Korean Horn Tests The Big One (Daniel 7:7)

North Korea’s Steady Quest for a Bigger Mushroom Cloud

Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DC
11:01 AM ET

It remains the lone ‘axis of evil’ power pushing for nukes

North Korea’s purported H-bomb test Wednesday makes clear the cost-benefit analysis of dealing with what President George W. Bush called the “axis of evil” shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks. That was his shorthand way of describing North Korea, Iraq and Iran in his 2002 State of the Union address. Since then, the U.S. and many of its allies have dealt with the three so-called “rogue nations” in three very different ways.

When Bush first declared the axis of evil on Jan. 29, 2002, he focused on Iraq. Fourteen months later, the U.S. invaded Saddam Hussein’s country, a war that killed 4,495 U.S. troops, cost more than $1 trillion, and served as a trigger for regional turmoil and a catalyst for the rise of ISIS. That’s the bad news. The good news: Iraq’s nuclear program is as dead as Saddam, executed in 2006.

Last year, the U.S. and five other allies struck a deal with Iran designed to delay Tehran’s nuclear ambitions for at least a decade. While hardly perfect—instead of killing Iran’s nuclear programs, it allows them to simmer—it does represent a firebreak in Iran’s push for membership in the atomic club. It represents a low-cost, potentially high-benefit, gamble to blunt Iran’s nuclear-weapons effort.

Then there’s North Korea. Under Kim Il-sung (in power from the country’s founding, in 1948, until his death in 1994), his son, Kim Jong-il (who ran the country from 1994 until his death in 2011), and his grandson, current leader Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang has resisted restrictions on its nuclear-weapons work, and then cheated when they have been imposed.

“This test is a measure for self-defense the D.P.R.K. has taken to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the U.S.-led hostile forces and to reliably safeguard the peace on the Korean Peninsula and regional security,” North Korea, using the initials for its formal name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, said in an official statement heralding the Wednesday morning test.

While North Korea said it had tested a fusion-fueled hydrogen bomb—far more powerful than a more rudimentary fission-fueled A-bomb—outside experts are skeptical. Initial reports suggested a seismic event occurred near North Korea’s traditional nuclear test site at 10 a.m. Wednesday, but the shock wave it created matched that of the less-powerful version. If determined to be a nuclear detonation, it would mark North Korea’s fourth known test.

In any event, U.S. officials doubt North Korea could miniaturize such a weapon, put it atop a missile, and have that missile reach even Hawaii or the western coast of the continental U.S. with any accuracy.

But Pyongyang is getting steadily closer.

North Korea began its nuclear-weapons work in the 1980s, with help from Pakistan, and its initial acquisition of some atomic bombs apparently took place in the early 1990s. “Our policy right along has been oriented to try to keep North Korea from getting a significant nuclear-weapon capability,” Defense Secretary William Perry told TIME in 1994, making clear it already had a small arsenal.

Perry dealt face-to-face with North Korea leaders in 1999, after leaving his Pentagon post, as an emissary for President Clinton once a 1994 deal designed to end Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions fell apart. Upon arriving in North Korea, and seeing that there were no meetings scheduled with its military leaders, Perry requested one. According to Perry’s new memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, the conversation between the former U.S. defense chief and the North Korean general went like this:

“This meeting was not my idea,” he said at once. “I was directed to meet with you. I don’t think we should even be talking about giving up nuclear weapons.”

I replied, “Why do you think you need nuclear weapons?”

“To defend ourselves from aggression!”

“Aggression from whom?”

“From you [pointing at me]! We will develop nuclear weapons. Then, if you attack us, we will use our nuclear weapons to destroy your cities—not excluding Palo Alto!”

“I appreciate candor in diplomacy,” Perry said of the mention of his longtime home, “but this was, perhaps, overdoing it.”

Of course, a nuclear weapon isn’t worth much without a means of delivering it. That means North Korea’s push for missiles is always a subject of intense U.S. interest.

“Intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy,” Perry wrote, along with current defense secretary Ashton Carter, in 2006 when it appeared that North Korea was readying for a nuclear-capable missile test. “Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.”

But the George W. Bush Administration did little beyond warning North Korea against such a test, which Perry and Carter criticized in TIME several days later, after the missile test failed. “Critics of our article, including members of the Bush Administration, say that a pre-emptive strike is too risky,” they said. “But if the U.S. is ever going to defend a line in the sand with North Korea, that is the least provocative way to do it, and next time it will only be riskier.”

That was a decade ago.

In his memoir, released in November, Perry expresses concern that the more than two decades of U.S.-led efforts to thwart North Korea’s nuclear goal have yielded little (unlike Wednesday’s test, which South Korea estimated had a yield of 6,000 tons of TNT).

“By 2015 we faced an angry and defiant North Korea that had armed itself with six to 10 nuclear bombs, was producing material for more bombs, and was testing the components of long-range missiles,” he writes. “Based on those outcomes, this is perhaps the most unsuccessful exercise of diplomacy in our country’s history.”

US Chief: Iran, Not ISIS, Is Our Greatest Threat (Daniel 8)

U.S. Centcom Chief: ‘Iran Represents the Most Significant Threat’

AP photo/Mohammad Hannon

by Edwin Mora3 Mar 2015Washington, DC 

WASHINGTON—Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top commander of U.S. military efforts against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), told a congressional panel that Iran poses the “most” serious threat to the region he oversees.“Iran represents the most significant threat to the Central Region… Iran continues to pursue policies that threaten U.S. strategic interests and goals throughout the Middle East,” declared Gen. Austin in written testimony prepared for a March 3 hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee.“Chronic instability, disenfranchised populations, and weak regional governments provide new footholds for a resilient and expanding global jihadist movement and an ideal environment for Iran and its allies to aggressively undermine U.S. regional goals,” later added Gen. Austin, who serves as the commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom).
Centcom’s area of responsibility (AOR) known as the “Central Region” covers at least 18 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. Austin acknowledged that Iranian-backed militant forces have been engaged in Iraq and Syria.
The “most concerning” aspect of the Iranian threat is that the Shiite majority nation uses the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and “proxy actors” such as the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and the Palestinian terror group Hamas to “engage in malign activity,” he said.

He pointed out that Iran has fomented unrest in Syria and Iraq where a U.S.-led coalition is combating ISIS. Iran is reportedly helping Kurdish and Shiite militias in their fight against ISIS in Iraq.

“During the past year, [Iran] primarily focused on Sunni groups in the Iraq and Syria-based conflict (including the moderate opposition in Syria) by bolstering the Syrian and Iraqi governments and overseeing engagements involving its own militant forces. Iran also maintains the ability to expand the scope of its activities,” explained Gen. Austin. “This is troubling as Iranian malign influence is enflaming sectarian tensions that are all too often exploited by violent extremist elements in the region.”

Gen. Austin testified before the House panel on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to Congress against Iran’s nuclear program, warning that Iran will always be a threat to the United States.

“When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy,” Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers.

Despite the outcome of the nuclear talks the United States and five other countries (P5+1) are having with Iran, the U.S.-Iran relationship will remain challenging, according to Gen. Austin.

“Our diplomats are working diligently to negotiate an acceptable agreement with respect to Iran’s nuclear program, and we hope that they will be successful,” the general told lawmakers. “But, regardless of the outcome of the P5+1 discussions, our relationship with Iran will remain a challenging one, as we are very concerned by their unhelpful behavior in a number of areas.”

“One of the key opportunities that exist with respect to Iran is the prospect of an acceptable agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program,” he later explained. “If the P5+1 are able to reach a long-term resolution, that would represent a step in the right direction and may present an unprecedented opportunity for positive change in the Central Region.”

Obama wants Iran to verifiably freeze its nuclear program for at least 10 years, a deal that Netanyahu and members of the president’s own party find unacceptable.

“While we remain hopeful that the two sides will eventually reach an acceptable deal, it is presently unclear how things will play out,” testified Gen. Austin. “We have to be prepared for what comes next. We will be prepared.”

“In addition to its nuclear program, Iran has a significant cyber capability, as well as the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East… Iran is able to strike targets throughout the region with increasing precision using creatively adapted foreign technologies to improve its missile arsenal,” he warned. “It also has increased its anti-access area- denial air defense capabilities. Iran is improving its counter-maritime capabilities (e.g., mines, small boats, cruise missiles, submarines), which serve to threaten the flow of global commerce in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran is considered a state-sponsor of terror by the United States.

Mohammad’s Greatest Fear: Apolitical Islam

Iran’s Greatest Fear: “American Islam”

Behnam Ben Taleblu
January 1, 2015

The Islamic State rages next door and the U.S. Congress is threatening new sanctions, but Iranian officials remain preoccupied by a different challenge, one that has haunted them for decades: “American Islam.”

“American Islam” isn’t the Islam practiced by Muslims across the United States. Rather, it is what the Islamic Republic perceives to be a depoliticized perversion of the true faith, devoid of the revolutionary sentiment that guides the Islamic Republic. As Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei lamented in 2010, “American Islam means ceremonial Islam, an Islam that is indifferent in the face of oppression.”

Over the three decades since the Islamic Revolution, Iranian officials have applied the term to Muslim nations deemed pliant before the will of superpowers like the United States. To combat this alleged deviation, the regime has revived a term favored by fundamentalists across the Muslim world: “the pure Islam of Mohammad.”

A newly published book, The Struggle of Two Islams, brings this political and religious dichotomy to the fore. The book is derived from Volume 21 of Sahifeh-ye Imam, a collection of sayings from the founding father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Struggle of Two Islams aims to vindicate the regime’s worldview, thus reaffirming its place as a champion of “pure Islam.”
As early as 1979, a young Khamenei served as interim Friday prayer leader for the city of Tehran. In an address mourning the assassination of the cleric Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari, Khamenei praised “his procession along the original and accurate path of Islam,” adding, “Our enemies have proven to us that they are against Islam.”

Soon, the Islamic Republic conflated its own enemies with those of God. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini would proclaim that “this war is a war against Islam…and God almighty will not forgive those who arise against Islam.” Khomeini reserved even greater disdain for Saudi Arabia (which had backed Iraq in the war), which he derided as “bloodthirsty,” and its Wahhabi religious institutions as promoting the same dreaded “American Islam.”

The rhetoric continued after Khomeini’s death in 1989. In 1990, a noted Azeri-Iranian Ayatollah sought to promulgate Iran’s brand of Islam in Azerbaijan, saying “if those people who seek Islam are not given it by healthy hands, then they will be given American Islam. That is to say, they will be fed a distorted Islam.” The next year, Khomeini’s successor Khamenei set the tone of Iran’s foreign and security policy for decades to come, warning, “The danger of American Islam … is not less than the danger of America’s military and political tools.”

It’s hard to find any Muslim polity or group that is spared Tehran’s barbs. Publications have scorned Turkey’s Islamist-leaning government as “the other side of American Islam’s coin,” while the Taliban and Al Qaeda are rightly deemed expressions of Islam’s modern “mutilation.” To counter these perceived perversions, Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Saeedi, Khamenei’s representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has extolled Iran’s destiny as “the introduction of Mohammad’s pure Islam to the world.”

Today, the tug of war continues. In a 2012 debate with Ebrahim Asgharzadeh (a hostage-taker in the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege who later embraced reformism), Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the hardline Kayhan newspaper and a confidant of Khamenei, insisted: “We are in conflict because of our identities. This conflict will only be ended on two accounts. Either we abandon pure Islam in governance, meaning an Islam that contests oppression…or America abandons its arrogant temper.”
As Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator, wrote in his memoirs, “I believe that we do not exist without our revolutionary goals.” Zarif, who speaks fluent English and has a PhD from an American university, may not appear to embody the civilizational discourse we hear from Iran’s most hardline clerical and military leaders. Nevertheless, his thesis remains the same: “We have a fundamental problem with the West and especially with America…This is because we are claimants of a mission, which has a global dimension.”

The Islamic Republic’s vision of a worldwide civilizational conflict—and equally important, within Islam itself—helps explain the diplomatic failures of the past and pitfalls of the future. Looking ahead, Western negotiators must recognize that even in the unlikely event of a comprehensive nuclear accord, Iran continues to pursue its theological objective to combat “American Islam,” and further promulgate its existential, zero-sum worldview.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is an Iran Research Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.