Love of the Land: Ahmadinejad Unveils His Grand Strategy: A Nuclear Defensive Umbrella for Aggression

Ahmadinejad Unveils His Grand Strategy: A Nuclear Defensive Umbrella for Aggression

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
05 May '10

Whatever you think of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he is not a stupid man. And he's also not acting like an intimidated one. During the latest UN meeting on nuclear issues, when the new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)director-general urged Iran to "clarify" its activities, the camera showed Ahmadinejad laughing contemptuously.

Diplomatic engagement isn't going to win this guy over, nor are hollow threats. He knows the current U.S. government court-martials Navy Seals for giving a bloody lip to a terrorist who murdered American civilians in Iraq and mutilated their corpses (though the two tried have been cleared). What does he have to be scared about?

The main theme of Ahmadinejad’s speech at the 2010 Review Conference by countries that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is to outflank Obama’s calls for getting rid of nuclear weapons, trying to repeat Iran's success of last September in getting sanctions postponed. Back then, Iran proposed a plan for letting its nuclear materials be reprocessed abroad. But once the sanctions’ momentum had been derailed, Iran made clear that it had no intention of agreeing to anything like that.

Incidentally, it was Obama who added the issue of getting rid of all nuclear weapons in the world to the UN conference agenda.

Afer running his own international nuclear summit under the slogan, "Nuclear Power for All, Nuclear Weapons for None," Ahmadinejad gave a UN speech sounding word for word what an idealistic pacifist would say: nuclear weapons are bad; ban them now.

Nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad explained, don’t bring real security and producing or possessing them, “under whatever pretext..is a very dangerous act which first and foremost makes the country” having them worse off. He even stated:

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Love of the Land: Ahmadinejad Unveils His Grand Strategy: A Nuclear Defensive Umbrella for Aggression

Love of the Land: The NPT Illusion

The NPT Illusion

Disarmament fantasies help the Iranian regime.


Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
04 May '10

These are strange days for New York City's finest. Over the weekend, they deployed in force to find the terrorist who tried to bomb Times Square. Yesterday, they deployed in force to protect the terrorist who is president of Iran. One of these guys works in propane, fireworks and gasoline; the other guy in enriched uranium, polonium triggers and ballistic missiles.

That other guy—the one who didn't roll into town in a Pathfinder—was in Manhattan to unload on this month's U.N. review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And unload he did: on the Truman administration, on the Obama administration, on "the Zionist regime," on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, on the NPT itself. For all this, Iran is still considered a member in good standing of the treaty, entitled to its seat at the International Atomic Energy Agency and its right to the nuclear reactors.

Does this make sense? In the upside-down universe of Turtle Bay—the same one in which Iran was just elected by acclamation to the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women—it does. What's stranger is that it also makes sense to President Obama, who has called the NPT the "cornerstone of the world's efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons." If that's the cornerstone, it's no wonder the edifice on top of it is collapsing.

The case for the NPT is that it has slowed nuclear proliferation by offering a grand bargain between the world's nuclear haves and have-nots. The haves promise to work toward the elimination of their arsenals via arms-control treaties; the have-nots get access to civilian nuclear technology while promising not to build weapons of their own.

As a show of global good citizenship, last month President Obama signed another arms-control treaty with Russia, and yesterday disclosed previously classified information about the exact size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This surely made a deep impression in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Bhutan, where conspicuous displays of moral stainlessness are considered the essence of geopolitical strategy.

(Read full op-ed)

Love of the Land: The NPT Illusion

Love of the Land: How Obama enables Iran's defiance

How Obama enables Iran's defiance

Anne Bayefsky
Eye on the U.N.
04 May '10

Yesterday the UN handed the world's leading would-be nuclear proliferator - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - a platform to open a UN conference about preventing nuclear proliferation.

A year ago, fully aware of Ahmadinejad's genocidal ambitions, the UN handed the same man a stage to open an "anti-racism" conference. The reaction in both cases was similar. The UN majority gave Ahmadinejad a round of applause. And a few Western governments made a show of walking out and then came right back in a short while later.

Yesterday, international relations were all about theater.

No lessons will be drawn in Washington about the UN's actual potential to help defeat violence and intolerance. On the contrary. While Ahmadinejad uses the UN to spew contempt for America and run out the clock on an Iranian bomb, the American President uses the UN as the centrifuge for his foreign policy. Yesterday's embarrassment, therefore, lies more at the feet of the President of the United States than those of the president of Iran.

It is President Obama who decided last September to be the first American President to preside over a session of the Security Council and then deleted "nuclear nonproliferation - Iran" from the draft agenda. Obama himself chose the subject matter of that summit. He added nuclear disarmament to nuclear nonproliferation and turned nonproliferation into a game of "you first."

It is Obama who decided to host an April Security Summit touted as "the largest gathering of countries hosted by an American President . . . since the conference in San Francisco around the United Nations." He selected the subject matter and then refused to add Iran.

It is Obama who, for the first time, has linked the issue of Israeli concessions to the prospect of getting serious about an Iranian bomb - a policy that has all the hallmarks of looking for a Jewish scapegoat when an Iranian bomb becomes a reality.

And it is Obama who has now told European leaders that he will insist on an international conference to create a Palestinian state regardless of whether Palestinians move an inch to throw out their elected leaders, who continue to reject coexistence with Israel. Again, Obama's move places the UN in center court, since the conference is to be organized by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's brainchild, the Quartet. The Quartet is composed of the UN, Russia, the European Union and the United States. Rather than being an independent actor, "the UN" plays the role of errand boy for the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

So it is hardly surprising that Ahmadinejad leaped for the UN microphone.

Unfortunately, however, his speech is not just a rant about Jewish self-determination, America or liberty. It is a declaration of war against every decent living thing.

The only question that remains is not which New York playhouse will host President Obama's next big production. The question is whether there is anybody left who will refuse to slink back inside the General Assembly and insist that international peace and security is not a game of charades.

Love of the Land: How Obama enables Iran's defiance

Love of the Land: If You Shoot at a King You Must Kill Him

If You Shoot at a King You Must Kill Him

Michael J. Totten
Commentary Magazine
12 April '10

Last week I spoke with Reza Kahlili, a man who during the 1980s and 1990s worked for the CIA under the code name "Wally" inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. He wrote a terrific book about his experience as an American agent called A Time to Betray, and today he's issuing a serious warning about his former Iranian masters: they mean what they say, and the West had better start taking them seriously.

He thinks President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei fully intend to use nuclear weapons if they acquire them, either by exploding them in enemy cities or holding the Middle East and the world's energy resources hostage. It's hard, to be sure, for even a well-placed expert to know this for certain. Perhaps not even the leadership knows exactly what it will do with the bomb once it gets the chance. (Either way, a nuclear-armed Iran won't suddenly play well with others.) What happens in the region over the next couple of years may depend in large part on whether the Israelis are willing to chance it.

We should not, Kahlili says, expect Iran's people to applaud an Israeli attack on the weapons facilities. "People in Iran do not sympathize with Israel the way they sympathize with the U.S.," he told me. "They're looking for help, right? But they're not looking for the same kind of help from Israel. So if Israel bombs the facilities in Iran, don't expect people to come out into the streets to celebrate or confront the government forces. That's not going to happen. They're just going to sit at home and pray this thing doesn't get out of hand."

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: If You Shoot at a King You Must Kill Him

Love of the Land: Obama's Jewish Defenders

Obama's Jewish Defenders

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
29 March '10

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

The goal of the assault is twofold. First, it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's control over Jerusalem in order to weaken Israel's standing among the American public. As Obama advisor Martin Indyk mocked, Obama's onslaught against Israel has made the Netanyahu government "supersensitive," about Jerusalem.

Second, as Obama's advisors explained to The Atlantic, through his unprecedented attacks on Israel's right to sovereignty over its capital city, Obama is working to topple Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government in the hopes of replacing it with a leftist government led by Tzipi Livni and Kadima.

It is a startling turn of events. Obama of course was elected to the presidency with the overwhelming support of the American Jewish community. Part of that support - which netted him 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- was based on his repeated assertion that he is absolutely committed to Israel's security.

Obama's expressed desire to overthrow the democratically elected government of Israel stands in contrast to his refusal to acknowledge the basic illegitimacy of the Iranian regime he seeks to appease. That government is founded on last June's stolen presidential elections which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power amidst massive opposition from the Iranian people. And of course, the Iranian regime which Obama coddles is publicly developing nuclear weapons with the declared purpose of destroying Israel; serves as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; and according to the US and British militaries is training al Qaida and Taliban fighters to kill US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Love of the Land: Obama's Jewish Defenders

Love of the Land: A Middle East Without American Influence?

A Middle East Without American Influence?

That's the logical outcome of the Obama administration's current policies.


Lee Smith
Slate
17 March '10

Last week, one of Syria's government news organs riffed on the title of my book The Strong Horse; Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. "The American president," Al Tharwa wrote, "was betting on the sick horse." Instead of siding with Syria's Hamas allies, Obama was backing the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. From Damascus' perspective, the description also applies to the United States' other Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms, as well as to Egypt and Jordan. These states are ready to be put out to pasture, while it is Iran's "axis of resistance," including Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Syria itself, that represents the rising power.

OK, maybe the regime in Damascus hasn't actually read my book. I lifted the title from Osama Bin Laden, anyway. "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," said Bin Laden, "by nature, they will like the strong horse." But the Syrian appraisal confirms my thesis—in the Middle East, political power is the prerogative of those who take it and maintain it by both the appearance and application of force. In this instance, unfortunately, what's good for my book is very bad for U.S. interests and allies—and for American citizens.

Related: Strong Horse Politics

As it turns out, the Syrians have a point. Saudi Arabia has the world's largest known oil reserves, and Egypt is the most populous Arab state, but they are no longer regional powerhouses, at least in the way the Arabic-speaking Middle East has typically registered power over the last 60-plus years—that is, as willingness to fight Israel. Cairo and Amman have peace treaties with Israel, the Palestinian Authority is involved in an on-again-off-again peace process, while Riyadh has opted to remain on the sidelines. This collective weakness is just the way that Washington ordained it four decades ago.

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Love of the Land: A Middle East Without American Influence?

Love of the Land: Obama has crossed the line

Obama has crossed the line

Isi Leibler
Speaking Candidly from Jerusalem
16 March '10

The bureaucratic fashla [blunder] of our dysfunctional government to forestall the announcement of a new housing project in Jerusalem during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden provided a pretext for the Obama administration to launch one of the harshest condemnations ever leveled against us by a US government. But while the timing of the announcement was appalling, it involved no breach of undertaking.

In fact, the Obama administration had previously publicly praised the Israeli government for making a “major concession” by imposing a settlement freeze which explicitly excluded Jerusalem.

The campaign was personally orchestrated by President Barack Obama. His Vice President Biden accused us of “endangering US lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Despite Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s abject apology, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused him of “insulting” the US. Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod even claimed that the Israeli government was deliberately undermining peace talks.

These hostile outbursts must be viewed in the context of the fact that despite strong ongoing support for Israel by the American people, the US-Israel relationship has been on a downward spiral since the election of the new administration. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy attributes this to Obama’s determination to rehabilitate Islam’s global tarnished image.

Yet his strategy of “engaging” Islamic rogue states has been disastrous. The effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran by appeasing the Iranian tyrants backfired with the ayatollahs literally mocking the US. The response of Syrian President Bashar Assad to US groveling and the appointment of an ambassador to Damascus, was to host a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and ridicule the US demand that he curtail his relationship with Iran. President Obama did not consider this “insulting,” prompting the editor of the Lebanese The Daily Star to say that “the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries.”

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Love of the Land: Obama has crossed the line

Love of the Land: The Jerusalem Syndrome

The Jerusalem Syndrome

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
14 March '10

Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted. When Assad received Ahmadinejad in Damascus after the US had sent a new ambassador there, Clinton asked for an explanation and was told to mind her own business. But when the Israeli Housing Ministry announced the construction of additional homes in an existing Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, Clinton could not take it.

The reaction of the international community to the “Ramat Shlomo” affair reveals double-standards, one-sidedness, and an ignorance of historical facts.

Double-standards, because in the attempts to rebuild confidence between Israel and the Palestinians, only Israel is expected not to “provoke” the other side. The Palestinians, for their part, get away with everything. True, Biden asked the PA to cancel the inauguration of a square named after Dalal Mughrabi. But the inauguration was only pushed off and the fact is that you did not hear Hillary Clinton or Catherine Ashton scold the Palestinians about this provocation. Mughrabi led one of the most horrendous terror attacks in Israel's history, perpetrated on 11 March 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. In December 2009, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas decided to sponsor a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mughrabi’s birth. A few months before, Abbas inaugurated a computer center named after Mughrabi. On 11 March 2009, PA television called Mughrabi and her accomplices “heroes.” This year, the PA has planned on marking the 11 March event by naming a new square after Mughrabi.

(Read full article)
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Posted by Yosef Hartuv at 1:48 PM

Love of the Land: The Jerusalem Syndrome

Love of the Land: Who is leading on US Mideast policy?

Who is leading on US Mideast policy?

Senator John Kerry goes out of his way to

make excuses for Bashar al-Assad (AFP photo)

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
09 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

In the past week, a new element was introduced into the unfolding and cacophonous saga of the Obama administration’s new Syria policy, namely the appearance of Senator John Kerry.

During a trip to the Middle East, Kerry spoke by telephone with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and later commented on the recent Damascus summit between Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at which the United States, and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was openly ridiculed. Kerry went out of his way to make excuses for Assad, downplayed the significance of the summit, and blamed Syria’s alliance with Iran on the Bush administration.

Kerry’s actions beg the question: Who exactly, if anyone, is taking the lead on Washington’s Middle East policy and defining its parameters and objectives? The absence of a clear answer only reflects, at a practical level, the incoherence that exists at the conceptual level in American strategy. The danger is that Syria will play multiple US interlocutors off against one another while cultivating more sympathetic advocates, in that way shaping the Obama administration’s engagement process to its advantage.

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Love of the Land: Who is leading on US Mideast policy?~

Love of the Land: Criminal Naivete: A 1936 Article Shows The Costs of Believing Dictators' Lies

Criminal Naivete: A 1936 Article Shows The Costs of Believing Dictators' Lies

Graphic: Stephen Hughes

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
07 March '10

There needs to be a much clearer understanding of why the West—and especially its political elite and intellectuals—has so much trouble comprehending the world, especially the Middle East.

Two of the most important themes are naiveté and the conviction that no one can really be a revolutionary, willing to die for an ideological belief. Radicalism is simply illogical in their eyes and an extremist is simply a moderate who has not yet been sufficiently engaged in dialogue or offered enough concessions or goodies.

So officials, journalists, and experts proclaim that an Islamist Turkey has no choice but to be friendly to the West, and Iran’s regime must act “logically” and not be aggressive; that the Palestinians must want to make real peace with Israel and that Hizballah is now a moderate party playing Lebanese parliamentary politics only; that Syria without doubt has to be ready to throw Iran overboard to be buddies with America; and so on.

It’s a good educational tool to look at how this basic type of thinking has worked in the past. Some time ago, I posted the 1920s’ New York Times article explaining that Adolf Hitler was going into retirement in Austria and wouldn’t be a problem in future. Now we have another example. But first I want to emphasize that the point here is not to laugh at the mistakes made by people in the past—everyone makes mistakes—but to consider why mistakes were made so they can be avoided in present and future.

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Love of the Land: Criminal Naivete: A 1936 Article Shows The Costs of Believing Dictators' Lies

Love of the Land: Hezbollah's Penance: The Shiite Militia Works to Rebuild its Tarnished Image

Hezbollah's Penance: The Shiite Militia Works to Rebuild its Tarnished Image

David Schenker
The Weekly Standard
05 March '10

Last week in Damascus, just days after the highest ranking visit from a U.S. official in years, Syrian President Bashar Assad hosted a state dinner for his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmedinajad. Welcoming Ahmedinajad so close on the heels of the U.S. diplomatic good will gesture was a pointed Syrian slight to the Obama administration, but the icing on the cake was Assad’s other guest of honor at the feast: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

For Damascus and Tehran—the last two U.S.-designated state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East—Hezbollah has long constituted a strategic asset and a point of pride. More recently, the organization successfully worked to broaden its appeal throughout the region. And indeed, after the Shiite terrorist organization fought Israel to a standstill in 2006, Hezbollah’s stature in the Arab world skyrocketed. Not only was Nasrallah the most compelling Arabic orator, Hezbollah became the most positive personification of Shiites in the largely Sunni Muslim region.

That was 2006. Today, while Hezbollah remains a formidable “resistance” force, in the past two years, a number of setbacks have tarnished the organization’s carefully cultivated image in Lebanon and the broader Arab world. Hezbollah’s military prowess may not be in doubt, but now for the first time, Lebanese and other Middle Easterners are starting to question the organization’s once unscrupulous morality. Nearly three decades after its establishment, the resistance has institutionalized and bureaucratized, and Hezbollah is starting to resemble other, corrupt Lebanese organizations.

The problems of the Party of God, Hezbollah's English translation, started in May 2008, when the militia violated its cardinal rule and turned its weapons—allegedly intended for use against Israel—on Lebanese citizens, when the organization invaded Beirut. Continuing this trend, three months later the militia opened fire (accidentally, Hezbollah says) on a Lebanese army helicopter, killing the co-pilot. Then, in November 2008, a 49-member Hezbollah cell was arrested in Egypt, accused of plotting attacks against Israeli tourists and Suez Canal shipping. (Nasrallah responded to the arrests by publicly calling on Egyptians to topple their government).

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Love of the Land: Hezbollah's Penance: The Shiite Militia Works to Rebuild its Tarnished Image

Love of the Land: Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Syria’s president is not a ‘pragmatist’ but fiercely anti-Israel, which is why efforts to lure him out of Iran’s orbit aren’t working.


Jonathan Spyer
Middle East/JPost
03 March '10

In Damascus last week, the full array of leaders of the so-called “resistance bloc” sat down to a sumptuous meal together.

Presidents Ahmedinejad of Iran and Assad of Syria were there, alongside a beaming Khaled Mashaal of Hamas and Hizbullah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah. There were some lesser lights, too, to make up the numbers – including Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a fossil from the old alphabet soup of secular Palestinian groups.

The mood – replicated a few days later in Teheran – was one of jubilant defiance.

The reasons underlying Syria’s membership in the “resistance bloc” remain fiercely debated in western policy discussion. It has long been the view of a powerful element in Washington – strongly echoed by many in the Israeli defense establishment – that Syria constitutes the “weakest link” in the Iranian-led bloc. Adherents to this view see the Syrian regime as concerned solely with power and its retention. Given, they say, that Syria’s ties to the Iran-led bloc are pragmatic rather than ideological, the policy trick to be performed is finding the right incentive to make Damascus recalculate the costs and benefits of its position.

Once the appropriate incentive tips the balance, it is assumed, the regime in Damascus will coolly absent itself from the company of frothing ideologues on display in Damascus and Teheran last week, and will take up its position on the rival table – or at least at a point equidistant between them.

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Love of the Land: Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Love of the Land: The wisdom of Ahmadinejad

The wisdom of Ahmadinejad

Fresnozionism.org
03 March '10

Some recent wisdom from the Iranian President:

Existence of Zionist regime an insult to humanity

Tehran, Feb 28, IRNA — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to the entire humanity.

Addressing International Conference on ‘National and Islamic Solidarity for Future of Palestine’, he said that it is well-known for all that the Zionist regime’s mission is threat, violence and beating drums of war. Supporters of the Zionist regime who are shouting slogans of human rights and anti-terrorism, support systematic crimes of the occupying regime, the president said.

He said that everybody knows that the regime is seeking hegemony over the world.

He said that the Zionist regime is the origin of all the wars, genocide, terrors and crimes against humanity and that they are the racist group not respecting the human principles.

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Love of the Land: The wisdom of Ahmadinejad

Love of the Land: Dinner in Damascus: What Did Iran Ask of Hizballah?

Dinner in Damascus: What Did Iran Ask of Hizballah?

David Schenker/Matthew Levitt
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Policy Watch #1637
02 March '10

On February 26, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah for a dinner in Damascus. Nasrallah is a routine guest in the capital, but the timing of this high-profile trip -- just a week after the United States dispatched Undersecretary of State William Burns to Damascus and nominated its first new ambassador in five years -- seemed calculated not only to irritate Washington, but also to highlight the central role Hizballah plays in Iran and Syria's strategic planning. Apart from serving as a pivot between Tehran and Damascus, however, the group also holds the power to engulf Lebanon and perhaps the entire region into another war through actions of its own.

Unfulfilled Promise of Retaliation

Two years after Hizballah military commander Imad Mughniyah was assassinated in Damascus -- prompting Nasrallah to declare an "open war" on Israel, the presumed perpetrator -- the group has yet to successfully retaliate. But it is not for lack of trying: in 2008, two Hizballah operatives and several Azerbaijani nationals were convicted of plotting attacks against the Israeli and U.S. embassies in Baku and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The same year, Turkish authorities foiled as many as six possible Hizballah terrorist plots targeting Israelis and possibly the local Jewish community. Iranian intelligence agents were reportedly helping the group establish a network of operatives posing as tourists.

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Love of the Land: Dinner in Damascus: What Did Iran Ask of Hizballah?

Love of the Land: The Vision Thing

The Vision Thing

Emmanuel Navon
For The Sake Of Zion
03 March '10

The man whom George W. Bush used to dismissingly call “The Eye Doctor” seems to be doing fine without glasses. Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist who inherited his father’s hereditary job only because his older brother was killed in a car accident, has turned the tables on the United States. Five years ago, he complied with the American injunction to pull his troops out of Lebanon. Today, he is publicly humiliating the United States.

In February 2005, the US withdrew its ambassador to Syria following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Assad’s involvement in Hariri’s murder was so obvious that former French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Hariri (and long-term guest in his Paris apartment), has been boycotting Assad ever since. By recalling its ambassador, the US was also expressing its discontent with the fact that Syria hosts and shields Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, transfers weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, lets terrorists crossing into Iraq, supports Iran’s foreign policy goals, and cooperates with Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear capabilities (concerns about Syria’s suspected nuclear program were brought to the world’s attention by the Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in eastern Syria in 2007).

Last month, five years exactly after the scolding of the Bush Administration, President Obama nominated Robert Ford as the new US Ambassador to Syria. The rationale of the current US Administration is that Assad can be sweet-talked into trading his alliance with Iran for a deal with America. Obama’s gamble has produced immediate results, but not the expected ones. Shortly after the nomination of Ambassador Ford, Ahmadinejad paid an official and pompous visit to Damascus (where he also met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah). Baffled, Hillary Clinton asked Assad why he was doing the opposite of what her government’s policy was supposed to produce. Assad responded as follows: “We have a hard time understanding Clinton, either because of a translation problem or because of our limited capabilities.” Hillary Clinton is being pushed around by Middle Eastern machos and America is being ridiculed.

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Love of the Land: The Vision Thing

Love of the Land: State of denial

State of denial

NOW Lebanon
01 March '10

Three men, three visits. Lebanese President Michel Sleiman goes to Russia and is met by the deputy foreign minister – (this is apparently not a slight; he is merely the most senior Arabist). He negotiates the sale of a few aging attack helicopters and returns to announce a controversial national dialogue line-up. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Saad Hariri jets off to Doha to discuss the usual “bilateral relations and regional events.”

However, the most meaningful “state” visit in recent days was made by a man who holds no public office, but who is arguably the most powerful individual in Lebanon. Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah may have been set up as the fall guy in the latest chapter in Hezbollah’s glorious struggle against the Zionist entity (as usual, no one else is prepared to take on Israel), but the fact remains that Hezbollah is the de facto power on the ground, and it was in Damascus that Lebanon’s real future was mapped out.

A formidable regional alliance is taking shape, and the Americans are not getting a look-in. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says she wants to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran but wakes up the next day to find out that arguably the three most powerful men in the region meet for lunch, declare undying love and vow that Israel will be defeated in Lebanon.

All Lebanese who value their security and sovereignty should be very worried, but then again Lebanon is a country in denial. The air has been filled with martial rhetoric in recent weeks with the drumbeat of conflict getting louder. Israeli jets fly over our airspace with impunity, while the recent banquet in Damascus is a painful reminder to the Lebanese that they can hold all the elections they want, wave as many flags as they want, but when President Assad wants to hold its own brand of bilateral talks, a call is placed to Dahiyeh, not Baabda or the Serail.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: State of denial

Love of the Land: The Northern Tinder Box

The Northern Tinder Box

Jonathan Spyer
GLORIA Center
28 February '10

The war of words is continuing. The latest salvoes were fired last week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and his Lebanese ally and client Hassan Nasrallah. Ahmedinejad reportedly told Nasrallah that if Israel attacks Hizballah, the response should be sufficient to lead to the closure, once and for all, of the Israeli 'case.' In the same week, Nasrallah promised attendees at a 'Resistance Martyrs Day' celebration that his movement would target Israel's infrastructure in the event of further hostilities. The Hizballah leader mentioned airports, factories and refineries as possible targets.

Hizballah second in command Naim Qassem joined in this week, describing Israel as 'worse than Nazism,' and the 'leader of international crime under the sponsorship of the U.S. and major world powers.' Qassem reiterated his movement's rejection of any diplomatic option vis a vis Israel, saying that "What was taken by the force of occupation can only be regained by the force of the resistance."

The self-confident, warlike tones of these leaders are by now familiar. But what, if anything, is revealed by these most recent statements?

Some analysis has suggested that the heightened rhetoric may presage an attempt by Iran to heat up the northern front in response to the hardening international stance to Iran's nuclear program. While nothing should be ruled out, a number of factors should be borne in mind in this regard. Hizballah and its backers are well aware of the broad contours of Israel's likely response in the event of further aggression by the movement on the northern border. The message has been adequately transferred that a future conflict would not remain within the parameters of a localized Israel-Hizballah clash in southern Lebanon.

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Love of the Land: The Northern Tinder Box

Love of the Land: Purim and the obsessions of crackpot professors

Purim and the obsessions of crackpot professors

Bataween
Point of No Return
26 February '10

With the festival of Purim around the corner, Jews turn to Persia and tell the story of how the Jewess Esther and her uncle Mordechai saved their people from extermination by the wicked Haman.

Same story, different time. President Ahmadinejad has again just announced he is looking forward to a Middle East without Zionists.

In leftwing circles it's become fashionable to downplay Ahmadinejad's threats to annihilate Israel as just so much empty rhetoric, or a mistranslation of the Farsi. We are now seeing a breed of young (Ashkenazi) Israeli academics who see Marxist dichotomies and hifalutin' theories of cultural dissonance where there is just plain old antisemitism.

This book, by professor Haggai Ram, at Ben Gurion university, reviewed here, is no exception.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Purim and the obsessions of crackpot professors

Love of the Land: Syria Responds To Obama's Engagement, Publicly Mocks Clinton And Embraces Iran

Syria Responds To Obama's Engagement, Publicly Mocks Clinton And Embraces Iran

Omri
Mere Rhetoric
25 February '10

Which part of the new "positive, constructive U.S.-Syrian relationship" involves having the US Secretary of State getting publicly mocked by grinning totalitarian thugs?

President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a bilateral deal to remove travel visas and attended a Muslim ceremony in the Syrian capital... "We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement to cancel the visas," Assad said. "I find it strange that they (Americans) talk about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other," he added. Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference: "Clinton said we should maintain a distance. I say there is no distance between Iran and Syria." He added: "We have the same goals, same interests and same enemies."

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Love of the Land: Syria Responds To Obama's Engagement, Publicly Mocks Clinton And Embraces Iran

Love of the Land: Quotes of the month

Quotes of the month

Fresnozionism.org
25 February '10

…because I’m too lazy to write something serious!

An Israeli cabinet minister is more likely to face prosecution in the United Kingdom nowadays than a terrorist who has murdered Israeli civilians. — Barry Rubin, 2/22

What was disproportionate this time? Was there a disproportionate use of passports? — Tzipi Livni, 2/24

The Goldstone Report seems to be objective and well-grounded — Diego López Garrido, the secretary of state for the European Union in the Spanish Foreign Ministry, 2/25

A Middle East without Zionism is a divine promise… Time is on the side of the peoples of the region. The Zionist entity is nearing the threshold of nonexistence. Its raison d’être is finished, and its path is a dead end. If Israel wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, the death of the Zionist entity is certain… This time, all the nations of the region will stand fast in the face of the [Zionist regime], and will uproot it. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Damascus (tr. MEMRI) 2/25

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Love of the Land: Quotes of the month