials. Shuja Khanzada, who helped lead counter-terrorism operations as home minister in Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, was killed barely two weeks after police shot and killed one of the country’s most feared militant leaders. Authorities said the bombing was a retaliatory strike, although no militant group immediately claimed responsibility. A police officer stands guard on a roadside in Peshawar, Pakistan, following a suicide bomb blast that killed Shuja Khanzada, the home minister of Punjab province, on Aug. 16. (Arshad Arbab / European Pressphoto Agency) Khanzada was holding a meeting at his office in Attock district Sunday morning when a suicide bomber blew himself up, causing a blast so powerful that the roof of the building caved in with 40 to 50 people inside, officials said. Khanzada and several others were crushed under the rubble, said Ghulam Shabbir, a senior police officer in Attock. It was several hours before rescue teams could retrieve the bodies from the wreckage. “There is no chance that we would rescue somebody alive from the rubble,” said Deeba Shahnaz, a spokesperson for rescue operations, adding that the death toll could rise. Khanzada was actively involved in major operations against militant groups in Punjab and had become a target of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group, after the July 29 killing of its leader, Malik Ishaq, provincial counter-terrorism officials said. The retired army colonel served as military attache in Pakistan's embassy in Washington from 1992 to 1994. Pressure on militant groups in Pakistan has been growing since the government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism cases, a policy that Khanzada supported.
http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-pakistani-official-killed-in-suicide-blast-20150816-story.html

To Those Predicting Changes in the Middle East
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
Confusing between end results and facts produces myths. This has been especially evident in much of the news that has circulated lately regarding impending changes in the region. According to these reports the situation in Syria is starting to improve and Russia is finally altering its attitude towards Iran and Bashar Al-Assad. We have also heard that the Houthi retreat in Yemen is the outcome of a deal with ally Iran. Saudi Arabia is abandoning the Syrian opposition and reconciling with Assad. And the Lebanese can now elect a president following the Iranian nuclear deal. Some have even claimed that some of the new stances taken by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi are the result of an Iranian–Gulf reconciliation package and that Saudi Arabia has started to favor Hamas and turned its back on the Palestinian Authority.Until now, there is no compelling evidence that these changes have indeed taken place and I personally do not believe that any major political or military shifts will take place either. Those who hurried to analyze the increased political activity over the past few weeks went on to preach that regional and international powers have finally decided to resolve all matters related to Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gulf. The problem is that some of us often confuse between information and analysis, between news and opinion. For example, the recent meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Gulf ministers does not necessarily mean there has been a change in attitudes towards the Syrian conflict.
As for Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s statements about Tehran seeking to cooperate and reconcile with the Gulf states, they remain until this moment mere words without anything tangible to back them up—and are most likely a response to US calls for Iran to show a more positive spirit towards its Gulf adversaries so that the latter stop criticizing the nuclear deal. Zarif did not propose anything specific. We are only witnessing a flurry of diplomatic activity, which includes Qatari and Omani efforts to reconcile with Iran. The Iranians themselves do not wish to relinquish their influence in Syria and Iraq, nor do they want to cooperate to resolve the dispute over their position on Lebanon, comparatively a much easier task. As for Yemen, improvements on the political scene were generated by military advances on the ground such as the liberation of Aden and the defeat of the Houthi rebels. It had nothing to do with Iranian political stances.
The most important piece of evidence that proves all these rumors are bogus came from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir. Speaking in Moscow last week, he said the Kingdom does not accept any solution to the Syrian conflict that involves Assad remaining in power. He said those words quite clearly, while sitting next to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, who in turn maintained his country’s own position, contradicting the view from Riyadh. As for the news that a Syrian security official recently visited Jeddah, this should be seen as being part of routine communications that take place between adversaries. Even if the government in Damascus offered to present a new solution that Saudi Arabia may eventually welcome, the Kingdom does not necessarily have to accept it. The same goes for the visit of exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mishal to Saudi Arabia. It does not mean a change in Riyadh’s position, which is based on a legal foundation and clear political interests. Legitimacy goes to the Palestinian Authority; the Hamas government residing in Gaza appears to be a “lame duck” administration. Here it is in the Saudi interest to support the legitimate authority and cooperate with other countries in the region, particularly Egypt. Rumors that Iran is unhappy with communications between Riyadh and Gaza are merely a product of Hamas propaganda to make the Saudis turn to them. It is Iran that does not want a relationship with Hamas, as it is seeking to pass the nuclear deal and offset Israel’s opposition to it. Tehran, formerly a member of the “axis of evil,” now wants Riyadh to take its place and become a state cooperating with internationally reviled organizations so that Saudi Arabia stands in the extremist camp while Iran joins the moderates!Let’s go back to the surge in fake scenarios about impending major changes in the Middle East. The only new fact is Iran’s nuclear deal with the West, and we are yet to know how that will affect the region in the future, whether positively or negatively. The contentious issues between the countries of the region are deep-rooted. In Syria, the system collapsed with pro- and anti-Iranian terrorist organizations residing there. The war has swept all over the country from Zabadani to Deraa. In Yemen, the Saudi-led campaign has succeeded in helping liberate Aden while the capital Sana’a is about to be besieged. The situation in Iraq is still volatile with fighting going on every day in the west of the country and in parts of Iraq still controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These conflicts are real and need more than a few diplomatic visits and the fertile imaginations of some journalists in order to be adequately resolved. Only changes in attitudes can produce tangible results.

When Obama Adopts the Mullahs’ Style
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
Those who are sucked into big adversarial situations in history always run a number of risks. However, the biggest risk, I believe, is to have an evil adversary and end up looking, behaving and even thinking like them. If that happens to anyone, they could be sure that even if they win many battles, they would end up losing the war. In contrast, one might be lucky enough to end up resembling an adversary that is better than oneself. The effect that “the other” has on one has been observed throughout history, even at the level of great empires. When ancient Rome and Iran became adversaries each learned a number of things from each other. Rome was a republic in conflict with Iran, a monarchy. When Marcus Licinius Crassus, in his time the greatest of Roman generals, was killed by the Persians in the battle of Harran in 53 BC, the Roman elite started thinking of adopting the monarchic system which they eventually did under Julius Caesar. At the other end of the spectrum, unlike the Romans, Iranians did not have a standing army. In time, however, they decided to imitate their adversary by creating precisely such a war machine.
In more recent times, the Soviet Union and the United States, two great powers engaged in the Cold War, reciprocally adopted aspects of each other’s system. The Soviet defense doctrine has been built on the deployment of mass armies, scorched earth and prolonged fighting on land that had been tested with success during the Napoleonic wars. The American doctrine was woven around the motto: Get in, Kill the enemy, Get out! It found its most tragic expression in the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. Six years later, the Soviets had built their own atom bomb. The Soviets had a vast and brutal intelligence-security system built around the KGB, itself heir to the Tsarist Okhrana and the Leninist Cheka. In 1945, having disbanded the OSS, their wartime intelligence service, the Americans had nothing of the sort. Soon, however, they created the CUA which was to imitate the KGB in as many ways as America’s open society could tolerate. The Soviets practiced the black arts against their opponents in Eastern and Central Europe. Americans did similar things in Latin America.
Trouble for the Soviets started when more and more of their people, including some in the leadership, started to talk like the Americans. In 1989 together with four European newspaper editors we held a number of meetings in Moscow with Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev and Yevgeny Primakov. We were all surprised how all of them talked like western Social Democrats, especially when they held forth about “universal values.” “They have been contaminated by the Western bug,” I wrote at the time, only half in jest. “Let’s see if they really mean what they say.”All that came back to my mind when reading the speech that US President Barack Obama gave in Washington the other day in defense of his “nuke deal” with the Islamic Republic. The first thing that struck me was how his discourse echoed that of the mullahs. He started by building a metaphysical heaven-and-hell duality about a very this-worldly issue. He warned that the choice was between accepting his deal (Heaven) and war (Hell). The beauty of life, however, lies in the fact that it is full of endless possibilities, including doing nothing when doing anything else could cause more harm.
Next, he imitated the mullahs by practicing “taqiyah” (dissimulation). He diligently avoided delving into the details of a convoluted “deal” every part of which is designed to deceive. He also hid the fact that his much advertised “deal” has not been officially accepted by the Iranian state. More broadly, he practiced another mullahs’ trick known as “mohajah” which means drawing your adversary into the simulacrum of a battle which, even if they won, would offer them nothing but the simulacrum of a victory. Having already committed his administration through his sponsorship of a United Nations’ Security Council resolution endorsing the “deal”, Obama pretended that his fight with the Congress might end up conjuring some meaning. Another mullahs’ tactic he used is known as “takhrib” which means attacking the person of your adversary rather than responding to their argument. Those who opposed the “deal”, he kept saying, were the same warmongers that provoked the invasion of Iraq and the “Death to America” crowd in Iran. The message was simple: Those are bad guys, so what they say about this good deal does not count!
He was repeating a favorite dictum the mullahs say: Do not see what is said, see who is saying it! That dictum has generated two immense branches of knowledge: The Study of Men (Ilm Al-Rejal) and the Study of Pedigrees (Ilm al-Ansab). Prove that someone is a good man with a good pedigree and you could take his narrative (hadith) on the most complex of subjects at face value. On the contrary, he who is proven to be a bad man with an inferior pedigree should be dismissed with disdain even if he said the most sensible thing. Obama forgot that among the warmongers who pushed for the invasion of Iraq were two of his closest associates, Joe Biden, his vice president, and John Kerry, his secretary of state, along with the entire Democratic Party contingent in the Congress.
On the Iranian side, he forgot that President Hassan Rouhani and his patron former President Hashemi Rafsanjani built their entire career on “Death to America” slogans. Rouhani and his “moderate” ministers till have to walk on an American flag as they enter their offices every day. The official Iran Daily ran an editorial the other day in support of Obama’s “campaign for the deal.” “Obama is the nightmare of the Republicans because he wants to destroy the America they love,” it said. “His success will be a success for all those who want peace.” In other words, the Tehran editorialist was echoing Obama’s Manichaean jibe. In any case, name-calling and accusing critics of harboring hidden agendas is another tactic of the mullahs known as “siahkari” (blackening) of the adversary.
I am embarrassed to talk of myself, but I have been more of “Long Live America” crowd than the “Death to America” one. And, yet I think the Vienna deal is bad for Iran, bad for America and bad for the world. I also think that it is possible to forge a deal that is good for Iran, good for the US and good for the world. I have also never asked the US or anybody else to invade Iran or any other country. I have also never been a Republican if only because I am not a US citizen, and never studied, worked or resided there. I could assure Obama that, as far as I can gauge public opinion, the majority of Iranians have a good opinion of America and a bad opinion of the “deal”. This is, perhaps, why, like Obama, the Rafsanjani faction, of which Rouhani is part, is trying to avoid the issue being debated even in their own ersatz parliament. This is also why Iranian papers critical of the deal are closed down or publicly warned. Rather than depending on the Khomeinist lobby in Washington, or even assertions by people like myself, Obama should conduct his own enquiries to gauge Iranian public opinion. He might well find out that he is making an alliance with a faction that does not represent majority opinion in Iran. His “deal” may disappoint if not anger a majority of Iranians who are still strongly pro-America. Rouhani’s Cabinet is full of individuals who held the American diplomats hostage in Tehran for 444 days. Yet, they support Obama. Those who oppose the “deal”, however, include many Iranians who genuinely desire the closest of ties with the US. Finally, another mullah concept, used by Obama, is that of “End of Discussion” (fasl al-khitab) once the big cheese has spoken. That may work in the Khomeinist dictatorship; it is not worthy of a mature democracy like the United States.

Column one: American Jewry’s fateful hour
By CAROLINE B. GLICK/J.Post/08/13/2015
American Jewry is being tested today as never before. The future of the community is tied up in the results of the test.
If the Jews of America are able to mount a successful, forceful and sustained opposition to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which allows the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear-armed state and provides it with $150 billion up front, then the community will survive politically to fight another day. If the communal leadership and its members fail to fight, American Jews will find themselves communally disenfranchised. On the face of it, there is no reason this fight should have been anything more than a hopeless – but relatively insignificant – ordeal. Given that all Obama needs to do to secure the implementation of his nuclear pact with the mullahs is secure the support of a one-third minority in one house of Congress, he might have been expected to go easy on his opponents since they have so little chance of defeating him. Instead, Obama has decided to demolish them. He has presented them with two options – capitulate or be destroyed.
Consider Hillary Clinton’s behavior.
On Tuesday the Democratic presidential front-runner and former secretary of state ratcheted up her statements of support for Obama’s nuclear pact with the ayatollahs. Speaking to supporters in New Hampshire, Clinton said, “I’m hoping that the agreement is finally approved and I’m telling you if it’s not, all bets are off.” On its face, Clinton’s mounting support for the deal makes little sense. True, her principal rival for the Democratic nomination, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced his support. But this deal will probably not be an issue by the time Democrats begin voting in their primaries. On the other hand, the deal is not popular among either the general public or key Democratic donors. According to a poll taken this week by Monmouth University, only 27 percent of the general population and only 43 percent of Democrats want Congress to support the deal.
Then there is the funding issue.
Clinton hopes to raise $2.5 billion to fund her campaign. Her chance of securing that support – particularly from Jewish Democrats – is harmed, not helped by openly supporting the deal. So why is she speaking out in favor of it? The same day Clinton escalated her support for the deal, the FBI seized Clinton’s private email server and her thumb drive amid reports that the inspector-general of the US intelligence community concluded that there were top secret communications on her email server. Simply storing top secret communications, let alone disseminating them, is a felony offense.Clinton submitted more than 32,000 emails from her server to the State Department. A random sample of 40 emails showed up four classified documents, two of which were top secret. If the same ratios hold for the rest of the emails she submitted, then she may have illegally held some 3,200 classified documents, 1,600 of which were top secret. While Clinton is presenting the investigation as a simple security issue, she may very well find herself quickly under criminal investigation. At that point, her dwindling White House prospects will be the least of her worries.
But there is one person who can protect her.
If Obama wishes to close or expand a criminal probe of Clinton’s suspected criminal activities, he can. As Roger Simon from Pjmedia.com wrote this week, “Hillary Clinton is in such deep legal trouble over her emails that she needs the backing of Obama to survive. He controls the attorney-general’s office and therefore he controls Hillary (and her freedom) as long as he is president.” The prejudicial indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez – the most outspoken critic of Obama’s deal with the ayatollahs in the Democratic Party – on dubious corruption charges in April shows that Obama isn’t above using his control over the Justice Department to persecute political opponents. Then there is Obama’s treatment of Sen. Charles Schumer. Last Thursday night, the senior senator from New York and the next in line to lead the Democratic minority in the Senate informed Obama that he will oppose his nuclear deal. Schumer asked Obama to keep Schumer’s position to himself in order to enable Schumer to announce it on Friday morning.
Rather than respect Schumer’s wishes, the White House set its leftist attack dogs on Schumer.
By the time Schumer announced his plan to oppose the deal he had been called a traitor, a warmonger and an Israeli agent by leftist activist groups who pledged to withhold campaign contributions. Schumer was compared to former Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman was forced to face a primary challenge in his 2006 reelection bid. His opponent, Ned Lamont, was generously supported by leftist activists led by George Soros. Lamont’s campaign was laced with anti-Semitic overtones, and Lieberman lost. He was forced to run in the general election as an Independent and won by virtue of the support he received from Republican voters and donors. White House press secretary Josh Earnest threatened that Schumer could expect to be challenged in his bid to replace outgoing Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid when Reid retires next year. Responding to the onslaught against him, while maintaining his opposition to the deal, Schumer reportedly told his Democratic Senate colleagues that while he was opposing the deal, he would not lobby then to join him in opposition. The White House led- and instigated-assault on Schumer is interesting because of what it tells us about how Obama is using anti-Semitism. In all likelihood, Schumer would have demurred from lobbying his Senate colleagues from joining him in opposing the deal even if Obama hadn’t fomented an openly bigoted campaign to discredit him as a Jew. The mere threat of denying him his long-sought goal of heading the Democratic Senate faction, not to mention the possibility of mounting a primary challenge against him, probably would have sufficed to convince him not to take any further steps to oppose the deal. So what purpose is served by calling a senior Democratic senator with a perfect leftist record on domestic issues a traitor, a warmonger and an agent of Israel? In all likelihood, the decision to attack Schumer as a disloyal Jew does not owe to some uncontrollable anti-Semitic passion on Obama’s part.
Even if Obama is in fact an anti-Jewish bigot, he is more than capable of concealing his prejudice.
, as we learned over the weekend from Iranian media reports translated by MEMRI, Obama told the Iranians four years ago that they could have the bomb.
According to MEMRI’s findings, Iranian negotiators said that Obama sent then-Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman John Kerry to Oman in 2011, while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still Iran’s president, to begin nuclear negotiations. During the course of those early contacts, Obama agreed that Iran could continue enriching uranium in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a host of binding UN Security Council resolutions. He also agreed that Iran would not be required in the framework of a nuclear deal to reveal all of the possible military dimensions of its past nuclear work. In other words, he told the Iranians that he would not stand in their way to the bomb. Obama managed to hide his concessions from the American people. He orchestrated a spectacle of “serious” negotiations with the P5+1 and Iran, where he pretended that the concessions he had made four years earlier were made at the very last moment of the nuclear talks in Vienna.  Given his obvious skill, it is clear that he would only play the anti-Semitism card if he believed he had something to gain from it. So what is he planning to do that anti-Semitism can help him to accomplish? Over the past month, Obama has demonized and criminalized opponents of his nuclear deal.
Last week at American University Obama said that his Republican opponents are the moral equivalent of “Death to America”-chanting jihadists. Obama presented deal opponents in general as warmongers who would force the US into an unnecessary war that his deal would otherwise prevent. And, since he said that among all the nations of the world, only Israel opposes the deal, it easily follows that the Jews who oppose the deal are traitors who care more about Israel than America. And then this week his troops let it be known that Schumer is a warmonger and a traitor. And a Jew. In his meeting with American Jewish leaders last Tuesday, Obama said that if the community dares to criticize him personally, it will weaken the American Jewish community and as a result, the strength of the US-Israel relationship. If Jews – like Republicans – are warmongering traitors, obviously they should be made to pay a price.
By singling out and demonizing Jewish American opponents of the deal as corrupt, treacherous warmongers, Obama is setting the conditions for treating them as disloyal citizens can expected to be treated. In other words, at best, Jewish opponents can expect to find themselves treated like other Obama opponents – such as Tea Party groups that were hounded and harassed by the IRS and other governmental organs. AIPAC can expect to be subjected to humiliating, public and prejudicial probes. Jewish institutions and groups can expect to be picketed, vandalized and sued. Jewish activist can expect to be audited by the IRS. In that meeting with American Jewish leaders, Obama seemed to present them with a choice. He reportedly told AIPAC’s representatives, “If you guys would back down [from their opposition to the deal], I would back down from some of the things I’m doing.” Actually, he gave them no real options. Obama effectively told the leaders of the American Jewish community that as far as he is concerned, Jews have no right to advance their collective concerns as Jews. If they do, he will attack them. If they give up that right under duress, then he will leave them alone. So remain free and be hounded, or give up your rights and be left alone. Some commentators have characterized the fight over the deal as a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party. This may be the case. But first and foremost, it is a fight over whether or not Jews in America have the same rights as all other Americans. To be sure, Israel will be harmed greatly if Congress fails to vote down this deal. But Israel has other means of defending itself. If this deal goes through, the greatest loser will be American Jewry.

Turkey's Racism Problem
Uzay Bulut//Gatestone Institute/August 16, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6351/turkey-racism-problem
The U.S. Department of State needs to analyze the Kurdish issue more closely and carefully. When they do, they will see that the problem should not be called "the Kurdish Issue;" it would be more just to call it "the Turkish Racism Problem." Kurds in Turkey have always been brutally oppressed, even when there was no organization called the PKK. Kurds are not the ones who started the war in Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders have openly and frequently made it clear that despite all of the state terror, mass murders and oppression they have been exposed to, they wish to live in peace with their Turkish, Arab and Persian neighbors. There is a war imposed on Kurds. Turkey's authorities keep saying that the Turkish "security" forces do what they do -- arrest or kill Kurds -- only when Kurds carry out "terrorist" activities, or only when the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) attacks targets in Turkey. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. Turkey's attacks against Kurds have always been intense, even when the PKK declared unilateral ceasefires. Regarding 2014, when there were no clashes between the Turkish military and the PKK, Faysal Sariyildiz, a Kurdish MP for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), said, "During the last year, regarding the Kurdish issue, 3,490 people have been taken into custody, 880 people have been arrested and 25 people have been killed with police bullets."
"These attacks," said Mark Toner, spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, "are only exacerbating the continuation and the cycle of violence here. We want to see these attacks cease. We want to see the PKK renounce violence and re-engage in talks with the government of Turkey."What Mr. Toner fails to understand -- although of course both sides should renounce violence and try to resolve the issue through dialogue, without bloodshed -- is that the cycle of violence intensified only after the Turkish military started a recent all-out assault on Qandil in Iraqi Kurdistan. What the AKP government refers to as "the resolution process" started in 2012, when talks were allegedly held between the Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999. Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, after his capture by Turkish special forces in 1999. But since then, in terms of liberties and rights, what has changed for Kurds? Before that, about eight or nine talks between the PKK and the MIT were held in Oslo, Norway between 2008 to 2011, a PKK authority said. During the talks, the PKK -- through the protocols Ocalan prepared -- demanded a constitutional resolution, peace, and the establishment of a "Commission on Investigation of Truth" that would investigate murders committed in the past. "But in June 2011, after the elections, the government saw itself as powerful again, so it stopped participating in the talks and stopped taking them seriously," the PKK authority said.
Again, during this process, no legal step was taken for recognition of Kurdish national rights. Just this May, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a public speech: They [the HDP party] say that "When we come to power, we will abolish the Diyanet [Presidency of Religious Affairs]." Why? Because they have nothing to do with religion. They go as far as saying that Jerusalem belongs to Jews; they [the PKK] give education on Zoroastrianism at the camps on the mountains.[1] The TRT [state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation] has a Kurdish TV channel. There are Kurdish language courses at universities. Our country does not have a Kurdish issue any more. But our Kurdish citizens have some issues. Those who want to make the resolution process all about the Kurdish issue are on about something else. They say 'We are the representatives of the Kurds.' No way! If you really are their representatives, clear up the dirt in the sidestreets." Is this the language that someone who genuinely aims to achieve peace and provide democracy would use? First of all, Erdogan and his AKP party do not see the Kurdish issue as an ethnic or national problem. They seem to think that a Kurdish TV channel and a few courses at universities should be enough to resolve the issue. This shows that the root of the problem is not the Kurds' demands or violence. The root of the problem is traditional Turkish supremacism. The Turkish government evidently expects the indigenous Kurds to settle for whatever crumbs the government offers.
It is this supremacist mentality of Turkey that started and inflamed this problem, and created countless grievances in Kurdistan. The Turkish state wants to be the one to name the issue; to start and end it; to choose the way to resolve it or make it go on forever; to determine how Kurds will live and die; what Kurds can want and when they should stop; what language they can speak, and where and when. Then, when Kurds resist, and say they want to be free and have a say in their own affairs in Kurdistan, Turkey dismisses them or blames them for being "terrorists" or "traitors." The Kurdish PKK is an armed organization; and just like all armed organizations or groups, it uses violence as a tactic. But it does not aim to destroy Turkey or the Turkish people. It has declared several times that it is open to dialogue, negotiation and peaceful coexistence.
The Turkish government could also embrace a similar purpose: peace based on political equality and mutual respect. Turkey could abandon its destructive militaristic ways and start an open, transparent, genuine peace process that does not aim to destroy and annihilate Kurds and their militia. Killings will only bring more killings and more hatred. It is high time that Turkey stopped attacking Kurds and used the only method it has not used in its history: respecting the indigenous peoples of Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Turkish state authorities seem to wish to make Kurds surrender without gaining any national rights or political status, and they call this "a peace process." That is not an oversimplification: The AKP has ruled Turkey since 2002 but has done nothing to recognize Kurdish self-rule. All the AKP did was to provide a few small changes, such as permitting a Kurdish TV channel, TRT-6. But even those are not legal reforms. Turkey is still ruled with the same constitution that the Turkish military drafted after the 1980 coup d'état. In this fight, Kurds are the "rape victims." On their own ancestral lands, they have no national rights and no political status, and they do not even have the right to be fully educated in Kurdish. They are randomly murdered and arrested. Apparently, their lives have no value in the eyes of the Turkish state. Turkey has a huge national problem because it does not see Kurds as an equal nation. This is how many Turks see the conflict:
Turks are to have their own state -- a supreme one that has power over international politics -- but Kurds are not to have even autonomy. Turkish is to be a rich and respected language worldwide, but Kurds are not to have a single school where they can be educated fully in Kurdish. Turks are to have a powerful army; Kurds are to disarm their militia and are to just serve in the great army of Turks. But even integration in the military does not seem to work. Many soldiers of Kurdish origin serving in the Turkish army reportedly commit "suicide" or are killed in "accidents." In 2012, for instance, out of the 42 soldiers who were officially reported to have killed themselves, 39 were Kurdish and one was Armenian, according to the lawyer Mazlum Orak. The founders of the Turkish state also promoted Turkish nationalism to the full extent, while denying the very existence of Kurds in Turkey. They fully enforced a ban on Kurdish language, culture and geographical place names. They called Kurds "mountain Turks" and did not allow Kurds to establish legal political parties until the 1990s. Even after that, seven legal pro-Kurdish political parties were closed down by the Turkish constitutional court over 20 years. Scores of Kurdish villages were burned down by the Turkish army, and tens of thousands of Kurds were tortured or murdered wholesale.
Kurds in Turkey have therefore always been brutally oppressed even when there was no organization called the PKK.
Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikci, who was spent 17 years in prison for his writings on Kurds and Kurdistan, compared Turkey to South Africa. He concluded that Turkey's mentality "is much more racist" than South Africa's:
"What happened in South Africa in 1960s was that the white administration told the others: 'You are black; you will live separately from us. You will have separate neighborhoods, schools, hotels, and entertainment places. You will live outside of places where the white live; do not mix with whites.' And for that, they formed very large areas that were surrounded with wires. Those places had very limited infrastructure. The sewer system did not work; there were frequent electric power outages and water cuts. The schooling and health conditions were very insufficient. But the natives experienced their own identity. They lived the way they were. But Turkey tells Kurds: 'You will live with us but you will look like us. You will forget your identity. You will live with Turks but will look like Turks.' I am trying to say that this mentality is much more racist than the administration in South Africa." Besikci noted that in the 1990s, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and was elected as the president of South Africa: "The president of the white administration that released Mandela from prison became the vice president of Mandela in the elections. South Africa is called the most racist state of the world but such a change happened there. This shows the official ideology there was flexible; it was not so strict."
Kurds are not the ones who started the war in Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders have openly and frequently made it clear that despite all of the state terror, mass murders and oppression they have been exposed to, they wish to live in peace with their Turkish, Arab and Persian neighbors. There is a war imposed on Kurds. And its results have been disastrous for Kurdistan. The U.S. Department of State really needs to analyze the Kurdish issue more closely and carefully. When they do, they will see that the problem should actually not be called "the Kurdish Issue;" it would be more just to call it, "the Turkish Racism Problem."
**Uzay Bulut, born and raised a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.
[1] Selahattin Demirtas, co-President of the HDP, had said in a public statement, "Religions have their centers. Muslims go to Kaaba in Mecca; Jews go to Jerusalem."

Turkey's Multiple Wars
by Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/August 16, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6340/turkey-multiple-wars
At home, the AKP is fighting tens of millions of secular Turks, atheists, Kurds, Alevis, the PKK, the DHKP-C and the clandestine network of Gülenists. Not a small list.
In addition, Turkey does not have full ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations with Syria, Israel, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
To avoid fighting multiple enemies at multiple fronts is an old military strategy. Particularly in the last five years, Turkey's Islamist rulers have chosen to do the opposite.
First, they deliberately polarized the society along pious-secular Muslim lines in order to reinforce their conservative voter base. In 2013, they brutally suppressed millions of demonstrators who took to the streets to protest the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). They accused Israel and the West (including Western media, a German airline and even "intergalactic forces") of masterminding the protests.
At the end of 2013, the AKP broke up with its long-time political ally, the Gülenists, named after Fethullah Gülen, an influential Muslim preacher living in self-exile in the United States. Turkey's National Security Council recently added the Gülen movement into the country's list of terror organizations. In the past year and a half, law enforcement authorities have expelled, arrested, indicted or purged thousands of police officers, prosecutors and judges believed to be "Gülenists."
Today, in addition to the Gülenist "terrorists" the Turkish government is fighting, a Marxist-Leninist terror organization, DHKP-C and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the armed wing of the Kurdish political movement, have been fighting for self-rule or autonomy in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast. A ceasefire came in 2013, after nearly 40,000 people were killed in clashes since 1984.
However, recently violence renewed after a jihadist suicide bomber killed 32 people at a meeting of young pro-Kurdish humanitarian activists, in a small Turkish town on the Syrian border, on July 20. Since then, not a day has passed without clashes between the security forces and PKK militants. Hundreds have already been killed or injured in this new wave of violence. Similarly, Alevis, who practice an offshoot of Shia Islam, and are often viewed as heretics by the AKP's Sunni Islamists, are increasingly tense as they remain deprived of even official recognition of their houses of worship.
At home, the AKP is fighting tens of millions of secular Turks, atheists, Kurds, Alevis, the PKK, the DHKP-C and the clandestine network of Gülenists. Not a small list.
When Syria looked relatively stable, Ankara was fighting a cold war against President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus. Now, four years later, in addition to Assad, the Turks are also fighting a cold war against Syrian Kurds who have carved out a Kurdish zone across much of Turkey's border with Syria, and Turkey has recently officially joined the allied campaign to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS), and an unknown number of al-Qaeda-linked groups operating in northern Syria. "How many different groups is Turkey fighting in Syria, in addition to Assad's regime? I wish I knew the answer," a senior security official told this author.
In its vicinity, Turkey has not had diplomatic relations with Cyprus since 1974, when Turkey invaded the northern third of the island; nor with Armenia since 1991, when it became independent during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In addition, Turkey does not have full ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations with Syria, Israel, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
On top of that, Turkey, which claims to be emerging as the leader of the Muslim world, has not held a political forum with the 22-nation Arab League since 2012, due to its political crisis with Egypt. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not recognize the legitimacy of Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and insists that Egypt's legitimate president is Mohamed Morsi, the imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leader.
On August 4, the Arab League condemned Turkey's air strikes against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, and called on Ankara to recognize the sovereignty of Iraq.
Turkey looks like a crowded, noisy house sitting in a notoriously noisy, volatile and violent neighborhood. Half of the people living in the house tend to pick up fights with the other half on a daily basis. The house is often on fire because of the fighting. But the householders are also in feuds with most of the dangerous folks living in the neighborhood. Gang fighting and ambushes break out daily, with most crimes remaining "unsolved."
Yet the big angry people in the Turkish house still believe that they will one day be the toughest guys in the neighborhood whom everyone fears and respects. They do not even realize that often they are just the neighborhood's bad joke.
The big angry people in the Turkish house still believe that they will one day be the toughest guys in the neighborhood whom everyone fears and respects. They do not even realize that often they are just the neighborhood's bad joke. Pictured above, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and his political-ideological nemesis, Fethullah Gülen (right).
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum

Why Are Londoners Uncomfortable with a Muslim Mayor?
Raheem Kassam/Breitbart/August 16, 2015
Originally published under the title, "Londoners 'Uncomfortable' with Muslim Mayor, but Don't Blame Xenophobia, Blame Muslim Politicians."
Labour MP Sadiq Khan has declared his candidacy for mayor of London.
One-third of Londoners are said to be "uncomfortable" with the idea of a Muslim mayor, according to a new YouGov poll for LBC radio. What seems to have especially excited some is the revelation that 73 percent of UK Independence Party (UKIP) voters in London feel the same way. But can they really be blamed?
The reason some of the people are "uncomfortable" is undoubtedly going to be a level of xenophobia. But the majority, I believe, are subconsciously internalising the public performances of Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom and are rightly concerned by them.
Critics might point to the fact that UKIPers, across the board according to the poll, are less "progressive," leading the field in discomfort for the idea of a female mayor (12 percent), a homosexual mayor (26 percent) and an ethnic minority mayor (41 percent). Well, yes, UKIP is a party of traditionalists and conservatives first and libertarians second. I don't think anyone should try to hide from that or try to explain it away. But the discomfort about a Muslim mayor (73 percent) requires some deeper thought.
Sayeeda Hussain Warsi (left) resigned from Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, calling his Israel policy "morally indefensible." Former Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman (center) fell due to corruption charges. MEP Amjad Bashir (right) was kicked out of UKIP for "grave" financial irregularities.
Look at the shining examples we have of high profile Muslim politicians in the United Kingdom: Baroness Warsi, former Mayor Lutfur Rahman, ex-UKIPer Amjad Bashir, and of course one of the people tipped to challenge for the Labour candidacy, Labour MP Sadiq Khan.
"But wait! What about Syed Kamall? Sajid Javid? Khalid Mahmood? Rehman Chishti?" I hear you ask.
Quite. But what about Humza Yousaf, Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, and Yasmin Qureshi?
By and large, Muslim politicians in the UK tend to be far more ... divisive, to be polite. There are several camps. Some, like Lutfur Rahman and Baroness Warsi, have Islamist links. Some have questionable backgrounds, such as the defence of Louis Farrakhan or Guantanamo Bay detainees (Sadiq Khan), and one let UKIP down in a big way, while being investigated for improper behaviour (Amjad Bashir).
Humza Yousaf (left), a member of the Scottish parliament, was previously media spokesman for a radical Islamist charity. Labour MPs Shabana Mahmood (center) and Yasmin Qureshi (right) are more concerned with boycotting Israel than serving their constituents.
Others engage in sectarian politics at a whim. George Galloway, though he doesn't claim to be a Muslim (others claim he converted), divided and conquered in Bradford West and was, as a result, turfed out. Politicians like Ali, Mahmood, and Qureshi are united by their demonisation of Israel and tolerance of extremism.
And Tory-elected officials like Kamall, Javid, and Chishti are precisely why Conservative voters in London are more comfortable (39 percent against) with a Muslim mayor. One of their leading candidates is a practicing Muslim – they'd have to be.
Perhaps the argument can be made that UKIP voters are not xenophobic or anti-Muslim – although one might argue they are more likely to be anti-Islam, and that's a discussion for another time – but rather that they have simply been paying attention.
When you couple the backgrounds of a lot of leading Muslim politicians in Britain with the more objective, black-and-white worldview that UKIP voters have, they are naturally predetermined to be more sceptical.
You might argue that UKIP voters shouldn't see things in such a clear-cut way and shouldn't attribute the failings of one Muslim politician to others. There are evident trends, similarities, and commonalities, but that contention would be a decent compromise approach.
Unfortunately, while there are a handful of decent Muslim politicians in Britain, I can't help but think that the highest-profile ones have let people with my name and background down. It's no different than UKIPers being sceptical of a Conservative mayor, or Labour being sceptical of a Tory one.
Maybe I should run for London mayor on a UKIP ticket? Or maybe not.
**Raheem Kassam is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London

 When Multilateralism Met Realism -- and Tried to Make an Iran Deal
James F. Jeffrey/Foreign Policy/August 16, 2015
If realist opponents of the Iran agreement insist that the JCPOA must go, they will need to explain in detail how the limited alternatives at Washington's disposal are worth the profound risks of killing the current deal.
President Barack Obama's Aug. 6 speech on Iran, notable for its "my way or war" polemics, signals a hardening of the debate over the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, just as Congress begins reviewing the deal. This political calcification reflects various factors, from presidential election polling, to tensions between the Obama administration and Congress, to the existential issues involved for Middle Eastern states. But it draws much of its fire from the unreconciled differences in competing world views of the many fors and contras -- a multilateral idealism for the former, a unilateral realism for the latter.
Both perspectives are valid, but neither is complete. Without understanding the differences in perspectives and attempting to bridge them, arriving at a rational decision will be hampered. Even more seriously, the ultimate up or down results -- JCPOA survives congressional review or doesn't; the JCPOA, or whatever would replace it, strengthens Middle East stability or doesn't -- will be crippled if the deal does not better reflect and reconcile these conflicting world views. Thus Obama's multilateral idealism needs a shot of unilateral realism, and the realist opposition needs to better appreciate what multilateral idealism can and can't do.
These two perspectives have a long history of conflict and cohabitation. The P5+1 effort with Iran on the nuclear issue is a case of classic multilateral idealism: global relationships as moral, ordered, rational, and based on the rule of law. The operating elements of this system are nation states, equally sovereign and committed to the UN preamble's values, for which they signed up. The coin of this realm is diplomatic politesse even among bitter enemies, with member states treated as inherently redeemable -- if they promise to mend their ways.
This approach presents problems when dealing with a revolutionary anti-status quo state like Iran, problems exacerbated by the Obama administration's multilateral idealism on steroids. Projecting their own views onto a very different culture, administration leaders have claimed that the opportunities the deal offers Iran, as the president noted in his July 14 statement, for "integration into the global economy, more engagement with the international community, and the ability of the Iranian people to prosper and thrive" will do far more than any JCPOA details to keep Iran nuclear weapons-free. Iran's past behavior is thus not particularly important. What is, is "going forward," as Secretary of State John Kerry put it at the State Department press briefing on June 16. The administration thus seemingly believes that Iran will adhere to the agreement because adherence is beneficial to Iran's inevitable "vocation" -- a normal system state.
Usually presidents operating in a multilateral idealism context season it with a bit of realism (see: Former President Richard Nixon's 1972 Vietnam escalation while negotiating with China and the USSR) -- especially with nuclear aspirant states where the negotiating record is not promising. But the Obama administration is hampered here from two directions: first, by its dismissive attitude towards military force (the ultimate realist seasoning) in circumstances other than counterterrorism, and second, by administration leaders' "grander ambitions for a deal they hope could open up relations with [Iran] and be part of a transformation in the Middle East," as Gardiner Harris put it in the New York Times. This supposedly, per Kerry's words to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview on Aug. 5, could even produce U.S.-Iranian joint action on regional problems. In line with this, the administration seems to see any tough love towards Iran as deleterious to the prize -- which is a different Iran. But given the discouraging record of transforming states (Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Russia), putting all of one's eggs in this basket of idealist transformation seriously harms chances for managing an unpredictable Iran.
But those sharing the stark unilateral realism perspective of many JCPOA opponents have their own difficulties. In dealing with security threats like Iran, realism has much to offer: Only power and force, not laws or trust or glitzy conferences in Alpine venues, can protect oneself and one's friends from the "other." But driven by moral repugnance at Iran's undoubtedly aggressive policies, many opponents seek not effective deterrence but something stronger -- a permanent state of hostility toward Iran that mirrors Tehran's approach toward much of the world. While critics of the agreement frequently cite the many flaws in the JCPOA, for many the deal's main problem is its failure to force Iran to surrender virtually its entire nuclear program and remain permanently and internationally ostracized as the aggressor state they argue it is. The problem with this approach is not the end, per se, but the means available to achieve it.
Unilateral realism, of course, has in its repertoire the means to this end -- military force. (Unilateral U.S. sanctions just don't cut it.) But this is not now an option. Public opinion following the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is strongly against an attack on Iran in almost all circumstances, and as Gen. Joseph Dunford recently noted, America has more dangerous threats than Iran. Thus, the United States -- starting with the Bush administration -- eschewed a unilateral military approach with Iran for an international mix of negotiation and sanctions backed by threat of force, essentially applying multilateral idealism with unilateral realism threads, and that's where we are today.
With no unilateral realism means -- military force or unilateral sanctions -- at hand to achieve their desired end, realist opponents must deploy multilateral idealism's means: thus, their calls for new international negotiations and sanctions to rectify the JCPOA error. But these means, whether in the P5+1 talks or in any successor negotiation with Tehran (were the JCPOA to be rejected), cannot produce the end which these opponents seek; permanent ostracism is alien to the entire international law-based system. Not even Saddam Hussein's idiotic defiance at a time of much greater U.S. dominance could generate perpetual outcast status.
Thus the problem with the unilateral realism approach. Despite Obama's accusations, opponents wisely avoid advocating the one means -- military force -- that would produce the victory over Iran they want. The irony is that the uncertain maximum end which they could obtain with the multilateral idealism means left to them -- replacing the JCPOA with a new multilateral negotiation backed by new international sanctions -- is simply limited improvements to the JCPOA. And this approach has major risks: 1) no guarantee of a new, let alone better, agreement; 2) diplomatic confusion; 3) a refusal by the Obama administration to reengage; 4) the likely erosion of sanctions; 5) the collapse, at least temporarily, of verification of Iran's nuclear program; and 6) the possible exploitation of America's credibility gap by Russia and China.
If realist opponents have no choice to enlist these tools of multilateral idealism as a means to deal with Iran after killing the JCPOA, they need to analyze the practical pros and cons of the outcome in advance. What is the benefit of a new, still-less-than satisfactory, multilateral agreement in comparison to the profound risks of killing the existing agreement? A magic victory over Iran without using force is just not possible. And if the opponents of the deal still insist the JCPOA must go, they should present their alternative multilateral diplomatic, sanctions, and military plans in detail -- including hard evidence that the rest of the P5+1 would accommodate them.
Likewise, if the Obama administration wants to secure the agreement from congressional defeat and ensure that it meets minimum American and partner security needs (and thus not be rejected by the next administration), it must introduce a more credible element of unilateral realism -- namely, the threat of military pressure so abhorred by this president -- into its Iran policy, and distance itself credibly from the dream of a future Iran transformed by Obama and Kerry's diplomatic skill.
**James Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute.

There Is a Path to a Better Deal with Iran
Robert Satloff/The Atlantic/August 16, 2015
Because a 'no' vote on the Iran deal would have little practical impact until next year, lawmakers have time to work with the president on making reasonable fixes to the agreement even if they disapprove it in the short term.
Imagine you're a conflicted lawmaker in the U.S. Congress. You've heard all the arguments about the Iran nuclear agreement, pro and con. A vote on the deal is coming up in September and you have to make a decision. But you are torn.
Most of your colleagues don't share your angst. They have concluded that the risks of the nuclear accord far exceed its benefits. They will vote to disapprove.
Some take the opposing view. They accept President Barack Obama's argument that the agreement will effectively block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for a very long time at little risk to U.S. interests.
You are in a third group. You recognize the substantial achievements in the deal, such as Iran's commitment to cut its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98 percent, gut the core of its plutonium reactor, and mothball thousands of centrifuges. But you have also heard experts identify a long list of gaps, risks, and complications. These range from the three and a half weeks that Iran can delay inspections of suspect sites, to the billions of dollars that Iran will reap from sanctions relief -- some of which will surely end up in the hands of terrorists.
For his part, the president seems to believe that he negotiated a near-perfect deal. In his recent speech at American University, he described the pact as a "permanent" solution to the Iranian nuclear problem. It was a shift from when he told an NPR interviewer in April that once limitations on Iran's centrifuges and enrichment activities expire in 15 years, Iran's breakout time to a nuclear weapon would be "shrunk almost down to zero." Both statements -- achieving a "permanent" solution and Iran having near-zero breakout time -- cannot be true.
The president has said a "better deal" is a fantasy. But you never took seriously the unknowable assertion that the Iran accord is "the best deal possible," as though any negotiator emerging from talks would suggest that what he or she has received is anything but "the best deal possible." And you cringe whenever advocates of the agreement hype its achievements as "unprecedented," knowing this is not a synonym for "guaranteed effective."
You may not believe in unicorns, as Secretary of State John Kerry said you must to accept the idea of a "better deal," but you have been impressed by suggestions on how to strengthen the agreement. The United States could even implement many of these proposals without reopening negotiations with the Iranians and the P5+1 group of world powers. Here are several such options:
Consequences: Repair a glaring gap in the agreement, which offers no clear, agreed-upon penalties for Iranian violations of the deal's terms short of the last-resort punishment of a "snapback" of UN sanctions against Iran. This is akin to having a legal code with only one punishment -- the death penalty -- for every crime, from misdemeanors to felonies; the result is that virtually all crimes will go unpunished. The solution is to reach understandings now with America's European partners, the core elements of which should be made public, on the appropriate penalties to be imposed for a broad spectrum of Iranian violations. These violations could range from delaying access for international inspectors to suspect sites, to attempting to smuggle prohibited items outside the special "procurement channel" that will be created for all nuclear-related goods, to undertaking illicit weapons-design programs. The Iran deal gives the UN Security Council wide berth to define such penalties at a later date, but the penalties have no value in deterring Iran from violating the accord unless they are clarified now.
Deterrence: Reach understandings now with European and other international partners about penalties to be imposed on Iran should it transfer any windfall funds from sanctions relief to its regional allies and terrorist proxies rather than spend it on domestic economic needs. U.S. and Western intelligence agencies closely track the financial and military support that Iran provides its allies, and will be carefully following changes in Iran's disbursement of such assistance. To be effective, these new multilateral sanctions should impose disproportionate penalties on Iran for every marginal dollar sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, etc. Since these sanctions are unrelated to the nuclear issue, they are not precluded by the terms of the Iran agreement.
Pushback: Ramp up U.S. and allied efforts to counter Iran's negative actions in the Middle East, including interdicting weapons supplies to Hezbollah, Assad, and the Houthis in Yemen; designating as terrorists more leaders of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that are committing atrocities; expanding the training and arming of not only the Iraqi security forces but also the Kurdish peshmerga in the north and vetted Sunni forces in western Iraq; and working with Turkey to create a real safe haven in northern Syria where refugees can obtain humanitarian aid and vetted, non-extremist opposition fighters can be trained and equipped to fight against both ISIS and the Iran-backed Assad regime.
Declaratory policy: Affirm as a matter of U.S. policy that the United States will use all means necessary to prevent Iran's accumulation of the fissile material (highly enriched uranium) whose sole useful purpose is for a nuclear weapon. Such a statement, to be endorsed by a congressional resolution, would go beyond the "all options are on the table" formulation that, regrettably, has lost all credibility in the Middle East as a result of the president's public rejection of the military option. Just as Iran will claim that all restrictions on enrichment disappear after the fifteenth year of the agreement, the United States should go on record now as saying that it will respond with military force should Iran exercise that alleged right in a way that could only lead to a nuclear weapon. It is not for the president 15 years from now to make this declaration; to be effective and enshrined as U.S. doctrine, it should come from the president who negotiated the original deal with Iran.
Israeli deterrence: Ensure that Israel retains its own independent deterrent capability against Iran's potential nuclear weapon by committing to providing technology to the Israelis that would secure this objective over time. A good place to start would be proposing to transfer to Israel the 30,000-pound, bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator -- the only non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal that could do serious damage to Iran's underground nuclear installations -- and the requisite aircraft to carry this weapon. This alone would not substitute for U.S. efforts to build deterrence against Iran. But making sure Israel has its own assets would be a powerful complement.
You wish the president would embrace these sound, sensible suggestions. Inexplicably, he hasn't. And nothing in the administration's public posture suggests that he will change course before Congress votes. So, what will you do?
Some of your colleagues have floated the idea of a "conditional yes" as an alternative to "approve" and "disapprove." They, like you, recognize that the agreement has some significant advantages but are deeply troubled by its risks and costs. They want to attach strings to their "yes" vote, in the belief that this will bind the president and improve the deal.
But the legislation enabling Congress to review the Iran deal does not accommodate a "conditional yes." Votes are to "approve" or "disapprove." Legislators may negotiate with the White House over every comma and colon in a resolution of conditionality, and they may even secure one or two grudging concessions from the White House. But neither a resolution of Congress calling for these improvements nor ad-hoc understandings between the White House and individual legislators has the force of law or policy. According to the Iran-review legislation, the only thing that matters is a yea or nay on the agreement.
Is there really no "third way"? The answer is yes, there is. Pursuing it requires understanding what the relevant congressional legislation is really about.
Advocates of the agreement have characterized a congressional vote of disapproval as the opening salvo of the next Middle East war. In reality, a "no" vote may have powerful symbolic value, but it has limited practical impact according to the law. It does not, for example, negate the administration's vote at the UN Security Council in support of the deal, which sanctified the agreement in international law. Nor does it require the president to enforce U.S. sanctions against Iran with vigor. Its only real meaning is to restrict the president's authority under the law to suspend nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.
Here's the catch: By the terms of the nuclear agreement, the president only decides to suspend those sanctions after international inspectors certify that Iran has fulfilled its core requirements. In other words, congressional disapproval has no direct impact on the actions Iran must take under the agreement to shrink its enriched-uranium stockpile, mothball thousands of centrifuges, and deconstruct the core of its Arak plutonium reactor. Most experts believe that process will take six to nine months, or until the spring of 2016.
Why would Iran do all of these things if it can't count on the United States to suspend sanctions in response? While it's impossible to predict with certainty how Iranian leaders would react to congressional disapproval of the agreement, I'd argue chances are high that they would follow through on their commitments anyway, because the deal is simply that good for Iran. After Iran fulfills its early obligations, all United Nations and European Union nuclear-related sanctions come to an end. They aren't just suspended like U.S. sanctions -- they are terminated, presenting Iran with the potential for huge financial and political gain.
The "deal or war" thesis propounded by supporters of the agreement suggests that Iran, in the event of U.S. rejection of the deal, would prefer to bypass that financial and political windfall and instead put its nuclear program into high gear, risking an Israeli and American military response. But that volte-face makes little sense, now that Iran has painstakingly built a nuclear program that is on the verge of achieving the once-unthinkable legitimacy that comes with an international accord implicitly affirming Iran's right to unrestricted enrichment in the future. In such a scenario, Iran would reap an additional benefit in continuing to implement the agreement: The United States, not Iran, would be isolated diplomatically.
The key point is that a "no" vote on the Iran deal has little practical impact until next year. Between now and then, such a vote buys time, adding up to nine months to the strategic clock. If, before the vote, Obama refuses to adopt a comprehensive set of remedial measures that improves the deal, then a resounding vote of disapproval gives the president additional time to take such action and then ask Congress to endorse his new-and-improved proposal.
Chastened by a stinging congressional defeat in September -- one that would include a powerful rebuke by substantial members of his own party -- the president might be more willing to correct the flaws in the deal than he is today. That would surely be a more responsible and statesmanlike approach than purposefully circumventing the will of Congress through executive action that effectively lifts sanctions -- an alternative the president might consider if he is hell-bent on implementing the agreement.
Those who claim that a "no" vote would destroy the agreement argue that Europe would simply stop enforcing sanctions against Iran should Congress reject the deal. But this too doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. In my view, the Europeans are more likely to wait six to nine months to see whether Iran fulfills its core requirements under the deal so that they can claim validation for their decision to terminate sanctions. If Congress were to approve Obama's new-and-improved proposal before Iran complies with its requirements, the United States would still be on schedule to waive its sanctions at the same time that the European Union and United Nations terminate theirs.
So, if you are among the legislators who view the Iran agreement as flawed and are frustrated by the administration's unwillingness to implement reasonable fixes, there is a way to urge the president to pursue the "better deal" that he keeps urging his detractors to formulate, but that he can't seem to accept as a possibility. "No" doesn't necessarily mean "no, never." It can also mean "not now, not this way." It may be the best way to get to "yes."
*Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute. This article was originally published on the Atlantic website.

No One Talks About Liberating Mosul Anymore
Michael Knights/Foreign Policy/August 16, 2015
It's time to let the U.S. military get creative with partners on the ground in Iraq, and let the Air Force unleash its full capabilities against ISIS.
As the Iraqi military fights grinding village-by-village battles in western Anbar province, gaining little more than hundreds of feet on good days, there is no doubt that the war in Iraq against the Islamic State is slowing down. The best that can be reasonably expected in 2015 is the stabilization of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. No one even talks about liberating Iraq's second-most populous city, Mosul, anymore. At this rate, the United States will still be in Iraq when U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office -- an outcome no one, especially the president, wants.
The dominant explanations of this state of affairs focus on Obama's reticence to commit the necessary level of resources to defeat the Islamic State more quickly, or the inability of Iraqis to make good use of international support in the war effort. It is in some ways comforting to believe that the problems of this war are caused by a reluctant president or inept allies. The truth, however, is even more disturbing: The U.S. military has not been the ally it could be, because of its lack of imagination and flexibility.
From the beginning, the Pentagon has struggled to execute its mission of degrading and defeating the Islamic State in Iraq. "Leading from behind" is actually pretty difficult, and one of the U.S. military's key failings is that it remains stuck in a time warp where it is 2007, and it has 185,000 troops spread across every area in the country. Today's reality is different: There are only around 3,000 U.S. forces in Iraq, and they must mostly stay "within the wire" on secure bases.
The post-2014 U.S. presence in Iraq looks more like the small special operations forces outposts that have been used in the global war against terrorism, yet U.S. actions in Iraq have been shaped by the conventional military thinking of U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, led by Gen. Lloyd Austin. The Pentagon has continued to pursue massive train-and-equip efforts even when it lacks the resources to complete its mission, and remains too inflexible to use its air power to its maximum effect. The conventional military approach has created a false dichotomy for Obama: Either the United States needs to ramp up its commitment massively, the argument went, or rely on the current resource level and take it slow.
One of Centcom's earliest initiatives was to push for an early attempt to liberate Mosul, the Islamic State's capital in Iraq. The Mosul-first strategy resulted in a big, clunky train-and-equip program aimed at building entirely new Iraqi Army assault brigades for Mosul. The Defense Department used a "cookie-cutter" approach to design the $1.6 billion Iraq Train and Equip Fund, a scaled-down version of the massive U.S. programs that created Iraqi duplicates of U.S. brigades in 2005-2008.
The ITEF, however, has underperformed -- only 9,000 of 24,000 troops that were due to be trained and equipped by June 2015 have actually been trained. This is in part because the United States is not back in 2005: It has neither the resources nor the time for a slow, trial-by-error approach to building whole units.
ITEF envisaged building very complex U.S.-style brigades, all of which would be supplied by whole sets of equipment provided by the United States. The Iraqis, however, signaled they could not absorb or maintain so much new equipment due to their rudimentary logistical capabilities. Much of the equipment the United States promised, meanwhile, was not even in its excess inventory -- for instance, only around 9,000 of the needed 43,200 M4 rifles can be found in U.S. stocks.
By adopting a big, clunky train-and-equip effort, the Pentagon has been hampered by its own procedural weaknesses. An extraordinarily bureaucratic model was established to execute ITEF acquisition of equipment from excess U.S. defense stocks, U.S. equipment manufacturers, and foreign vendors. As a result, equipment has dribbled into Iraq -- months late, in many cases -- holding up the fielding of new units.
CONSTRAINING AMERICAN AIR POWER
Air power is America's secret sauce: Nobody opens up a can of whoop-ass like U.S. combat aviators. But for the last year, the most powerful air force in the world has been hamstrung in Iraq by a combination of strict rules of engagement and too few trusted on-the-ground spotters for airstrikes.
The United States only assesses small numbers of U.S.-trained Iraqi and Kurdish special forces as trustworthy enough to designate targets. The power to call in American airstrikes, after all, is not something it wants to hand out lightly -- the Pentagon needs to know that Iraqis are not using American airpower to settle personal scores.
When these Iraqi or Kurdish special forces deploy to provide ground-level close observation, U.S. airpower can be devastatingly effective. But such instances only account for a tiny proportion of firefights. On Aug. 3, for instance, coalition airpower intervened in eight places in Iraq while the war raged across a more than 1,200-mile front line.
The real challenge to U.S. air power comes when the Islamic State has the initiative -- as they often do -- and America's allies try to call in help. That's when they fall victim to a lack of on-the-ground intelligence and restrictive rules of engagement. The resulting bottleneck means that troops in contact with the Islamic State are trying to suck an ocean of air support through a tiny straw.
The technical challenge of this war is how to provide flexible, "unpartnered" close-air support wherever the Islamic State is attacking allied ground forces. ("Unpartnered" is a military term of art for strikes when U.S. airstrike controllers are not on the ground.) Somehow, the United States needs to get more eyes on ground who are trusted enough to tell the U.S. Air Force to release weapons when its allies need help the most.
This is a problem that's not going away. Even if Obama or a future president does deploy U.S. special operators to Iraq, they will never have the coverage that 185,000 U.S. troops once provided. In future wars, a shrinking U.S. Army and reduced tolerance for troop losses may make "unpartnered" strikes increasingly common. This makes it especially vital to find an innovative way to feed reliable data from on-the-ground sensors to U.S. warplanes fighting the Islamic State. This could mean building vetted Iraqi "air weapons teams," capable of embedding with a multitude of different types of unit -- Iraqi military, Kurdish Peshmerga, and even vetted elements of the predominately Shiite Popular Mobilization Units and Sunni tribal fighters.
With more on-the-ground intelligence, the United States also needs to loosen its rules of engagement to allow the U.S. military to take calculated risks to save Iraqi lives. In Ramadi, restrictions on airstrikes limited the effectiveness of U.S. air power -- and subsequently hundreds of Iraqi men were executed in areas lost to the Islamic State. Do Washington's strict rules of engagement really avoid civilian deaths, or just avoid direct U.S. culpability for civilian deaths?
The U.S. military needs to get creative. This could mean adapting simple, off-the-shelf materials such as GoPro headcams, voice links, and GPS devices so vetted Iraqi and Kurdish special forces can give the coalition a ground-eye view of the battlefield. This is exactly what Pentagon initiatives like the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency are supposed to do -- meet urgent operational requirements, as the JIDA website says, "with tactical responsiveness and anticipatory acquisition."
BECOMING A BETTER ALLY
U.S. civilian leaders need to encourage the Pentagon to do better -- but at the same time, America's military leaders need to think more creatively about how to speed up the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq. Big units and big programs should give way to more targeted assistance and innovation in niche areas, perhaps involving a greater role for solutions crafted by the U.S. special operations forces community. Iraq's leaders would welcome most, if not all, of these ideas.
Quick, affordable battlefield innovation is in the DNA of the U.S. military. When U.S. troops faced the 10-foot-tall hedgerows in Normandy in 1944, they welded blades to the tanks so they could go through the hedgerows without exposing the weak armor on the belly of the tanks to German weaponry.
That innovation is still in the U.S. military's DNA. The Pentagon adapted and innovated to gain success in Iraq half a decade ago during the "surge" and the counter-IED war. It's not too late to do it again.
**Michael Knights is a Lafer Fellow with The Washington Institute.

How did ISIS obtain mustard agent in fight against Kurds?
Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/August 16/15
Mounting evidence indicates ISIS militants targeted Kurdish fighters with mustard agent in northern Iraq earlier this week. While Kurdish sources have claimed that ISIS cadres have carried out at least several other chemical weapon attacks in both Syria and Iraq, injuring dozens of Kurds, since July 2014, this is the first time the international community has immediately responded to such claims.
The United States publicly confirmed that it is currently assessing credible intelligence involving the assault, noting that, “U.S. intelligence agencies thought ISIS had at least a small supply of mustard agent even before this week’s clash with Iraqi Kurdish fighters.” Most crucially, the WSJ also noted that this report, “hadn’t been made public.” There was no indication U.S. officials had shared this piece of intelligence with Kurdish fighters prior to the latest CW attack. If this knowledge was in fact not shared, it would represent the USA’s latest failure in dealings with the Kurds. Meanwhile, Rudaw has since published photographs, reportedly showing blisters on fighters’ bodies that are apparently consistent with injuries sustained in a mustard gas attack.
Continued chemical weapon attacks in the region were not an inevitable product of the ongoing, bloody Syrian conflict.A myriad of questions regarding how ISIS obtained mustard agent abound; amid widespread scepticism regarding the Russia-U.S. backed Assad regime chemical weapons ”deal” - that egregiously and absurdly allowed the Assad regime to self-report their inventory – it cannot be ruled out that such agents were seized from unsecured CW sites in Syria. In yet more unparalleled reporting from the WSJ in late July, an article noted that chemical weapon inspectors were, “…suspicious of Syria’s claim to have only 20 tons of ready-to-use mustard agent…U.S. intelligence agencies expected the Syrians to have hundreds of tons.”
Syrian regime’s use of chlorine gas
At the same time, failures of the chemical weapons deal – which completely excluded chlorine gas, a favourite of the Assad regime – continue to wreak havoc on Syrian civilians. In the newest reports, Syria’s true heroes, The White Helmets” posted photographs of an unidentified gel-like substance, that was packed into barrel bombs and dropped onto the town of Daraya. At least one UK-based analyst assessed that the substance was very likely napalm.
Continued chemical weapon attacks in the region were not an inevitable product of the ongoing, bloody Syrian conflict; the international community’s failure to seriously address the Assad regime’s massive Sarin attack nearly two years ago set a new level of acceptance for such brutality. Every chlorine attack carried out by the regime with impunity since has reinforced the notion that low-level chemical weapon attacks are now an acceptable method of warfare. At the same time, the ramifications of the disastrous plan to allow the Assad regime to self-report its own chemical weapons inventory are likely to continue indefinitely.
Perhaps it is worth noting that other features of the Syrian conflict, widespread, systematic torture and indiscriminate barrel bombings, are no less barbaric than chemical weapon attacks. But the chemical weapons initiative was one of the only ways the West, specifically the U.S., has ever actually confronted the Assad regime over its continued massacres.
Moreover, the West has mostly abandoned Syrian refugees, has repeatedly allowed the Syrian regime to treat humanitarian issues as bargaining chips and in the latest representation of a failure to communicate with sources on the ground, may have killed at least five Syrian children. As the chemical weapons deal continues unravelling, the U.S. should be pressured to revisit the deals shortcomings; in the meantime, there are few reasons to assess the region will not see continued chemical weapon attacks – by both ISIS and the Assad regime.

The Qatari Offer to Mediate between Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood
 Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Al Awsat/August 16/15
In August 2013 Egypt was in a state of alert: supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were protesting at Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square in Cairo and at Al-Nahda Square in Giza while the rest of the Egyptians were deeply angered by the Islamist group and its violent methods. At the time, Adly Mansour was Egypt’s interim President and his government was struggling to restore stability to Egypt as it faced a surge of Islamist-inspired violence and criticism from several western countries who claimed that toppling the Brotherhood amounted to a coup.
Amid this heated atmosphere, the Egyptian street was split between a remarkable majority, who sharply opposed the Brotherhood and wanted to see their rallies dispersed at any cost, and a pro-Brotherhood minority, who feared they lost their second chance of ruling Egypt, given that their first one came in 1954 when they failed to assassinate President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Cairo was swarming with Western delegations who visited Egypt in an attempt to reach a political settlement between the military-backed government and the ousted Brotherhood on the grounds that it was still possible to involve the Islamist group in the country’s political process if they accepted the political roadmap. Egyptian officials at the time said they would not mind welcoming the Brotherhood if it renounced violence.
The Egyptians were not happy with foreign delegations arriving at the presidential Heliopolis Palace to mediate between the interim government and the Brotherhood. In fact, the smartly dressed members of those delegations could not feel what Egyptians in cafes and homes really felt. People in Egypt were pessimistic about the presence of those delegations and wanted them to leave the country. For the Egyptian people, what was happening in Egypt was a domestic crisis and they wanted their government to remain strong in the face of outside pressures.
Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Al-Attiyah has recently announced his readiness to mediate between the government and the Brotherhood, saying the Islamist group is one of Egypt’s political components. In fact, one cannot but question the timing of the Qatari offer which came just after Egypt celebrated the inauguration of its new Suez Canal, an achievement which has been the subject of a childish propaganda campaign by the Brotherhood supporters who mocked it as insignificant.
There is no chance for mediation or dialogue between the government and the Brotherhood. No future government will accept that as it will face fierce opposition from the public. It would be illogical to bring up the issue now that Egypt has proved it is on the right track towards stability and development.If they have a genuine desire to ensure greater stability in the region, those who sponsor the Brotherhood should realize that the Islamist group has lost everything and therefore needs to change politically and ideologically if it wants to have a place in the future of Egypt.

Analyzing new diplomatic activity in the Middle East
Raghida Dergham/Al Arabiya/August 16/15
There has been a flurry of both converging and diverging ideas put forward to take Syria to a new phase. However, the mechanisms to achieve transition remain scarce, and subject to different interpretations, priorities, and alliances. Syria today is a market open to escalation at all levels, in the name of consensus on defeating the Islamic State group (ISIS). Despite the new developments, the theoretical approach to Syria remains that the country is a graveyard for all sides involved on the ground. Russia, an ally to the regime in Damascus, has been all but entrusted to lead the political process while the Obama administration finds itself preoccupied selling the nuclear deal to Congress for the coming two months. However, differences remain between Washington and Moscow regarding the Assad problem – that is Assad’s ultimate fate in the solutions being proposed. One common denominator between the Russian initiative, the Iranian initiative, and the initiative of U.N. Envoy Staffan De Mistura is that they all bypass the Geneva Communique. This is with regard to the internationally agreed transition based on establishing a governing body with full powers bringing together the regime and the opposition, to replace the regime and end Assad’s monopoly of power in Syria.
The three parties, Moscow, Tehran, and De Mistura, want the Gulf countries to reverse their positions opposed to Assad’s role and their commitment to Geneva I, and agree to a central role for Tehran in the solution in Syria. This would be on the basis of a reference framework replacing Geneva, despite all rhetoric coming from Moscow and De Mistura suggesting they are committed to Geneva I.The Saudi foreign minister clarified Riyadh’s official position with respect to Assad, Geneva, and Iran’s role. But he also held remarkable talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow this week, which did not only tackle the issue of Syria but also Yemen, Iraq, and bilateral relations. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for his part, visited Lebanon and Syria, and will now head to Moscow and possibly Ankara, in a bid to give reassurances regarding the nuclear deal and call for dialogue. In truth, examining the modified Iranian initiative for Syria reveals that the distance between ideas and serious implementation mechanisms remains vast. The road to Syria’s recovery is strewn with bodies and graves until further notice.
If ISIS is excluded?
The four points of the Iranian initiative are: a ceasefire; an expanded national unity government; amending the constitution to protect the rights of minorities; and elections overseen by international observers. Clearly, this initiative has no connection to the Geneva six-point framework. It is a coup against Geneva, which Tehran was explicitly opposed to from the get-go. The reason is that Tehran insists on Bashar al-Assad, and refused for him to be replaced by a transitional governing body that would prepare for elections ahead of establishing a new government. Moscow is fixated on the issue of terrorism. Syria is a top priority for it. And its relationship with Iran is one of alliance At first glance, the four points may seem reasonable. But upon digging deeper, things become different. For example, regarding the ceasefire, there have been questions as to whether Tehran wants to legitimize the militias it has created in Syria. Others ask what would a ceasefire mean if ISIS is excluded? The expanded national government, meanwhile, is clearly the antithesis of the transitional governing body with full powers – and therefore of Geneva I and the Geneva II process.Tehran also wants to amend the constitution to guarantee the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. This brings back to mind the Taif Accord in Lebanon, which enshrined a sectarian power-sharing system in the country. This, in and of itself, means that Iran wants to be the sponsor of constitutional amendments in Syria. More importantly, the Iranian, Russian, and De Mistura initiatives consecrate Iran as a key component of the solution in Syria in parallel with the coup against the Geneva framework. In other words, the three initiatives seek to bypass the Assad problem by removing demands for him to step down before or after the transitional phase, under the title of the two priorities of defeating ISIS and the political solution.
Moscow believes that demands for Assad to step down undermine the war on ISIS. Moscow believes that the survival of the regime is crucial for defeating ISIS, and that removing Assad would lead to the regime’s collapse. Therefore, Russia’s vision is that a political solution in Syria requires Assad to remain in his pose, even for an interim period, to allow the regime to regain its strength and defeat ISIS.
By contrast, Washington sees that preventing the regime’s collapse requires removing Assad. The forces needed to fight ISIS, from Turkey to the Gulf via the moderate armed opposition, will all not accept for ISIS to be defeated only for Assad to remain in power. Since the situation on the ground is not proceeding in favor of the regime, Washington believes that rescuing it from collapse necessitates that Moscow and Tehran accept there is no alternative to dislodging Assad, even if gradually, as Obama suggested last week.
In the same trench
Tehran speaks of a political solution, but practically, it is in the same trench with Damascus when it comes to insisting on a military solution through the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah. The regime in Damascus, led by Bashar al-Assad, wants to drag Iran deeper and deeper into military cooperation including via an expanded combat role for Hezbollah. In Tehran, the tug of war has started between the hawks and the doves. But at least for now, President Rowhani and his Foreign Minister Zarif seem to still have a green light from Supreme Leader Khamenei to send out messages of reassurance and moderation. It seems they have the authority to speak on behalf of the state in the Islamic Republic, which is seeking understandings with its neighbors. What is not clear yet, however, is whether the Revolutionary Guard have the authority in parallel to speak on behalf of the revolution in Iran. The outcome of the tug of war will most certainly impact Syria.
At this stage, the stocks of political solutions are up regionally and internationally, in tandem with the continuation of fighting and arms deliveries on both sides. Initiatives abound, and there is talk of expanded talks bringing together the five major powers as well as regional powers including Egypt, Iran, and Turkey. There is also talk of a five-party contact group including the United States and Russia with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. Russia wants to demand "all parties" to the conflict in Syria to fight terrorism through a presidential statement from the Security Council.
Moscow has managed to introduce a new tone in the Security Council regarding Syria by imposing an anti-terror agenda on a draft presidential statement meant to support De Mistura’s efforts. Russia – with U.S. blessing – managed to introduce a clause in the statement that said the Security Council “reaffirms its resolve to address all aspects of the threat, and calls on all parties to commit to putting an end to terrorist acts perpetrated by ISIL, ANF and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaida.” The United States and the European powers, meanwhile, did not include any clauses on Hezbollah’s role in Syria or the regime’s use of barrel bombs, and caved in to Russia’s prioritization of fighting ISIS, al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda over the implementation of Geneva I.
Venezuela, Moscow’s ally in the Security Council, sought to officially obstruct a clause in the draft statement calling for the implementation of the Geneva I communique. Venezuela said the clause did not take into account the position of the Syrian government, and claimed the establishment of a transitional governing body with full powers is unconstitutional and bypasses the legal system in Syria.
What is new is that the hitherto confrontational US-Russian dealing on Syria has become one of appeasement. The U.S. has washed its hands clean of Syria and left it to Moscow. Today, there is a cordial rhetoric between the two sides, at the level of their presidents, through the Syrian window. This follows the restoration of cordiality between them through the Iranian gateway and the nuclear deal. Thus, Lavrov and Kerry returned to smiles, embraces, and joint positions, as they launched their diplomatic initiative with the GCC countries in Doha last week. Following the Doha meeting, signs emerged of a Russian-Saudi accord on a number of issues during the meeting between Adel al-Jubeir and Sergei Lavrov in Moscow this week. However, the divergence continued over Syria because of the Assad problem and the Geneva problem. They agreed on fighting ISIS and differed on Assad’s fate. Their talks on the Iranian issue went beyond the nuclear program, tackling the details of the Iranian role in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Lavrov publicized the conversation regarding Syria and counterterrorism. For his part, Jubeir insisted that Assad had no place in Syria’s future, and that he is part of the problem not the solution. Jubeir also clarified Riyadh’s position regarding the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for a regional alliance to fight ISIS. He said that Riyadh would not be part of an alliance in which the regime in Damascus is a participant.
Moscow is fixated on the issue of terrorism. Syria is a top priority for it. And its relationship with Iran is one of alliance. Meanwhile, Moscow is content with the current state of relations with the Obama administration. Russian diplomacy wants to continue dialogue with Saudi Arabia comprehensively and candidly. Moscow also wants to launch other dialogues regarding security arrangements in the Gulf that would include it and Iran. But what matters is not just what Moscow and Tehran want in Syria and from the Gulf countries, or what Washington wants as it engaged with Tehran and entrusts Moscow with the task of managing regional solutions. What matters is that a breakthrough of some kind has emerged through ongoing diplomatic efforts, and this needs a profound analysis because the new Russian-Iranian-American rhetoric is sophisticated and U.N. envoy De Mistura has added an Italian twist to this ambiguity.