Walking Into The Iranian Trap (Daniel 8:3)

US Poised to Lift Sanctions on Iran Under Nuclear Deal
By DEB RIECHMANN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Dec 17, 2015, 5:09 PM ET
The United States appears poised to lift at least some sanctions against Iran — possibly as early as January — as members of Congress urge a swift, robust U.S. response to Tehran’s recent ballistic missile test.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in a letter Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran is fulfilling its obligations under the international agreement in what Kerry calls a “transparent” and “verifiable” way, and that “suspension of sanctions … is appropriate.”
The committee’s top Democrat, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, said at a hearing Thursday that it appears that sanctions relief could start as early as January, not in the spring as initially anticipated.
The deal involving the United States, Iran and five other world powers would curb Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for giving Iran access to billions in frozen assets and oil revenue.
Cardin said that throughout the congressional review of the deal, witnesses for the administration guessed that it would be spring until Iran could comply with the terms required for that relief to begin.
“Now we understand it is likely that Iran will be in compliance and entitled to sanctions relief as early as January,” Cardin said at the hearing where Obama administration officials were questioned about the deal.
“Obviously, we want them to comply — don’t get me wrong,” Cardin said. “But why did we misjudge so badly the date that is likely for compliance?”
Stephen Mull, the State Department’s lead coordinator for implementation of the deal, agreed that some administration officials had speculated that it would take until the spring. But he said the pacing of compliance is in Iran’s hands.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said Wednesday that Iran will carry out its remaining obligations in the next two weeks to pave the way for the lifting of sanctions in January. He said Iran would now dismantle some nuclear centrifuges and ship out a major portion of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Mull emphasized that the agreement requires Iran to take steps to dismantle its nuclear program correctly, not quickly.
“We’re not there yet,” he said. “I don’t think anyone in the U.S. can predict when that will be. The responsibility for that lies with Iran as verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
Mull said Iran has begun dismantling its uranium enrichment system by removing thousands of centrifuges and transferring them into a storage facility that will be monitored by international nuclear inspectors.
“It has already removed more than 5,000 of its machines and is likely to move quickly to remove the rest in the coming days,” Mull said.
He said Iran is reducing its stockpile of various forms of enriched uranium to no more than 300 kilograms of material enriched up to 3.67 percent.
“It will accomplish this primarily by shipping a significant amount of such material outside Iran, while also diluting the remaining excess to the level of natural uranium or below,” Mull said. “Commercial contracts are in place for Iran to ship its enriched uranium stockpiles to Russia. We expect that this material — approximately 25,000 pounds of material enriched up to 20 percent low-enriched uranium — could leave Iran in the coming weeks.”
Senators from both parties expressed concern about recent actions taken by Iran, which they fear could foreshadow Iranian noncompliance.
Saying the deal is off to a “terrible start,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the committee chairman, cited Iran’s conviction of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter, along with the export of weapons to Syria and Yemen, and an Oct. 10 ballistic missile test that U.N. experts say violates the U.N. ballistic missile test ban.
“We see no evidence of them paying a price for any of these actions,” Corker said.
Mull said the administration was “actively considering the appropriate consequences” to the October missile launch, but did not elaborate.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who supported the deal, called for forceful enforcement of the agreement.
“If we fail in any way to relentlessly enforce what we’ve got in terms of both U.S. unilateral and multilateral abilities to constrain Iran’s actions, they will take that as a clear signal that we’ve taken our eye off the ball,” Coons said.
He was one of 21 Democratic senators who wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday expressing “profound concern” about a second ballistic missile test by Iran on Nov. 21. “If there are no consequences for this violation, Iran’s leaders will certainly also question the willingness of the international community to respond to violations” of the Iran deal, they wrote.
Earlier, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and 35 other GOP senators wrote Obama a similar letter, urging the administration not to lift sanctions in the wake of the ballistic missile tests. “This approach toward Tehran undermines further an already weak Iran deal and jeopardizes our national security interests,” the letter said.

Of Course The Republicans Will Fall Into The Iran Trap

 

Will Republicans Fall for the Iran Trap?

If the GOP manages to kill the Iran deal, thus isolating the country and putting it on a path to war, then the party’s political viability could be placed on ice for a considerable period.

Robert W. Merry

July 27, 2015
The Republican Party is walking into a trap, and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon that can save it from the disaster. In Congress, they will vote to a person, or nearly so, in opposing President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, it appears that every one of the current sixteen GOP presidential candidates will campaign against the agreement. What’s more, at least three GOP candidates—Florida’s Marco Rubio, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Texas’s Ted Cruz—say they will rescind the deal if they become president. No doubt others will soon echo that threat.

All this will be thoroughly debated—first, during the congressional drama that now will unfold regarding GOP efforts to deny presidential authority to lift U.S. sanctions against Iran; and, then, during the forthcoming presidential election. And through those debates the GOP position will collapse of its own weight. The underlying logic is so flimsy and riddled with inconsistencies that ultimately the American people will reject it.

Begin with the GOP response to Obama’s argument that the choice facing the United States now is the current agreement, which is imperfect but sound, and a likely war as the only remaining option for halting or delaying Iran’s nuclear-arms program. Opponents argue that that is a false dichotomy in that another option would be further sanctions to force upon Iran a better agreement. There are two problems with that response.

First, there is no evidence that a better deal would be in the offing should the United States crank up the economic pressure through tougher sanctions. The current agreement, after all, is the product of long and arduous negotiations aimed at reaching a point that all sides could live with, not that one side could tout as a definitive victory. That’s not how negotiations work, and certainly not when national interest and national pride are involved. Granted, the outcome wasn’t ideal from the American standpoint, but no ideal outcome is ever in the cards in such circumstances.

Second, even if a better deal were possible at some point in the past, that train has left the station. Having gone through those wrenching bargaining sessions, Iran simply isn’t going to go back to square one because Ted Cruz, Rand Paul et al don’t like it. Iran’s only viable option would be to push headlong toward nuclear weapons as a future bargaining chip for sanctions removal and, more significantly, to fortify it against the nearly certain war that has been promoted so assiduously by the current Israeli government and by so many likeminded U.S. politicians. And there wouldn’t be anything short of war to stop the Iranians from pursuing that course.

Besides, it isn’t just America and Iran on this parchment. Other signatories are China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany, and there is no reason to believe any of these countries will back away from the agreement. So how is the United States going to separate itself from this so-called P5+1 contingent and unilaterally pressure Iran to renegotiate the deal, particularly as these other nations are working within the United Nations to lift UN sanctions against Iran. The result will be a degree of U.S. isolation never experienced since before World War II.

And so we come back to the Obama dichotomy: the current policy or a likely war. This stark choice has not crystallized within the national consciousness thus far. But it will. The American people are not stupid, at least not collectively. They will be able to assess the arguments on both sides, and the Obama argument will not only make more sense but also will convey with more credibility where the real dangers lie in this geopolitical equation.

In any risk assessment, there are two fundamental elements. The first is the magnitude of the downside risk; the second is the likelihood of it. The magnitude of the disaster that would flow from a U.S. war with Iran (far greater than the disaster that ensued from our war with Iraq) is not difficult to contemplate—huge troop requirements, burdensome financial commitments, tragic casualty numbers, likely civic unrest at home, further destabilization of the Middle East with utterly unknown (but serious) consequences, further U.S. isolation in the world, possibly a spreading conflagration to other parts of the world as other powers challenge a distracted America. The likelihood of the worst-case scenario here may not be ominously high, but even best-case consequences could be tragic, and the law of unintended consequences is never far away when the shooting starts.

Which brings us to the second argument of the neocon wing of the GOP, which increasingly seems to be the entire GOP. It is that Iran is a nation of crazies, bent on conquering the world and destroying Israel without any serious regard to its own fate. Mitt Romney wrote just recently, “Iran is led by suicidal, apocalypse-seeking, America-hating, Israel-denying theocratic fanatics.” These fanatics, he added (in case anybody may have missed the point), are “entirely bereft of restraint, decency and respect for human life.” So naturally it follows, “If the ayatollahs have nuclear weapons, they will use them, someday, somewhere.”

This is breathtaking in its own fanaticism—and in the ignorance that, one might have hoped, would have been tucked away after Romney’s 2012 presidential defeat at the hands of a lackluster incumbent. A survey of recent Iranian history suggests that its leaders, while starkly fundamentalist in their religious sensibility, conduct foreign policy based on a logical understanding of their national interests and an often brilliant pursuit of them within the context of geopolitical reality.

They certainly never sent an army halfway around the world to overthrow the leader of a sovereign state with the intent of establishing a beachhead for the transformation of an entire regional culture. Now that’s “bereft of restraint.” The only conventional war the Ayatollahs have engaged in ensued when Iran was invaded by Iraq—with American support. True, they align themselves with some nations we don’t like, but those alliances, as unsavory as they may be to us, are in Iran’s interest as a regional power in a nasty neighborhood. One can argue that this renders Iran a U.S. adversary, but there is no evidence that these people are fanatical nihilists who want to destroy the world.

As to the prospect that Iran inevitably would use nuclear weapons if it had them, it is worth noting that the world has nine nuclear nations, and only one has ever used them—and that when no other nation had them for retaliation. Romney is saying here that Iran is more fanatical and suicidal than any other nuclear nation in the history of the nuclear age, even North Korea. That isn’t going to hold up when the American people get down to assessing the arguments of this debate.
Finally, we are told that Iran will cheat on the agreement, that inspections won’t be rigor
ous enough, that Iran always cheats and is hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons so it will cheat here for sure and thwart all efforts by the agreement signatories and the UN, including UN inspectors, to monitor its nuclear activity until the world is faced with a fait accompli. Perhaps. But how realistic is such a scenario? With satellite technology and the CIA and Israeli intelligence and random revelations, could Iran really spring such a fait accompli on the world before the world caught wind of it? Once again we come to the likelihood factor in risk analysis. The likelihood factor here is very slim.
History tells us that the American people like it when their presidents score big foreign-policy triumphs—and count it as a plus when the incumbent or incumbent party seeks White House retention at the next election. This is Obama’s big foreign-policy triumph. And, while the American people haven’t yet embraced it as such, they will. As the debate progresses, it will become increasingly clear that the consequences of killing this deal or reneging on it are ominous, that America and the world retain plenty of options if Iran proves treacherous, and that the stakes include not only America’s relationship with Iran but also America’s standing in the world. Not to mention the prospects for war if the deal goes down.

If it survives over nearly unanimous GOP objections, as appears likely, it will be a net negative for Republicans, perhaps even a big one. But, if the party manages to kill the deal for America, thus isolating the country and putting it upon a path to war, then the party’s political viability could be placed on ice for a considerable period.

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington political correspondent and publishing executive, is the author most recently of Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.

Obama Walking Into The Persian Trap (Dan 8)

Is Iran luring Obama into a trap in Iraq?

By Amir Basiri

Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake and Josh Rogin recently reported that U.S. troops are sharing a base with Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran’s notorious proxies are spying on U.S. operations and personnel at their leisure to prepare the ground for future crimes. This worrying revelation is the latest manifestation of a misconception about the Iranian regime’s nature and its intentions in Iraq — an error that can prove to be fatal if not corrected.

In his interviews with different media outlets, U.S. President Barack Obama has made assertions about the Iranian regime being able to become a successful regional power and help stabilize the Middle East. Also, in his secret missives to the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Obama has promised that in the event of a final accord on Iran’s contested nuclear program, the U.S. is willing to cooperate with Iran in the fight against the Islamic State, an extremist group that is rampaging through the Middle East and has cut itself a caliphate out of territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

The assumption that Tehran can help in the fight to counter the advances of the IS stems from the shortsighted thinking that as a Shiite extremist powerhouse, the Iranian regime is the archenemy of the Sunni extremist Islamic State.

But a quick review of Iran’s actions in recent years proves that Tehran’s foreign policy in the region is not based on ideological tenets, but rather on setting up short-term — and sometimes contradictory — alliances to further its ultimate end: keeping the Middle East in a state of instability in order to remain the main power broker and hegemon of the region.

For instance, in 2001, Iran allegedly helped the U.S. with intelligence in invading Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban, a Sunni extremist government which at the time was a rival to the Iranian regime. But today, Iran is providing training camps to Taliban fighters and is backing it with cash and arms to fight Islamic State and counter U.S. influence in the region.

Another example is Yemen, where Iran’s proxy, the Houthi militants, have cast their lot with Iran’s former bitter enemy, ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and have occupied large swathes of the country, triggering a regional conflict and an all-out humanitarian crisis that is spreading across the Arabian Peninsula.

Iran also has regional goals in Iraq and Syria. While in Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Forces — an Iran-backed umbrella of Shiite militias — are ostensibly fighting the Islamic State, in Syria, the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by a plethora of Iranian proxy militias, is effectively colluding with the Islamic State in order to fend off the advances of opposition forces.
Moreover, Iran has at some point given refuge to the leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the Islamic State, because at the time, doing so served Tehran’s purpose to undermine the U.S.-led effort to restore order in Iraq.

To conclude, Iran’s loyalties are tactical and volatile, and relying on its Shiite nature as a basis for enlisting it in the fight against IS can prove to be calamitous. As soon as Tehran reaches the conclusion that IS is no longer a threat for its regional ambitions, it will order its forces to turn their weapons toward its next rival – the U.S. and its allies in the region. And it should not come as a surprise if Iran decides to align itself with the remnants of IS to that end.

Ironically, as Lake and Rogin’s report states, among the groups now sharing headquarters with the U.S. advisors in Iraq, some are designated as terrorist groups, and their members openly brag about their past record of murdering U.S. troops in Iraq. They wouldn’t think twice about doing so again, should the need arise. The Iranian regime is notoriously known for exploiting its counterparts’ vulnerabilities in order to strengthen its hand in negotiations, and right now, Obama’s erroneous interpretation of the regime’s intentions is perhaps providing Tehran with a full array, especially if it decides to assume a more confronting posture toward the U.S. in case the nuclear talks fall apart.
Giving leeway to the Iranian regime’s mischief-making for the sake of fighting IS is a self-defeating strategy that is already on its way to becoming an abject failure. Iran-backed Shiite militias are ransacking Sunni townships and villages behind U.S.-led airstrikes, looting and killing with wild abandon and further alienating a Sunni population that can be the key to defeating the IS. Crimes committed by these militia forces are driving a wedge into the Iraqi sectarian divide and are playing into the hands of both the IS and Iran, which happen to be the two sides of the same coin.
Iran’s goals is to seize Iraq for its own, not to stabilize it against terrorist groups. Therefore, any rational approach to putting back the torn pieces of Iraq would first start by the total eviction of the Iranian regime and its terrorist elements from the country. Not doing so will only help embolden Tehran in its evil deeds and increase the Iranian regime’s influence in Iraq and the Middle East.
To marshal Iraqis against the onslaught of the IS, the marginalized Sunni population needs to be empowered with both the political and the military clout needed to take part in reuniting the country and driving out extremist elements. They have already proven to be capable of doing so during the 2006-2007 surge against al-Qaeda.

Amir Basiri is an Iranian human rights activist and a supporter of democratic regime change in Iran. He tweets at @Amir_bas

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Walking Into The Persian Trap

With American Help Iraq’s Cycle of Violence Spirals

Brotherly Hatred of Shia and Sunni

 

Matthew Hoh | The Blog

 

Posted: 10/15/2014 12:15 pm EDT Updated: 10/15/2014 12:59 pm EDT

Amnesty International published a report yesterday on Iraqi Government and Shia militia war crimes against Sunni populations in Iraq. This important piece of documentation helps to illustrate the cycle of violence that has been devastating the people of Iraq for 11 years and why US military intervention, on behalf of the Shia government and against the Sunni population, is not working, will not work, and will only prolong the suffering of millions of Iraqis.

Over the last several years, since the US military withdrew in late 2011*, the Shia government in Baghdad has persecuted the Sunni minority population relentlessly. Persecution against Sunnis has included killings, disappearances, mass arrests, indefinite detainment without charges or trial, torture, and exclusion from national, provincial and local political, security and revenue structures.

The result has been Sunni alignment with the Islamic State and organized revolution against the Shia dominated government in Baghdad with the all too predictable accompanying sectarian slaughter. Mass Sunni retaliation against non-Sunnis, led by the Islamic State, highlighted the news cycle this summer, although this type of bloodshed was nothing unique or new to the people of Iraq. The cycle of violence continues as Shia forces, now with American military support, engage in retribution against Sunni civilians.

This cycle of violence started with our invasion of Iraq in 2003, and while it diminished for a period of time from 2007-2011, it has since been progressing steadily. Nearly 10,000 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence in 2013, and, if nothing changes, at the current rate, nearly 20,000 Iraqis, maybe more, will die this year.

What can and should be done?

Address the political grievances of the Sunni population. Give the Sunnis a reason not to support the Islamic State. Right now the Sunni population of Iraq is choosing to side with the Islamic State because that is a better option than to further acquiesce to the Shia government in Baghdad. To accomplish Sunni rejection of the Islamic State pressure must be put on the government in Baghdad to reform by incorporating Sunnis back into the security forces, into the political system and into the revenue streams, as well as removing Shia dominated security forces from Sunni areas. Greater autonomy must be given to Sunni areas; note this is not a Sunni only demand, but the government in Baghdad is so corrupt, that the Shia province of Basra in southern Iraq wants autonomy too.

The government in Baghdad will not reform or stop its persecution of Sunnis while we provide it with unconditional support through weapons sales and the use of the American air force or while we allow the continued sale of Iraqi oil. With no reform and no negotiation the Sunnis will remain attached to the Islamic State. With no political efforts the Islamic State will continue to grow stronger.

Sound familiar? Like our misadventure in Afghanistan? The greater we supported the corrupt government in Kabul and the more American troops we sent, the more the Taliban prospered. A similar dynamic is at play in Iraq. Consequently, without a change in American policy the cycle of violence in Iraq will continue its ghastly spiral, Amnesty International will find cause and need to publish more reports, and parasites of war, like the Islamic State and American defense companies will be the sole beneficiaries.

You may find the Amnesty International report here.

*This is not an endorsement for US forces to have remained in Iraq, but rather acknowledgment of one of the consequences of massive policy folly and foolishness. Despite a revisionist view currently circulated by hawks in D.C. and on TV, the prospect of American troops staying in Iraq past 2011 was wildly unpopular with a majority of Iraqis and would have led to a re-opening of the Iraq Civil War, including Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces once again killing American troops in large numbers. One of the foremost lessons that somehow, amazingly, we have not learned as Americans, is that once war has begun, war is impossible to control and there may be no options that result in anything other than death, maiming and destruction.

The Persian Nuclear Chess Game

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy

Israel Hayom

Chess: An Iranian Invention

The idea that the enemy of my enemy is my potential ally underlies the 2014 Western policy toward Iran, the enemy of Islamic State. It underlay U.S. policy toward Iraq’s Saddam Hussein — the enemy of Iran — until his occupation of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990.

The reckless policy toward Iraq in 1990 triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the U.S. taxpayer, 4,500 U.S. military fatalities, a surge of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism, and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf. The misguided characterization of Iran could produce a nuclear conflict, a mega-trillion dollar cost to the U.S. taxpayer, an unprecedented level of fatalities, a tidal wave of global anti-U.S Islamic terrorism, and tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

During 1989-1990, upon the conclusion of the Iraq-Iran war, the U.S. administration portrayed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein — the enemy of America’s enemy, Iran — as a potential ally, enhancing Baghdad’s strategic capabilities through an intelligence-sharing agreement, supplies of sensitive dual-use systems and the extension of $5 billion loan guarantees. Instead of constraining Saddam’s regional maneuverability and inherent, violent, megalomaniac expansionism, the U.S. administration chose to ignore Saddam’s core, imperialistic, rogue, radical, anti-U.S. ideology, which triggered the Iraq-Iran war.

The larger, historical, ideological, complex context was overtaken by a narrowly and simplistically designed policy du jour. The recklessness of “the enemy of my enemy is my potential ally” was underlined by an intense U.S.-Iraq diplomatic traffic. For example, Saddam’s meeting with Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, which convinced Saddam that he could invade Kuwait with impunity.

Thus, an erroneous U.S. policy led to Iraq’s plunder of Kuwait, and consequently to the First Gulf War (1991), the devastatingly costly Second Gulf War (2003-2010) and possibly the third Gulf war.

The victory of wishful thinking over reality was also the basis for Israel’s 1993 policy toward the PLO — the enemy of Hamas — which was gullibly expected to align itself with Israel’s war on Palestinian terrorism, in return for the unprecedented Israeli territorial concessions of the Oslo process. Instead, since 1993, Israel has been a victim of an unprecedented wave of PLO/Hamas anti-Israel terrorism, reinforced by daily hate education and incitement in Mahmoud Abbas’ schools, mosques and media, as well as a surge of terrorism from 2000-2003, the 2006 Hamas takeover of Gaza and the 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 wars against Palestinian terrorism in Gaza.

The assumption that “the enemy of my enemy is potentially my friend” underestimates the following endemic, unique features of Iran’s ayatollahs and mullahs: the compulsive, core, Islamic, supremacist, megalomaniac, anti-infidel, anti-U.S. ideology; the perception of the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and the chief obstacle to an imperial Islamic Iran; the intimate military ties with America’s enemies and adversaries; the sponsorship of global anti-U.S. jihadist terrorism, including in Iraq and Afghanistan; a 30-year track record of non-compliance and deceit in their negotiation with the West; Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s key role in misleading the West; the clear and present danger posed by a nuclear Iran to the survival of Saudi Arabia and other pro-U.S. oil-producing Arab regimes and to global and homeland security, national security and economy; the impact of Iran’s occupation of Iraq’s Shiite section upon the stability of the Gulf; the egregious violations of human rights by Iran’s minority, tyrannical, ruthless regime which sent 500,000 children to clear minefields during the Iraq-Iran War; and the ineffectiveness of sanctions, and any diplomatic option, when applied to rogue regimes, bent on domination, and the rejection of peaceful coexistence.

“The enemy of my enemy is my potential ally” worldview has been nurtured by the same foreign policy establishments that have systematically misread the Middle East: misjudging the rise of Islamic State; overestimating the will of the U.S.’s Arab allies to fight and the capabilities of Iraq’s military; underestimating the developments in Syria; welcoming the Arab tsunami as an “Arab Spring” transitioning toward democracy; crowning the Palestinian issue as the core cause of the Middle East turbulence and the crown jewel of Arab policy-making; encouraging the toppling of pro-U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the rise of the anti-U.S. Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood terror organization; giving Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi the cold shoulder; jumpstarting the 2006 Hamas takeover of Gaza; legitimizing Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas in 1988 and embracing them as a messengers of peace in 1993; underestimating Palestinian/Iranian hate education as the most effective manufacturing line of terrorism and the most authentic reflection of the respective leadership; courting Saddam Hussein in 1990; punishing Israel for destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, which spared the U.S. a nuclear confrontation in 1991; the abandonment of the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran, and welcoming the rise of anti-U.S. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; initial opposition to Prime Minister Begin’s 1977 direct peace negotiations with Egypt, and so on.

The deficient threat assessment of a nuclear Iran has crowned Teheran’s ayatollahs and mullahs as the top beneficiaries of the confrontation with Islamic State, rewarding them with what they want most: additional time required to obtain nuclear capabilities.

Reality checks and common sense indicate that the U.S. does not have a potential ally in the battle between Iran and Islamic State. Both are sworn enemies (amenable to tactical, provisional negotiations and truces) bent on Islamic supremacy, terrorism and “Death to America.”

The nature of the ayatollahs and mullahs on the one hand, and the assumption that they are potential allies of the U.S. on the other hand, constitutes a self-destruct oxymoron, which could entail a devastating nuclear cost.

France Falls Into The Iranian Shia Trap

Paris Wants Iran to Help Crush Islamic Radicals

PARIS — Sep 12, 2014, 1:23 PM ET

By SYLVIE CORBET and ELAINE GANLEY

Associated Press

 

France is prepared to invite Iran to an international conference Monday aimed at coordinating actions to knock out the Islamic State extremists in Iraq — even though that runs counter to the U.S. refusal to deal with Tehran.

The position reflects a recent shift in France’s policy toward Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation and neighbor of Iraq that joins regional states and the West in adamantly opposing the advance of the radicals. Tehran’s long-time influence, including at times a military presence, in Shiite-majority Iraq makes it a logical partner in France’s eyes.

A French official helping to plan the conference says the only hitch is agreeing with partners, but added “we are not far from a consensus.” The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named, didn’t elaborate.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made the American position clear Wednesday in Baghdad. “The United States does not cooperate, militarily or otherwise, nor does it have any intention in this process of doing so with Iran,” he said.

Iran is embroiled in a nuclear dispute with the international community which fears Tehran’s nuclear capabilities will be used to make weapons. But French President Francois Hollande says that is a separate issue.

France has staked a tough stance in the nuclear dispute, but is viewing Iranian help in the region with pragmatism, stressing the overlapping concerns of Iraq, Iran and the West about the dangers posed by the Islamic State group. Paris believes Tehran should not be excluded from the effort to crush the radicals who now control a wide swath of Iraq.

France began arming Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State group last month and is ready to carry out airstrikes, like the United States. There has been no overt talk about extending Iran’s role beyond the conference table.

Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaee, said Friday that Iran would be happy to participate in the Paris conference since it has a great interest in the stabilization of Iraq. He added that Iran is prepared to offer any support to its neighbor and hopes the conference will yield successful results.

———

Lara Jakes in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.