Good to read that the Biden administration has Iranian agents like Ariane Tabatabai with top secret security clearances working at the Pentagon.
She's publishing & submitting articles to Foreign Policy, The Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, supporting a pro nuclear Tehran arguing that Iran is “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need an agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”
Nothing to see here folks.......in the mean time, lets send another 25 billion to Zelenskyy.
To WaPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the White House PR firms, here is a go-to template excerpted from reporting of the embarrassing debacle with the honored Nazi to explain it away;
“While some may view it as a grave error on the part of Canada's parliament, others may argue that it was an unintentional mistake.”
Simply substitute ‘Biden administration’ for ‘Canada’s parliament’ and incompetence is then decriminalized to an “unintentional mistake”.
Let’s try this out on another matter.
--The Biden administration’s overestimation of the effectiveness of the Ukraine military and the weakness of their Russian counterparts is arguably an unintentional mistake.--
That sounds so much better than “a colossal failure of competence with disastrous ramifications.
The money sent to Ukraine will go to weapons to stop Russia in it's tracks and do our dirty work for us. In the Clinton's pockets? WTF are you talking about?
"The money sent to Ukraine will go to weapons to stop Russia in it's tracks"
Do you really think bombs and bullets are the only way to make money? Step one is blowing everything up. Step two in the money-grubbing scam behind perpetual wars is "Reconstruction". A lot of money is spent but curiously, not much gets built. It's how a lot of defenders of "democracy" got rich off our crusade in Afghanistan.
If there is a democrat administration running things when the rubble stops bouncing in Ukraine, chances are the Clinton Foundation will be dispatched to oversee who gets rich off the tax money our beneficent House and Senate representatives pledge for the effort. If it is the Clinton’s, I hope they do a better job for Ukrainians than they did for Haitians after their earthquake.
I think there’s definitely money laundering going on...but how to ever prove it...it’s taken this long to get bank records from when Biden was VP and even though it’s certainly proves he’s a lying asshole it’s just noise to a lot of people...and Dems still won’t admit - or don’t know legally - that if a family member gets unlawful money/gifts, sucks for you!
Oh this could be fun. I'll pile on. "The Biden administration's opening of the southern border is arguably an unintentional mistake." Which is so much better than acknowledging the disastrous consequences.
I worry that the obvious is denied in the Biden departments of State and Defense. What kind of oddsmaker would bet on the player with a tiny fraction of land area and population of its opponent in a war of attrition? Not surprisingly, Ukrainians not in the military seem to be fleeing. Clearly they get what Biden, et al, does not.
It would be naïve to believe that other countries, including adversaries, so called “allies” and even our own government agencies aren’t engaging their own version of the “Iran Experts Initiative” and dispensing their propaganda via rags like the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal…. which is then drafted into policy by staff of sclerotic, brain dead and/or greedy senators with a fondness for gold bars and beach front property.
Whoa...she is so outed now. She has touted all over the world for the past 10 years how pro nuclear Iran she is. She was cleverly slipped into our Department of Defense last year. Secretary Austin has received a letter from Rep. Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee demanding an explanation for her federal employment. Best they dump her ASAP. Getting too close to election time to defend themselves.
You have to be a flat-out jackass simpleton to think that China, which is run by millenarian communist psychopaths with a 100 year plan for global domination, will lose interest in Taiwan if Putin doesn’t get to keep enough of Donbas.
This war actually has sped up their plans to take Taiwan because they now have a guaranteed wartime energy supply.
Also, the primary cost of this war is from inflation which is already in the trillions.
There a lot of these vying for #1: WW1, the New Deal, Korea, all of the regime change in the Middle East engineered by the US, Vietnam, WMD, Covid...and your choice above for #1, tough choice.
The problem with Vietnam (now our buddy) was we spent money to help the wrong side. Vietnam was invaded by the English, French and then us. We should have told them to get the hell out and leave that little nation alone.The "domino theory?" Give me a freaking break!
Colour me cynical but it’s interesting that NOW we are seeing so many of these posts expressing doubts and reluctance to keep supporting Ukraine. Why now? Well, because this is the latest GOP talking point!
And Honey, Mike Vogel doesn’t need any help but let me jump in anyway: yes, we certainly should have stayed out of Vietnam, back in 1945 when it was still a French colony, by refusing to provide the ships and trucks and tanks to the bankrupt French so they could re-assert control. America never had a dog in that fight and should have stayed out of it. We DO have a dog in the Ukraine fight. It’s called “freedom” and if you think fighting for it (even with our guns and money but the Ukrainians’ blood and bodies) is “over there” and not our business, you need to get the history books out. If we don’t defend Ukraine, when will it EVER be justified?
Really? You aren’t very good at noting obvious differences. In those wars American blood and treasure were spent on the fools errand of attempting to create democracies in countries composed mainly of people who embraced the conquest ideology of Islam.
In the unjustified Russian war on Ukraine, no American combat boots are on the ground, so no American blood is being spilled. And the money is being spent to assist a fledging democracy which is fighting a conquest ideology.
The boots are on the ground. Do not kid yourself. While I too, as an American and a Westerner, believe Russia is in the wrong, I cannot say that from the Russian perspective it is unjustified given the actions of the last two Democratic administration's. Probably under Trump too because therein the intelligence agencies lost all pretense of loyalty to a duly elected President. I also very much disapprove of sacrificing Ukrainians in a US proxy war. It is inhumane.
Lynne, tho many will think I support Putin (WRONG!), but Putin did warn if the prior agreement to keep NATO from advancing to surround Russian borders wasn’t ignored, then had no beef with the USA, or Trump.
Trump “threatened” we’d stop funding NATO unless ALL the other NATO members started paying their delinquent dues = hundreds of billions of dollars.
I know, I know, “Russia, Russia, Russia, and Trump & Putin we’re best buddies” And, Hillary’s, now clearly debunked, Russian Collusion BS seems to follow him still!
So, Mike V, we shouldn’t have been in Vietnam? Afghanistan? Because NOW, 2023, we have 20/20 hindsight?
How will we eventually view our involvement in Ukraine? And what if/or when China attacks Taiwan? What will the US do? Beijing claims Taiwan is their territory, same as Putin has claimed parts of Ukraine belongs to Russia.
How do we know? Where do we draw the line on our involvement in foreign wars?
To be honest, Ukraine is more Russian than Russia, historically speaking: the future Russian Empire began in Kiev. So it isn't as if Russia has no historical claim on the territory. And NO, I don't support Putin!!!!!
The reality is that U.S. meddling in Ukraine, beginning in 2014, created a situation where we are, in effect, using Ukraine as a catspaw to pursue a second Cold War against Russia. Because for some reason, certain elements in our government were really upset that the first one ended.
I agree. At some point we have to learn from the follies of the past. Plus I think all of our foreign escapades have weakened us and we should disengage and reassess our preparedness.
It always angers me when some ignoramus yahoo says, "We should bring democracy to country X.". Country X has never been a democracy. In the Middle East all of these countries have been ruled by brutal dictators for thousands of years. That is all they know.
It took a thousand years and lots of blood for Great Britian to evolve into a democracy and we were the offspring of Great Britain. The only form of government we knew was a democracy.
Latin America pretends to be democracies. The Latins, except Costa Rica, are always looking for a strong man to run their countries.
I'll get push back on this but I speak from experience. I was raised and lived in Latin America for 40 years.
I'll put my, on the ground experience, up against some academic any day.
You Canadians need to dust off some history books, if they still exist in your country. Maybe you heard that your House of Commons speaker delighted a visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the rest of the clapping seals occupying the House by giving a back slapping, atta boy to Ukrainian “war hero” Yaroslav Hunka, “for fighting the Soviet Union during World War II”, apparently ignorant to the fact that old Yaroslav was a member of the Waffen-SS Galicia, a Nazi military unit notorious for horrific war crimes at the time.
But the ignorance doesn’t stop there, at the time Yaroslav and his Nazi pals were engaging in atrocities, my uncle was dodging U-Boat torpedoes as a Merchant Marine in the North Atlantic to deliver desperately needed supplies to the Soviet Union, our ALLY in fighting Nazis. It’s probably best that my uncle is no longer on this earth. I’m sure he never envisioned a day when one of the Nazis trying desperately to send him to his death in icy waters would be honored by a country, he risked his life to defend.
If you think that Ukraine is a “fledging democracy”, I recommend that you educate yourself. You can start with the following link:
I don’t read or listen to those sites, so you needn’t be so ignorant. My conclusion is based primarily on how America has responded to its lack of success in foreign wars since WW II.
This war has been a disaster for Russia. Defeat will result in less enthusiasm for wars of choice.
Maybe, I'd prefer to hear that from the President of the US rather than inferences. Perhaps I"m wrong, but I believe that the President of Ukraine would also like regime change in Russia. I'm wondering if our president would go for that. We need to know in black and white. I doubt that a defeat in Ukraine would end Russian Imperialism. Imperialism is in their DNA.
Why would I be scared of "Russian imperialism"? How would that affect me more than Western imperialism where a 15-minute city looms on the horizon, huge inflation on energy costs and food, increasing class divide between the rich and poor, rampant retail theft, a vastly increasing suicide/mental illness rate, open discrimination in the job market, massive looming demographic issues...? Russian imperialism just doesn't affect me.
Sorry if that sounds selfish, but it's how I - and reportedly over 55% of Americans (likely more; that was a CNN poll) feel.
It was perplexing when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But now we can see that ironically, his outreach to Iran set the stage for “the enemy of my enemy is my friend“ normalization agreements between Israel and Sunni Arab countries, including, hopefully soon, Saudi Arabia.
Public relations efforts like the ones described are understandable. But so is the strategy of isolating bad actors like Iran and maintaining crushing sanctions on them directly, and indirectly on any countries that trade with them.
Obama is a shallow pseudo-intellectual armed with bad theories about the world, presiding over an administration striking in its mix of arrogance and incompetence. He still lives in DC and still has a strong influence over the Biden agenda. The conventional press has almost completely failed to report on this. The Iran case is just one part of it.
What the hell does Ukraine and Zelensky have to do with this? Ukraine is a U.S. ally, fightly bravely to stop madman Putin from taking over their soverign nation. If we don't help them, are you that naive to think Putin won't take this as carte blanche to storm into other neighbors such as Poland? Iran is the total opposite--a two faced theocracy which poses a nuclear threat not only to us, but to the world. If our allies can't count on us, our credibity is shot to hell, and we will inevitably reap the whirlwind.
Mike V, and when China attacks Taiwan, do you believe their “mad man won’t take it as carte blanche to storm other places”, UNLESS we intervene? I am not being sarcastic here, but reading your comments today, I do want to hear how you think we’ll do against the CCP army.
Actually, they're already at it. Have you not noticed that almost 100,000 American citizens are dying each year of fentanyl overdoses? China sends the ingredients and recipes for such to Central American cartels, who bring the the poison to the US and also terrorize the citizens in their own luckless countries. If that doesn't count as a messy situation, what does?
And we should call them on it, using sanctions and all other means at our disposal. It is noteworthy that 85% of the Fentanyl entering the U.S. is brought in by American citizens driving over the border with the drugs stored in secret compartments in their vehicles and supplied by the cartels. Let's crack down on them as well!
You cite a statistic I had not encountered. I'm all for sending any fentanyl traffickers to prison, as well as US distributors and local dealers whose clients die of overdoses.
As one who grew up on the West Coast and still spends part of each year in an ever-more-squalid city there, I have seen the damage done. We have waited too long to act on this.
I'm 100% for doing whatever is feasible to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion and restore sovereignty over their internationally recognized boundaries. Not sure what that has to do with Iranian influence operations and a pro-Iranian academic working in the Defense Dept., other than the fact that Iran, in keeping with their long-held identity as one of the "bad guys," is providing weapons and support to their allies in Moscow.
A post that makes no sense. If sworn enemies of the US, like the Iranian theocratic regime, now closely allied to Putin’s Russia, has covert operations in the US, than somehow means we should deny Ukraine what it needs to defend itself against Russia and to essentially fight for us the new Cold War (not cold for them!) that Russia has imposed? This makes no sense whatsoever, but I guess America has to buy it because some ex-cable show demagogue has said it, and a bunch of people who have no idea what the Russian empire is about repeat it.
I have a great idea. Every time the janitor, compro, post a non-answer, respond to him with a single number or special character like, 1 or 5 or ? or & and then hit post. The idiot will receive dozens of emails saying he has a response to one of his asinine posts and he will eagerly think some sap has answered his non posts. He'll get dozens of single character responses.
It will send a message to him that we think he is not only a jerk but not as bright as he thinks he is.
Instead, this Jay Solomon fellow who writes for Semafor, founded by Benjamin Eli Smith with funding from people like Sam Bankman-Fried, Henry Kravis, and Jessica Lessin, will have a much less biased opinion.
So you're willing to discount the truth for partisanship? That truth being that Israel has far greater influence over our government and institutions than does Iran, and that Israel commits human rights violations of an egregiousness equivalent to if not surpassing those of Iran, with far greater frequency?
You're a right-wing guy like myself, I don't understand how someone of our generally shared disposition can take issue with Iran, especially an issue such as foreign operatives leveraging their power for the benefit of their homeland, and not have the same problem with Israel. When you say that you're "not too worried about someone being biased" because you find the subject of said bias reprehensible, you are not adopting a good faith position, but perhaps in this case you do not care to extend "good faith".
Trump was President already and the worst thing that happened was the permanent authoritarian Democrat government tried to remove him with multiple coup attempts.
I shall never forget an interview with Bibi Netanyahu back during one of the Bush administrations. When asked about Iran's nuclear ambitions, his response was cryptic and chilling. Paraphrasing: We know that the United States is politically limited in its response to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Translated: We understand that America is an unreliable ally; we further understand that an Iranian nuclear weapon means the immediate destruction of Israel, and our response will not be limited by any such silliness as politics.
Anyone who thinks the Jews are unaware of their historical place as underdogs and global whipping-boys, unaware of the pogroms and genocides directed entirely at them - and further, that they are ever going to allow themselves to be gathered together in railcars or driven into the sea are fools. Will they respond to an Iranian nuclear weapon? Yes. Will it be overwhelming and decisive, and will it involve the use of their own nuclear device, which we know they have? Yes and yes.
When asked how the Jews defeated an overwhelming army of Arabs in seven days, Golda Meir replied, "We have a secret weapon." Asked to elaborate, she said, "We have nowhere else to go."
If the Iranians have any doubts what will be the wages of developing a nuclear device, I would suggest a little history lesson; a good place to begin would be the story of Masada.
At this year’s UN General Assembly meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu conveyed a fairly clear threat to Iran when he went off script. What he was supposed to say was that Iran needed to face a “credible military threat” to force it to end its program. What he actually said was a “credible nuclear threat.”
Empowering an aggressive and destabilizing Iran is far from the West’s first foreign policy own goal. It might prove the most costly.
Bibi wants to stay out of jail just as Trump does. Can’t blame them for that, but never believe a single word they say. Except that on Iran, Bibi’s right. This whole Iranian nuclear clusterf-k is weird: lots of oil; could have a civil nuclear program as, say, Korea, Taiwan and the UAE do (& submit to IAEA inspections), and seek a rapprochement with the US and re-join the family of nations - and stop vilifying Israel. Instead, Iran is a pariah, its people are being immiserated, its poor and sinking. Weird! No wonder the regime’s “best buddies” are those other paragons: Putin; Xi; Assad and Hizbollah.
Israel already has nuclear weapons, so they don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Iran. Obviously they'd prefer if things don't come to that point, but if they do, they are prepared.
They don't have anything to worry about? You do realize (or maybe you don't) that the fanatics who control Iran's government are not deterred in the slightest by the possibility that Israel will shoot nukes back. They don't care how many Iranian citizens die as a result, as long as Israel is destroyed.
I don't think you understand how nuclear deterrence works. Iran will not have enough nuclear weapons to constitute a second-strike capability if they do end up procuring them, and Israel does decide to go nuclear. Israel will undoubtedly strike first in the event of hostilities because 1), they have incredibly detailed intelligence on Iran's defense capabilities and nuclear programs (which is how they were able to assassinate so many of their physicists), so they will know if Iran is close to procuring weapons and if they do, and 2), Israel is only about the size of Connecticut, so a single detonation would be enough to effectively destroy the country's ability to function. Naturally they would not let Iran get the first shot off because they would know when Iran would be able to do so, and they have very strong reasons to not allow them to. Israel would strike first and destroy Iran's nukes with nukes of their own. This concept is why the Soviet Union and The United States built so many weapons in the Cold War, because they were trying to have enough to have a second strike capability.
Israel won't be "shooting back"; they will be shooting first, and they will destroy Iran's capacity to respond in doing so.
Maybe I just don't know enough about the details of foreign policy, but I had a hard time following the tangled threads of this article. Is the problem that these people were acting as agents for the Iranian government when they had not been openly declared to be such?
Celia, I had the same reaction. The article was written in a manner that appeared to be concise and thorough, but I had a difficult time parsing what the thrust of it was really about.
But what I DID understand was that "experts" are being trusted by policy makers in Washington, to the detriment of THIS country AND Israel in particular. Unless and until Iran forsakes its stated goal to wipe the State of Israel off the face of the map they should not be trusted. And any expert, so-called, from that country should be doubted when they state the case for Iran's nuclear ambitions.
As much as I despised Obama for the health care initiative, I despise him even MORE for the Iran nuclear deal and the pallets of cash he sent to them to seal the deal. Iran is NOT to be trusted!
Thank God the ever senile Joe just sent Iran 6 billion dollars. Now Iran can not only keep its agents in the Pentagon on the payroll they can give them all a raise.
Come on Brian. A little humor here. I don't know if the jerk is a Muslim or not. He was raised in his formative years in a Muslin nation by a Muslim stepfather so who knows?
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It is the nuclear agreement that the US signed with Iran while the Muslim in Chief was POTUS. The agreement Trump ripped up and then imposed sanctions. The agreement that Biden seeks to reenter. It just baffles the mind what the neocon foreign policy wonks are doing.
It can be clarifying to remember that Obama considered Israel to be just another example of “White Colonialism” in the Middle East. While never explicitly stated, his actions while in office clearly demonstrated that he wanted Iran to be the hegemonic leader of the Middle East. Towards this end, the administration promoted the farcical idea that Iran, with one of the world’s largest deposits of fossil fuel, needed to develop nuclear power for domestic purposes. He authorized $billions to Iran which they have used to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Trump put a stop to this. The current administration, staffed with all the same people from the Obama administration (including Malley) are simply continuing the goals from the precious Obama administration. The reality of individuals with Iranian heritage being part of the current administration is hardly surprising.
Does anyone else marvel how “ social justice warriors”on Am campus attack Israel ever more stridently while never a word against Iran which deals viciously w women and gays. Very difficult following this article
It took me years to understand the strange bedfellowship between the Left and Islam. Islam is everything the Left *purports* to hate: fervent religious believers who force their illiberal sexist and homophobic beliefs on whole populations via theocracy. How on earth could Leftists embrace that???
Then I realized, with deep shock, that it all comes down to mutual hatred of Israel.
So the Left looks the other way as Islamists throw gays from buildings and force women to wear burqas.
I first became aware of this when Hillary Clinton publicly supported Palestine. I remember thinking WTH lady? But over the years I came to understand she is perfectly comfortable with what you describe. She is an elitist through and through and as such expects to do well under authoritarianism. Check out her "aide" that has been with her for years. The one that was married to Weiner.
Celia, I have wondered that same thing over the years and you just hit the nail on the head. I had never considered that but I totally agree. When it comes to Iran, the Leftists must also agree with “death to America.” Obama said early on that he wanted to fundamentally change the United States.
Assume this was facetious. Not one “social justice warrior” cares about Iranian population suffering under nightmare regime. Obama gave Cairo speech inviting banned Muslim Brotherhood whir putting “ daylight” btwn USA and Israel. Redacted every reference to Islamist extremism in every US counter terrorism manual calling jihad Ft Hood attack work place violence Huma Abedin family MB royalty
;~) And yet the Leftists screaming about Muslim parents not wanting their kids sexually groomed for abuse and transing are somehow NOT Islamophobic.
Oh wait, the Leftists decided that the Muslim parents had been brainwashed by conservative Christians. So the Leftists are *totally* not Islamophobic.
Except that anyone with a brain would realize that Islam is inherently a conservative religion. Nope, nope, these parents could not possibly be against pornographic books in schools and kindergarteners being forced to question what gender they are! Not without the brainwashing of those eeeeeevil Christians.
I marvel at how American women of Iranian heritage, who enjoy all of the West's freedoms, can support a regime that would beat and jail them for being "immodest". And how that regime is happy to overlook their immorality to further its agenda.
It is not just Iran but the Saudis are just as brutal and the ever senile Joe kisses their asses as have all our presidents in the last 30 or 40 years.
If we were truly a moral nation, we would have nothing to do with Islamic nations or China, Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea.
Every Islamic nation supports slavery and the brutalization of women.
You're right. Trump kissed the Saudis asses, his lackey son-in-law Kushner was handed $2 BILLION from them as a going away gift, and what's the Republicans response? Hunter Biden must be brought to justice!
He should, but compared to Kushner and (as Chris Christie explains it) the biggest family of grifters he ever saw in his life, HB is a jaywalker compared to Kushner enabling and profiting from his mass murderer Saudi buddies.
AL, because they HATE America, like so many WOKE LEFT Democrats do! Yet, while living here enjoying our freedoms, they support regimes that would quickly take them away, if possible!
I would use the word “marvel” in quotes but I agree with your statement that academia is - once again - completely without logic in blindly supporting one progressive issue at the expense of another progressive issue without any self-awareness of their ignorance. Support by Democrats for the two well-known Squad members who are whole-heartedly a part of this problem is a “marvel” as well.
Yes. “marvel” in quotes. Torture, death, Masah Amini - none of it resonates w the Left. Oberlin won’t give up Mohammed Jafar Mahallati responsible for deaths of thousands. Grows more Orwellian by the minute…
That is, of course, in addition to the fact that I ran, is threatening to wipe Israel off the map, and is the founder of most of the terrorism in the world
While Obama is quite the anti-American scumbag, I find you defending Obama to the death to be 10-15% less farcical than when you are defending decrepit white racist and child molester Joe Biden to the death, and it is thus less entertaining.
It wasn't that you had a hard time following it. It was just that, as a patriotic American citizen, you find it hard to believe that your government would be just this rotten and deluded.
That’s a good point, it was hard for me to focus on the story details because they were so complicated AND because my head was spinning from the upsetting information about our treasonous government.
I am with you. Iran has interests, and these people are out trying to further their perspectives. I really didn't see anything other than something that happens in the world of diplomacy. Thanks for sharing what I was thinking.
Me, too. Or maybe I just watched too much of “The Diplomat,” but I think I figured most countries would be doing this kind of subvert opinion-garnering. I didn’t completely understand when it crossed the line.
It would have helped if the author had given us more context. An Iranian agent working at the Pentagon is clearly across the line. But a lot of this just seemed to be shady-but-not-unusual efforts to manipulate opinions on Iran. I would have liked to have seen more dots connected. How, specifically, did these efforts change how our government acted toward Iran?
Like, the who is the European nation funding this dot. And given the policy shift from prior administrations to Obama I think it is indisputable that yes efforts like this changed how our government treated Iran.
I’m half German and my uncle was a senior official in the German Embassy in Tehran in the 70s and 80s. He was involved in negotiating the (supposedly peaceful) nuclear deals between the German government and the Shah, which was the original technological basis for Iran’s current nuclear weapons program. My uncle married an Iranian / Persian and I have numerous Persian cousins.
Persians are highly intelligent, cultured and attractive people. Their culture is one of the oldest in the world. They are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as primitive barbarians.
The regime that took over from the Shah is one of the cruelest and most effective governments in the world. We should have been taking Iran exceptionally seriously as a strong regional power with aggressive designs to dominate its region.
Instead, this brilliant, strategic nation has been playing America like a piano for decades. Just observing from the outside, President Obama and the Obama Administration appeared to have crossed a bright line into treason during their Iran negotiations. This article seems to confirm the infiltration of America’s defense and policy establishments by Iranian agents and the active collusion by Obama and Biden (aka Obama Administration 2.0) officials with Iran.
In a sense, this is no surprise given Obama’s betrayal of America, and it is certainly the most plausible explanation for the Obama Administration's disastrous Iran policy.
A nuclear-capable Iran will never have the scale of Russia or China, but they have perfected the deadly art of both covert and overt terrorism, starting way back with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon under Reagan, and we can expect them to continue to punch way above their weight in the international arena. Soon they will be be able to add the threat of nuclear weapons (not necessarily mounted on ballistic missiles) to their deck of cards.
The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?
Totally agree--they are wonderful people, and as you say so highly civilized, and once full of the joy of life: attractive, high spirited, poetic, gracious and elegant, intellectual, heirs to some of the greatest architecture in the world, Persians are civilized in the deepest sense.
That’s the tragedy, Bruce. They didn’t “cede control”, their country was stolen from them. They are now helpless just as the equally talented and cultured Germans were in 1933, as the Russians and Syrians and Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and Zimbabweans (etc etc) are today. They must feel such rage, and such futility...
Except that many of them did support the revolution because they felt that the Shah's push to modernization was too much too soon. There is disparity of opinion within Iran itself re: liberalism vs. conservatism. While it may seem that the entire population is against the regime, a substantial number are not. This, in part, explains why a counter revolution never seems to take off successfully. Perhaps the number in favour of a counter revolution is growing but part of the complexity is not being aligned on what the next government should be.
"The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?"
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend". It's becoming clearer by the day that the Obama/Biden Administration 2.0 is by far "America’s most implacable enemy"
Thanks for this Chris. You have articulated my instincts eloquently. But I find the "[T]hey are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as being primitive barbarians" thing concerning and off-putting. Perhaps instead of Putin rebuilding the USSR we should be concerned about Iran rebuilding and expanding the Achaemenid Empire.
Well, Persia’s ancient glory plus Iran’s Shia brand of Islam create a complex situation and it’s very difficult to forecast what lies in the future for the region—but adding nukes to the mix was a terrible mistake.
That’s because Obama is the President Buchanan of the 21st century. America almost didn’t survive the Buchanan Administration, and I doubt there’s a Lincoln to save us this time—unless it’s possibly Vivek.
Although some Buchanan Administration officials actively transferred weapons and ammunition to southern-based military facilities right up to the end of the Buchanan Administration.
Well, it should come as no surprise that Iran, like every other anti-American regime, has its intelligence fingers in our government as we likewise do in theirs. That we are blessed with a free press that digs up the bodies and reports on the secret connections between the actors is our advantage and saving grace. This report is a prime example of the benefits of a free press. Good job Semafor ,and thank you FP for posting it.
You sound very nonchalant about this story. It seems like it’s taking a very long time for this to come to light and so although it is wonderful that this has been reported on one has the wonder, what took so long? This is serious stuff.
And why is this not on the front page of the WSJ and other major newspapers throughout the country, as well as on NBC, CBS, Disne - uh, ABC, or even Fox News?
I guess it’s a little naive NOT to assume that stuff like this goes on in capital cities around the world, but we have to read and listen to news with a more critical mind.
Thanks SO much for this!
PS I couldn’t help but think of Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” when fatwa was mentioned! “Fatwa? No! No, fatwa!!!”
It isn't as if the Biden cabal wasn't warned about these traitors. "Iranian dissidents and Republican lawmakers expressed outrage when the Biden administration in 2021 tapped Tabatabai for a State Department post, arguing that based on her family's ties to the Iranian government and the policy views she has espoused, she should not be granted a top-secret security clearance, the Free Beacon reported." Now she's working at the Pentagon and the Pentagon flacks are defending her. Just another piece of evidence that the reptilian Biden Administration is anti-American to its core. Coddling Iran is no accident. Never forget their shrieks of outrage when Trump took out Soleimani - the Iranian terror chief who had the blood of American soldiers on his hands.
I can’t help but wonder whether Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s foreign policy assistant (whose qualifications for the post was his ability for writing fiction) who was tasked with getting the public to support the JCPOA, knew about the IEI. After all, he did brag later of having created an “echo chamber” to fake the existence of a broad consensus.
The possibility of parallel but independent tracks cannot be foreclosed, but given the cross-over of personnel with Malley and both sides desire to push an agreement that seemed to undermine fundamental US interests (and should have been a treaty but lacked the required Senate support), some level of coordination suggests itself.
To this day, President Obama has never given a particularly compelling or coherent justification for his decision to embolden Iran, of which the JCPOA was only part of his larger strategy (a word I use loosely as that strategy remains opaque, at least to me).
Put slightly differently, the detailed critique given by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech to Congress remains unanswered. For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. Similarly left unexplained was how an inspection regime that exempted all Iranian military sites and providing a 24 day notice to all others, could legitimately be characterized as the most robust ever.
That Prime Minister Netanyahu was instead personally attacked for “insulting” the President by accepting Congress’ invitation to address Congress directly on the matter should have told everyone all they needed to know about the JCPOA’s merits.
And the concessions we made to Iran continue to reverberate. For instance, having agreed to allow Iran to enrich and have its own nuclear industry, it’s hard for the US to make the case to our ally Saudi Arabia that it won’t be allowed the same capabilities.
On the bright side, the JCPOA seems to have been an essential spur to the Abraham Accords and caused a significant change in the Kingdom’s public relationship with Israel.
Should all these ongoing tectonic shifts in the Israeli-Arab conflict somehow translate to Arab recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and lead to an economic renaissance in a now stabilized region, look to President Obama to attempt a victory lap and claim that was the real goal of his JCPOA all along. Don’t believe him.
"For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. "
I suggest that, much like foundation of body politic, it is explained by obfuscation(s) through [ab]use of the vernacular. Simply: lots of dense smoke/hot air!
It is clear that Washington DC, government, politicians,as lobbyists and contractors are open for business without regard to impact on the country. Rather than allowing the corporate press to focus on sideshows of individual politicians, relatives, etc, the focus should be the across the board on the built in risks to the country from their actions. Until then, no one is really serious about fixing it.
I think it will take individual politicians and family members suffering consequences for selling American influence like common stock to start, start mind you, the fix.
How much money is spent in "think tanks" creating experts? Our society is swimming in experts of every kind. Is the world a better place because we have more of them? I would vote no. This article tells of people in think tanks, and Iran funds it. Is there any news here? As a government, Iran has national interests that it wants to influence. The Obama and Biden teams on Iran love diplomacy and talk. They come from the Neville Chamberlian School of Foreign Policy. For me, things like this will happen in a free society. But part of a great reform movement is to get rid of the funding for think tanks and make these people get real jobs.
Amazing story and worrying that US intel not good enough (or maybe it is) to know what is happening.
Mind you the UK can't talk. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) is a Sinophile and married to a Chinese woman who is high in the CCP and works in Chinese State Media - how did he ever get security clearance to be any where near Govt let alone one of the chief ministers!
Might be a good investigation and story for The Free Press......
It's funny how people have a problem with individuals from foreign nations using their positions in the government to benefit their homeland (even if the evidence for their subversion is purely circumstantial such as your finance minister) except for Israel, where in fact the opposite occurs, where people simultaneously lavish praise upon pro-Israel policy positions advocated for by Jewish government officials and hurl accusations of anti-Semitism at anyone who takes note of this overt conflict of interest. One could of course say that it's not a conflict of interest, because the interests of our two countries are so closely aligned, but this ignores both the historical record of Israel's reliability as an ally of the United States (which is very poor) and the underlying causes which led our interests to become so seemingly "aligned" to begin with.
This comment section is full of people decrying Iran and Iranians because of one (1) small think tank and a few Iranians using their power to benefit their own country (which is a very serious issue, don't get me wrong) but are completely blind if not welcoming of the exponentially greater presence of Zionist think tanks and dozens of Zionist Jews in our state department and hundreds if not thousands in adjacent foreign policy institutions, all of whom leverage their positions for the benefit of the state of Israel. This is blatant hypocrisy.
“People have a problem” “People lavish praise” “people accuse” … these are such subjective metrics. I think your framing of this double standard could be easily reversed and still sound plausible, as in: Why is there such a high burden of proof to accuse Iranian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, or those associated with them of collusion, but when it comes to Jewish Americans people assume they are foreign agents unless they take an anti-Israel stance?
You are correct to criticize my subjective phraseology, although I imagine it'd be easy to find polling data that more or less corroborates my points, however, I disagree that one could reverse my position and still have it hold the same weight. I never argued that there wasn't a high burden of proof to brand Iranians and Chinese as foreign agents--there very much is still resistance to that--my point was that even while there are occasional exposes such as this, and that our government works overtime to root out Chinese and Iranian spies, there is no such effort by the media or government alike to do the same with Israel. The most damning distinction is that Iran and China are categorically considered by policymakers, media outlets, and academics alike to be our enemies, while Israel is quixotically held up as an ally. Much of our reasoning for being at odds with Iran in the first place is because of the Iranian position in regards to Israel.
Thank you for a very valuable story. It only continues the trail of influence peddling the Slow Joe regime is influenced by. Some millions here, some millions there, University Presidents bought and paid for and you have foreign policy dictated by those trying to destroy you. Makes as much sense as Iran or Russia on the UN Human Rights Commission. Yet there it is.
One can wager lots of money in betting this story never makes it to the so called main press (aka - fish wrap) or the talking heads who probably would say Trump did it or the Republicans prevented fixing a busted system. See the absolutely mentally unbalanced liberal mind set says; it's not them, it's really us causing the issues. Our actions make the governments of Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia, etc. act like they do. See way back when we were Imperialists and that somehow justifies their evil actions of today. Women and kids being killed, sold, or just plain enslaved, must be caused by the USA.
From Fang-Fang, other Dems and even Republicans connections via money and academic funding, is it any wonder our foreign policy is such a disaster. Only thing worse is the economy and the border. Yet the same liberal mindset will work to elect the same idiots again. This should be a major issue in the coming elections on foreign influence in elected officials and the academic realm. But it won't, why? We need to be worried about tranny issues and the ability to abort babies. Two main issues and to hell with selling the country for a few gold bars.
Good to read that the Biden administration has Iranian agents like Ariane Tabatabai with top secret security clearances working at the Pentagon.
She's publishing & submitting articles to Foreign Policy, The Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, supporting a pro nuclear Tehran arguing that Iran is “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need an agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”
Nothing to see here folks.......in the mean time, lets send another 25 billion to Zelenskyy.
To WaPo, NYT, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the White House PR firms, here is a go-to template excerpted from reporting of the embarrassing debacle with the honored Nazi to explain it away;
“While some may view it as a grave error on the part of Canada's parliament, others may argue that it was an unintentional mistake.”
Simply substitute ‘Biden administration’ for ‘Canada’s parliament’ and incompetence is then decriminalized to an “unintentional mistake”.
Let’s try this out on another matter.
--The Biden administration’s overestimation of the effectiveness of the Ukraine military and the weakness of their Russian counterparts is arguably an unintentional mistake.--
That sounds so much better than “a colossal failure of competence with disastrous ramifications.
I wonder, how much of the billions sent to Ukraine will end up in the ever senile Joe's crime family's pockets?
If not Joe's, definitely the Clinton's pockets.
Both.
Cynthia, least we forget Obama!
The money sent to Ukraine will go to weapons to stop Russia in it's tracks and do our dirty work for us. In the Clinton's pockets? WTF are you talking about?
"The money sent to Ukraine will go to weapons to stop Russia in it's tracks"
Do you really think bombs and bullets are the only way to make money? Step one is blowing everything up. Step two in the money-grubbing scam behind perpetual wars is "Reconstruction". A lot of money is spent but curiously, not much gets built. It's how a lot of defenders of "democracy" got rich off our crusade in Afghanistan.
If there is a democrat administration running things when the rubble stops bouncing in Ukraine, chances are the Clinton Foundation will be dispatched to oversee who gets rich off the tax money our beneficent House and Senate representatives pledge for the effort. If it is the Clinton’s, I hope they do a better job for Ukrainians than they did for Haitians after their earthquake.
https://canada-haiti.ca/content/how-clintons-robbed-and-destroyed-haiti
An assumption based on experience with US politics....that's what they are talking about. Do not ask for evidence.......none will ever "exist".
Lonesome, remember “10% to the Big Guy” tho I wonder just what dirt Ukrainian Big Wigs have on Biden & Hunter?
I think there’s definitely money laundering going on...but how to ever prove it...it’s taken this long to get bank records from when Biden was VP and even though it’s certainly proves he’s a lying asshole it’s just noise to a lot of people...and Dems still won’t admit - or don’t know legally - that if a family member gets unlawful money/gifts, sucks for you!
I don’t support sending any money to Ukraine. Sending weapons which will never be used is another story.
Oh this could be fun. I'll pile on. "The Biden administration's opening of the southern border is arguably an unintentional mistake." Which is so much better than acknowledging the disastrous consequences.
Damn! Journalism is so easy!
You are my new best friend.
I worry that the obvious is denied in the Biden departments of State and Defense. What kind of oddsmaker would bet on the player with a tiny fraction of land area and population of its opponent in a war of attrition? Not surprisingly, Ukrainians not in the military seem to be fleeing. Clearly they get what Biden, et al, does not.
"lets send another 25 billion to Zelenskyy"
It would be naïve to believe that other countries, including adversaries, so called “allies” and even our own government agencies aren’t engaging their own version of the “Iran Experts Initiative” and dispensing their propaganda via rags like the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal…. which is then drafted into policy by staff of sclerotic, brain dead and/or greedy senators with a fondness for gold bars and beach front property.
Who is funding all these "think tanks"? How many millions of dollars has been spent sending these minions all over the world? To do what, exactly?
Whoa...she is so outed now. She has touted all over the world for the past 10 years how pro nuclear Iran she is. She was cleverly slipped into our Department of Defense last year. Secretary Austin has received a letter from Rep. Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee demanding an explanation for her federal employment. Best they dump her ASAP. Getting too close to election time to defend themselves.
How much of the 6 billion sent to Iran ended up in the ever senile Joe's pockets?
Too little, too late.
Money spent helping Ukraine end Russian imperialism will save trillions in future defense spending.
"Money spent helping Ukraine end Russian imperialism will save trillions in future defense spending"
I recall hearing "experts" say the same thing about Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan....
Yip same bullshit different war!
You have to be a flat-out jackass simpleton to think that China, which is run by millenarian communist psychopaths with a 100 year plan for global domination, will lose interest in Taiwan if Putin doesn’t get to keep enough of Donbas.
This war actually has sped up their plans to take Taiwan because they now have a guaranteed wartime energy supply.
Also, the primary cost of this war is from inflation which is already in the trillions.
The main cause of inflation is the Democrat Party’s war on Mother Nature.
The scam of the 21st century!
There a lot of these vying for #1: WW1, the New Deal, Korea, all of the regime change in the Middle East engineered by the US, Vietnam, WMD, Covid...and your choice above for #1, tough choice.
You don't think us not helping Ukraine and caving in to Russian expansionism will encourage China to invade Taiwan? Seriously?
Plus Intel. Lots of intel. On another note did you see this about the chip plant in Arizona Biden cut the ribbon on?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-shifts-focus-japan-amid-152552116.html
Interestingly there is also a story about it in the South China Times.
It is like that old Moe's & Joe song, "Only the Names Have Been Changed".
The problem with Vietnam (now our buddy) was we spent money to help the wrong side. Vietnam was invaded by the English, French and then us. We should have told them to get the hell out and leave that little nation alone.The "domino theory?" Give me a freaking break!
Colour me cynical but it’s interesting that NOW we are seeing so many of these posts expressing doubts and reluctance to keep supporting Ukraine. Why now? Well, because this is the latest GOP talking point!
And Honey, Mike Vogel doesn’t need any help but let me jump in anyway: yes, we certainly should have stayed out of Vietnam, back in 1945 when it was still a French colony, by refusing to provide the ships and trucks and tanks to the bankrupt French so they could re-assert control. America never had a dog in that fight and should have stayed out of it. We DO have a dog in the Ukraine fight. It’s called “freedom” and if you think fighting for it (even with our guns and money but the Ukrainians’ blood and bodies) is “over there” and not our business, you need to get the history books out. If we don’t defend Ukraine, when will it EVER be justified?
Really? You aren’t very good at noting obvious differences. In those wars American blood and treasure were spent on the fools errand of attempting to create democracies in countries composed mainly of people who embraced the conquest ideology of Islam.
In the unjustified Russian war on Ukraine, no American combat boots are on the ground, so no American blood is being spilled. And the money is being spent to assist a fledging democracy which is fighting a conquest ideology.
The boots are on the ground. Do not kid yourself. While I too, as an American and a Westerner, believe Russia is in the wrong, I cannot say that from the Russian perspective it is unjustified given the actions of the last two Democratic administration's. Probably under Trump too because therein the intelligence agencies lost all pretense of loyalty to a duly elected President. I also very much disapprove of sacrificing Ukrainians in a US proxy war. It is inhumane.
Lynne, tho many will think I support Putin (WRONG!), but Putin did warn if the prior agreement to keep NATO from advancing to surround Russian borders wasn’t ignored, then had no beef with the USA, or Trump.
Trump “threatened” we’d stop funding NATO unless ALL the other NATO members started paying their delinquent dues = hundreds of billions of dollars.
I know, I know, “Russia, Russia, Russia, and Trump & Putin we’re best buddies” And, Hillary’s, now clearly debunked, Russian Collusion BS seems to follow him still!
So, Mike V, we shouldn’t have been in Vietnam? Afghanistan? Because NOW, 2023, we have 20/20 hindsight?
How will we eventually view our involvement in Ukraine? And what if/or when China attacks Taiwan? What will the US do? Beijing claims Taiwan is their territory, same as Putin has claimed parts of Ukraine belongs to Russia.
How do we know? Where do we draw the line on our involvement in foreign wars?
To be honest, Ukraine is more Russian than Russia, historically speaking: the future Russian Empire began in Kiev. So it isn't as if Russia has no historical claim on the territory. And NO, I don't support Putin!!!!!
The reality is that U.S. meddling in Ukraine, beginning in 2014, created a situation where we are, in effect, using Ukraine as a catspaw to pursue a second Cold War against Russia. Because for some reason, certain elements in our government were really upset that the first one ended.
I agree. At some point we have to learn from the follies of the past. Plus I think all of our foreign escapades have weakened us and we should disengage and reassess our preparedness.
100 percent
It always angers me when some ignoramus yahoo says, "We should bring democracy to country X.". Country X has never been a democracy. In the Middle East all of these countries have been ruled by brutal dictators for thousands of years. That is all they know.
It took a thousand years and lots of blood for Great Britian to evolve into a democracy and we were the offspring of Great Britain. The only form of government we knew was a democracy.
Latin America pretends to be democracies. The Latins, except Costa Rica, are always looking for a strong man to run their countries.
I'll get push back on this but I speak from experience. I was raised and lived in Latin America for 40 years.
I'll put my, on the ground experience, up against some academic any day.
Exactly.
I never said America should bring democracy to Ukraine. Ukraine is already a democracy. I said America should help Ukraine defend itself from Russia.
My post was just a statement of fact, not meant to offend. I apologize if it did.
You Canadians need to dust off some history books, if they still exist in your country. Maybe you heard that your House of Commons speaker delighted a visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the rest of the clapping seals occupying the House by giving a back slapping, atta boy to Ukrainian “war hero” Yaroslav Hunka, “for fighting the Soviet Union during World War II”, apparently ignorant to the fact that old Yaroslav was a member of the Waffen-SS Galicia, a Nazi military unit notorious for horrific war crimes at the time.
But the ignorance doesn’t stop there, at the time Yaroslav and his Nazi pals were engaging in atrocities, my uncle was dodging U-Boat torpedoes as a Merchant Marine in the North Atlantic to deliver desperately needed supplies to the Soviet Union, our ALLY in fighting Nazis. It’s probably best that my uncle is no longer on this earth. I’m sure he never envisioned a day when one of the Nazis trying desperately to send him to his death in icy waters would be honored by a country, he risked his life to defend.
If you think that Ukraine is a “fledging democracy”, I recommend that you educate yourself. You can start with the following link:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/27/springtime-for-hitler/
I love satire.
It could have been more used practically helping Americans in need not enriching corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs.
Money should not be sent to Ukraine. I support sending weapons which will never be used.
It is the same as money. The weapons are being replaced with US cash. Don't fool yourself.
Mitch McConnell - is that you?
That made me laugh. Thanks. And I agree with the implications of your sly wit.
Trillions? Give one example of this hyperbolic nonsense.
How much money has America spent on defense since the 2nd World War.
And you think that the necessity for defense spending will go away if Russia is defeated?
It will be significantly reduced. Obviously.
That is not at all obvious.
Obviously not.
"Defense" is such an intentionally misleading misnomer. It should revert to its prior name, The Department of War" (1947).
Until we know what the goal is and whether it is a fixed goal, no more.
The goal is to evict Russian troops from Ukraine. The defeat of Russia in Ukraine will end Russian imperialism.
Sure that's it. After all that is what those beacons of democracy the NYT, WaPo, CNN and MSNBC say.
I don’t read or listen to those sites, so you needn’t be so ignorant. My conclusion is based primarily on how America has responded to its lack of success in foreign wars since WW II.
This war has been a disaster for Russia. Defeat will result in less enthusiasm for wars of choice.
That was Charlie Wilson's Afghanistan theory too.
Maybe, I'd prefer to hear that from the President of the US rather than inferences. Perhaps I"m wrong, but I believe that the President of Ukraine would also like regime change in Russia. I'm wondering if our president would go for that. We need to know in black and white. I doubt that a defeat in Ukraine would end Russian Imperialism. Imperialism is in their DNA.
😂😂😂
Why would I be scared of "Russian imperialism"? How would that affect me more than Western imperialism where a 15-minute city looms on the horizon, huge inflation on energy costs and food, increasing class divide between the rich and poor, rampant retail theft, a vastly increasing suicide/mental illness rate, open discrimination in the job market, massive looming demographic issues...? Russian imperialism just doesn't affect me.
Sorry if that sounds selfish, but it's how I - and reportedly over 55% of Americans (likely more; that was a CNN poll) feel.
It was perplexing when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But now we can see that ironically, his outreach to Iran set the stage for “the enemy of my enemy is my friend“ normalization agreements between Israel and Sunni Arab countries, including, hopefully soon, Saudi Arabia.
Public relations efforts like the ones described are understandable. But so is the strategy of isolating bad actors like Iran and maintaining crushing sanctions on them directly, and indirectly on any countries that trade with them.
Obama is a shallow pseudo-intellectual armed with bad theories about the world, presiding over an administration striking in its mix of arrogance and incompetence. He still lives in DC and still has a strong influence over the Biden agenda. The conventional press has almost completely failed to report on this. The Iran case is just one part of it.
What the hell does Ukraine and Zelensky have to do with this? Ukraine is a U.S. ally, fightly bravely to stop madman Putin from taking over their soverign nation. If we don't help them, are you that naive to think Putin won't take this as carte blanche to storm into other neighbors such as Poland? Iran is the total opposite--a two faced theocracy which poses a nuclear threat not only to us, but to the world. If our allies can't count on us, our credibity is shot to hell, and we will inevitably reap the whirlwind.
Mike V, and when China attacks Taiwan, do you believe their “mad man won’t take it as carte blanche to storm other places”, UNLESS we intervene? I am not being sarcastic here, but reading your comments today, I do want to hear how you think we’ll do against the CCP army.
"Intervening" and assisting Ukraine will act as a deterrent to China. I don't think they want to get into a messy situation with us either.
Actually, they're already at it. Have you not noticed that almost 100,000 American citizens are dying each year of fentanyl overdoses? China sends the ingredients and recipes for such to Central American cartels, who bring the the poison to the US and also terrorize the citizens in their own luckless countries. If that doesn't count as a messy situation, what does?
And we should call them on it, using sanctions and all other means at our disposal. It is noteworthy that 85% of the Fentanyl entering the U.S. is brought in by American citizens driving over the border with the drugs stored in secret compartments in their vehicles and supplied by the cartels. Let's crack down on them as well!
You cite a statistic I had not encountered. I'm all for sending any fentanyl traffickers to prison, as well as US distributors and local dealers whose clients die of overdoses.
As one who grew up on the West Coast and still spends part of each year in an ever-more-squalid city there, I have seen the damage done. We have waited too long to act on this.
You may want to adjust your meds. Just sayin....
After reading the responses from the brain dead conspiracy cultists, I may indeed.
Not to mention that Iran remains one of the largest weapon suppliers to Russia viz a viz Ukraine.
I still don't understand the hard-on the Biden Admin (and Obama previously) have for Iran and to get this Nuclear Deal (aka extortion) through.
I'm 100% for doing whatever is feasible to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion and restore sovereignty over their internationally recognized boundaries. Not sure what that has to do with Iranian influence operations and a pro-Iranian academic working in the Defense Dept., other than the fact that Iran, in keeping with their long-held identity as one of the "bad guys," is providing weapons and support to their allies in Moscow.
Evans W
A post that makes no sense. If sworn enemies of the US, like the Iranian theocratic regime, now closely allied to Putin’s Russia, has covert operations in the US, than somehow means we should deny Ukraine what it needs to defend itself against Russia and to essentially fight for us the new Cold War (not cold for them!) that Russia has imposed? This makes no sense whatsoever, but I guess America has to buy it because some ex-cable show demagogue has said it, and a bunch of people who have no idea what the Russian empire is about repeat it.
I’m waiting for trusted MSNBC anchors Ali Velshi, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Medhi Hassan to weigh in on this before I pick a side……..
It should be coming shortly just let Medhi, Ali and Ayman collect their thoughts especially on Israel and the Jews - the shit should start flowing.
I have a great idea. Every time the janitor, compro, post a non-answer, respond to him with a single number or special character like, 1 or 5 or ? or & and then hit post. The idiot will receive dozens of emails saying he has a response to one of his asinine posts and he will eagerly think some sap has answered his non posts. He'll get dozens of single character responses.
It will send a message to him that we think he is not only a jerk but not as bright as he thinks he is.
Except that I have a personal rule that I just don't respond to him at all. No matter the provocation. No matter how rational it would be to respond.
Yeah, he is pretty odious.
Dont rest directly and not mention his name
Great idea!
I'm sure they are all to busy practicing Tatbir to weigh in on this nothing burger.....
Subtle....
Instead, this Jay Solomon fellow who writes for Semafor, founded by Benjamin Eli Smith with funding from people like Sam Bankman-Fried, Henry Kravis, and Jessica Lessin, will have a much less biased opinion.
Well yeah but I’m not too worried about someone being biased against the Iranian regime because that’s also known as ‘not being a barbarian’.
So you're willing to discount the truth for partisanship? That truth being that Israel has far greater influence over our government and institutions than does Iran, and that Israel commits human rights violations of an egregiousness equivalent to if not surpassing those of Iran, with far greater frequency?
You're a right-wing guy like myself, I don't understand how someone of our generally shared disposition can take issue with Iran, especially an issue such as foreign operatives leveraging their power for the benefit of their homeland, and not have the same problem with Israel. When you say that you're "not too worried about someone being biased" because you find the subject of said bias reprehensible, you are not adopting a good faith position, but perhaps in this case you do not care to extend "good faith".
Uh…no. Nope, not, no…
Is that all you can bring yourself to say?
You’re not serious if you’re equating Iran and Israel, so I’m speechless.
Wow.....
I will stick with none of above.
Don't hold your breath.
Subtle....
***yawn***
Time to call troll busters
Funny. Feel the same way your comments.
I knew this would be a touchy subject for you since you are both an MSNBC viewer and Boko Haram five-star general.
Ah, so what evidence/proof do you have that I am a Boko Haram general?
That would be bery unlikely since you have also accused me in the past of being a white, 20 year old, paid by George Soros.
Not touchy at all. It's just very revealing for you.
Continue....
2
666
This is the most appropriate response to Compost2.0 ever.
@
🤣🤣🤣
%
LOL, you've progressed beyond a 3 letter response. Congrats!
And maybe one day you'll progress as a human.
Can I use your "speak, scream, tear things down" quote, Timothy?
)
Lol. Hey no comment, nothing for me to debunk. Great strategy!
So odd for someone who accuses others on not answering things directly.
Coward.
~
Lol! Hey, no comments, nothing for me to debunk. Like the new strategy!
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( . )
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Lol. When you don't say anyrhinh, nothing for me to debunk. Like the run and hide strategy!
Iranian spies probably blend in really well in Washington DC because, like everyone else in Washington DC, they hate America.
Good point. I shudder to think what a look-see at Nuland's or Vindemann's communications would reveal.
What does our government and the Iranian regime have in common?
They both see their own people as their biggest threat.
Birds of a feather seem to flock together.
And it's long past time to confirm their fears......
Trump and Iranian leadership ARE the biggest threat to their nations! Wake up!
Trump was President already and the worst thing that happened was the permanent authoritarian Democrat government tried to remove him with multiple coup attempts.
Imagine if we had had a Hillary Clinton administration in charge during Covid?
Jesus....
Fewer Americans would have died, Ben.
Explain?
Donnie T a threat?
I ain’t buying it.
I shall never forget an interview with Bibi Netanyahu back during one of the Bush administrations. When asked about Iran's nuclear ambitions, his response was cryptic and chilling. Paraphrasing: We know that the United States is politically limited in its response to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Translated: We understand that America is an unreliable ally; we further understand that an Iranian nuclear weapon means the immediate destruction of Israel, and our response will not be limited by any such silliness as politics.
Anyone who thinks the Jews are unaware of their historical place as underdogs and global whipping-boys, unaware of the pogroms and genocides directed entirely at them - and further, that they are ever going to allow themselves to be gathered together in railcars or driven into the sea are fools. Will they respond to an Iranian nuclear weapon? Yes. Will it be overwhelming and decisive, and will it involve the use of their own nuclear device, which we know they have? Yes and yes.
When asked how the Jews defeated an overwhelming army of Arabs in seven days, Golda Meir replied, "We have a secret weapon." Asked to elaborate, she said, "We have nowhere else to go."
If the Iranians have any doubts what will be the wages of developing a nuclear device, I would suggest a little history lesson; a good place to begin would be the story of Masada.
At this year’s UN General Assembly meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu conveyed a fairly clear threat to Iran when he went off script. What he was supposed to say was that Iran needed to face a “credible military threat” to force it to end its program. What he actually said was a “credible nuclear threat.”
Empowering an aggressive and destabilizing Iran is far from the West’s first foreign policy own goal. It might prove the most costly.
Bibi wants to stay out of jail just as Trump does. Can’t blame them for that, but never believe a single word they say. Except that on Iran, Bibi’s right. This whole Iranian nuclear clusterf-k is weird: lots of oil; could have a civil nuclear program as, say, Korea, Taiwan and the UAE do (& submit to IAEA inspections), and seek a rapprochement with the US and re-join the family of nations - and stop vilifying Israel. Instead, Iran is a pariah, its people are being immiserated, its poor and sinking. Weird! No wonder the regime’s “best buddies” are those other paragons: Putin; Xi; Assad and Hizbollah.
Again I quote Golda Meir: "There will never be peace until the Arabs love their children more than they hate us."
Israel already has nuclear weapons, so they don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Iran. Obviously they'd prefer if things don't come to that point, but if they do, they are prepared.
They don't have anything to worry about? You do realize (or maybe you don't) that the fanatics who control Iran's government are not deterred in the slightest by the possibility that Israel will shoot nukes back. They don't care how many Iranian citizens die as a result, as long as Israel is destroyed.
And your proof of this is what?
I don't think you understand how nuclear deterrence works. Iran will not have enough nuclear weapons to constitute a second-strike capability if they do end up procuring them, and Israel does decide to go nuclear. Israel will undoubtedly strike first in the event of hostilities because 1), they have incredibly detailed intelligence on Iran's defense capabilities and nuclear programs (which is how they were able to assassinate so many of their physicists), so they will know if Iran is close to procuring weapons and if they do, and 2), Israel is only about the size of Connecticut, so a single detonation would be enough to effectively destroy the country's ability to function. Naturally they would not let Iran get the first shot off because they would know when Iran would be able to do so, and they have very strong reasons to not allow them to. Israel would strike first and destroy Iran's nukes with nukes of their own. This concept is why the Soviet Union and The United States built so many weapons in the Cold War, because they were trying to have enough to have a second strike capability.
Israel won't be "shooting back"; they will be shooting first, and they will destroy Iran's capacity to respond in doing so.
Maybe I just don't know enough about the details of foreign policy, but I had a hard time following the tangled threads of this article. Is the problem that these people were acting as agents for the Iranian government when they had not been openly declared to be such?
Celia, I had the same reaction. The article was written in a manner that appeared to be concise and thorough, but I had a difficult time parsing what the thrust of it was really about.
But what I DID understand was that "experts" are being trusted by policy makers in Washington, to the detriment of THIS country AND Israel in particular. Unless and until Iran forsakes its stated goal to wipe the State of Israel off the face of the map they should not be trusted. And any expert, so-called, from that country should be doubted when they state the case for Iran's nuclear ambitions.
As much as I despised Obama for the health care initiative, I despise him even MORE for the Iran nuclear deal and the pallets of cash he sent to them to seal the deal. Iran is NOT to be trusted!
The fact that an Iranian undeclared agent is an employee at the Pentagon was the thing that really stood out to me.
Thank God the ever senile Joe just sent Iran 6 billion dollars. Now Iran can not only keep its agents in the Pentagon on the payroll they can give them all a raise.
Why was the 6 Billion in Iranian oil revenue released?
Hostage exchange. You know that.
Why? Why? Do you answer this nitwit?
Could be....or maybe Biden is Iranian?
5
%
1000% Correct.
Obama is behind this even to this day.
JCPOA is bad policy.
Well, the golfer in chief is a Muslim and he just helping out his Islamic pals.
I have always wondered. Did he carry his prayer rug with hm on Air Force One?
Obama support for JCPOA has nothing to do with the things you stated.
Come on Brian. A little humor here. I don't know if the jerk is a Muslim or not. He was raised in his formative years in a Muslin nation by a Muslim stepfather so who knows?
My apologies. I’m in a lot of pain with a chronic condition I have and didn’t recognize the sarcasm. My bad. Thanks for waking me up.
No, at Obama's church they do not shout "Death to America!" They shout "God damn America!".
What is JSPOA?
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It is the nuclear agreement that the US signed with Iran while the Muslim in Chief was POTUS. The agreement Trump ripped up and then imposed sanctions. The agreement that Biden seeks to reenter. It just baffles the mind what the neocon foreign policy wonks are doing.
I get that the WH decision-making process (if they have one) has been driven by a deceiving campaign carefully orchestrated by Iran. One more....🙄
It can be clarifying to remember that Obama considered Israel to be just another example of “White Colonialism” in the Middle East. While never explicitly stated, his actions while in office clearly demonstrated that he wanted Iran to be the hegemonic leader of the Middle East. Towards this end, the administration promoted the farcical idea that Iran, with one of the world’s largest deposits of fossil fuel, needed to develop nuclear power for domestic purposes. He authorized $billions to Iran which they have used to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Trump put a stop to this. The current administration, staffed with all the same people from the Obama administration (including Malley) are simply continuing the goals from the precious Obama administration. The reality of individuals with Iranian heritage being part of the current administration is hardly surprising.
Does anyone else marvel how “ social justice warriors”on Am campus attack Israel ever more stridently while never a word against Iran which deals viciously w women and gays. Very difficult following this article
It took me years to understand the strange bedfellowship between the Left and Islam. Islam is everything the Left *purports* to hate: fervent religious believers who force their illiberal sexist and homophobic beliefs on whole populations via theocracy. How on earth could Leftists embrace that???
Then I realized, with deep shock, that it all comes down to mutual hatred of Israel.
So the Left looks the other way as Islamists throw gays from buildings and force women to wear burqas.
I first became aware of this when Hillary Clinton publicly supported Palestine. I remember thinking WTH lady? But over the years I came to understand she is perfectly comfortable with what you describe. She is an elitist through and through and as such expects to do well under authoritarianism. Check out her "aide" that has been with her for years. The one that was married to Weiner.
Celia, I have wondered that same thing over the years and you just hit the nail on the head. I had never considered that but I totally agree. When it comes to Iran, the Leftists must also agree with “death to America.” Obama said early on that he wanted to fundamentally change the United States.
It's kind of like the racism of white Democrats. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
You are obviously Islamophobic.
Assume this was facetious. Not one “social justice warrior” cares about Iranian population suffering under nightmare regime. Obama gave Cairo speech inviting banned Muslim Brotherhood whir putting “ daylight” btwn USA and Israel. Redacted every reference to Islamist extremism in every US counter terrorism manual calling jihad Ft Hood attack work place violence Huma Abedin family MB royalty
Celia and I go back a long way and I consider her a friend. She knows I was being facetious.
;~) And yet the Leftists screaming about Muslim parents not wanting their kids sexually groomed for abuse and transing are somehow NOT Islamophobic.
Oh wait, the Leftists decided that the Muslim parents had been brainwashed by conservative Christians. So the Leftists are *totally* not Islamophobic.
Except that anyone with a brain would realize that Islam is inherently a conservative religion. Nope, nope, these parents could not possibly be against pornographic books in schools and kindergarteners being forced to question what gender they are! Not without the brainwashing of those eeeeeevil Christians.
Ha, Lonesome!
Also they both detest dissent
Yup. Leftists dream of having that much control over the population.
Celia, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
I marvel at how American women of Iranian heritage, who enjoy all of the West's freedoms, can support a regime that would beat and jail them for being "immodest". And how that regime is happy to overlook their immorality to further its agenda.
It is not just Iran but the Saudis are just as brutal and the ever senile Joe kisses their asses as have all our presidents in the last 30 or 40 years.
If we were truly a moral nation, we would have nothing to do with Islamic nations or China, Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea.
Every Islamic nation supports slavery and the brutalization of women.
You're right. Trump kissed the Saudis asses, his lackey son-in-law Kushner was handed $2 BILLION from them as a going away gift, and what's the Republicans response? Hunter Biden must be brought to justice!
He should, but compared to Kushner and (as Chris Christie explains it) the biggest family of grifters he ever saw in his life, HB is a jaywalker compared to Kushner enabling and profiting from his mass murderer Saudi buddies.
End the hypocrisy!
do you want all corruption punished or just Rep crooks?
I want them all to go to jail, not just the ever senile Joe.
AL, because they HATE America, like so many WOKE LEFT Democrats do! Yet, while living here enjoying our freedoms, they support regimes that would quickly take them away, if possible!
I would use the word “marvel” in quotes but I agree with your statement that academia is - once again - completely without logic in blindly supporting one progressive issue at the expense of another progressive issue without any self-awareness of their ignorance. Support by Democrats for the two well-known Squad members who are whole-heartedly a part of this problem is a “marvel” as well.
Yes. “marvel” in quotes. Torture, death, Masah Amini - none of it resonates w the Left. Oberlin won’t give up Mohammed Jafar Mahallati responsible for deaths of thousands. Grows more Orwellian by the minute…
I think they are aware. They count on your and my unawareness to succeed.
That is, of course, in addition to the fact that I ran, is threatening to wipe Israel off the map, and is the founder of most of the terrorism in the world
Yes! Thank you, Bill, well stated!
Lol.....Obama considered it X, but never explicitly said it was X.
While Obama is quite the anti-American scumbag, I find you defending Obama to the death to be 10-15% less farcical than when you are defending decrepit white racist and child molester Joe Biden to the death, and it is thus less entertaining.
😢😢😢😢
How is Obama Anti-American?
What evidence do you have of Biden being a racist and/or child molester?
Emoji responses don't count.
6
It wasn't that you had a hard time following it. It was just that, as a patriotic American citizen, you find it hard to believe that your government would be just this rotten and deluded.
That’s a good point, it was hard for me to focus on the story details because they were so complicated AND because my head was spinning from the upsetting information about our treasonous government.
It is just a jumping off point for your own research.
I am with you. Iran has interests, and these people are out trying to further their perspectives. I really didn't see anything other than something that happens in the world of diplomacy. Thanks for sharing what I was thinking.
Me, too. Or maybe I just watched too much of “The Diplomat,” but I think I figured most countries would be doing this kind of subvert opinion-garnering. I didn’t completely understand when it crossed the line.
It would have helped if the author had given us more context. An Iranian agent working at the Pentagon is clearly across the line. But a lot of this just seemed to be shady-but-not-unusual efforts to manipulate opinions on Iran. I would have liked to have seen more dots connected. How, specifically, did these efforts change how our government acted toward Iran?
Like, the who is the European nation funding this dot. And given the policy shift from prior administrations to Obama I think it is indisputable that yes efforts like this changed how our government treated Iran.
IS she actually an Iranian agent? It’s implied but not stated and like Albert, this seems to me to be normal diplomacy, and in the open too.
Likewise this whole matter is a cluster——— courtesy of Obama. We are expected know our role and shut our mouths.
Yes, essentially ethnic Persian-Americans in our government are cooperating with Iranian government assets.
I’m half German and my uncle was a senior official in the German Embassy in Tehran in the 70s and 80s. He was involved in negotiating the (supposedly peaceful) nuclear deals between the German government and the Shah, which was the original technological basis for Iran’s current nuclear weapons program. My uncle married an Iranian / Persian and I have numerous Persian cousins.
Persians are highly intelligent, cultured and attractive people. Their culture is one of the oldest in the world. They are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as primitive barbarians.
The regime that took over from the Shah is one of the cruelest and most effective governments in the world. We should have been taking Iran exceptionally seriously as a strong regional power with aggressive designs to dominate its region.
Instead, this brilliant, strategic nation has been playing America like a piano for decades. Just observing from the outside, President Obama and the Obama Administration appeared to have crossed a bright line into treason during their Iran negotiations. This article seems to confirm the infiltration of America’s defense and policy establishments by Iranian agents and the active collusion by Obama and Biden (aka Obama Administration 2.0) officials with Iran.
In a sense, this is no surprise given Obama’s betrayal of America, and it is certainly the most plausible explanation for the Obama Administration's disastrous Iran policy.
A nuclear-capable Iran will never have the scale of Russia or China, but they have perfected the deadly art of both covert and overt terrorism, starting way back with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon under Reagan, and we can expect them to continue to punch way above their weight in the international arena. Soon they will be be able to add the threat of nuclear weapons (not necessarily mounted on ballistic missiles) to their deck of cards.
The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?
It always saddens me to remember that the once highly civilized Persian people have been brought so low.
Totally agree--they are wonderful people, and as you say so highly civilized, and once full of the joy of life: attractive, high spirited, poetic, gracious and elegant, intellectual, heirs to some of the greatest architecture in the world, Persians are civilized in the deepest sense.
Clearly not all Persians are civilized in the deepest sense. There, as here, the good people have ceded control to totalitarian lunatics.
Quite right Bruce!
More likely the good people have relocated as have some of the bad people. The former came with dreams, the latter to destroy us.
That’s the tragedy, Bruce. They didn’t “cede control”, their country was stolen from them. They are now helpless just as the equally talented and cultured Germans were in 1933, as the Russians and Syrians and Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and Zimbabweans (etc etc) are today. They must feel such rage, and such futility...
Except that many of them did support the revolution because they felt that the Shah's push to modernization was too much too soon. There is disparity of opinion within Iran itself re: liberalism vs. conservatism. While it may seem that the entire population is against the regime, a substantial number are not. This, in part, explains why a counter revolution never seems to take off successfully. Perhaps the number in favour of a counter revolution is growing but part of the complexity is not being aligned on what the next government should be.
You've never thought about that once, not until today.
"The deepest question is why Barack Obama himself has chosen to lavishly fund and arm with nuclear weapons a regime that is perhaps America’s most implacable enemy?"
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend". It's becoming clearer by the day that the Obama/Biden Administration 2.0 is by far "America’s most implacable enemy"
Thanks for this Chris. You have articulated my instincts eloquently. But I find the "[T]hey are not Arabs and historically regarded Arabs with contempt as being primitive barbarians" thing concerning and off-putting. Perhaps instead of Putin rebuilding the USSR we should be concerned about Iran rebuilding and expanding the Achaemenid Empire.
Well, Persia’s ancient glory plus Iran’s Shia brand of Islam create a complex situation and it’s very difficult to forecast what lies in the future for the region—but adding nukes to the mix was a terrible mistake.
Agreed. I keep seeing scenes from the 300 playing in my head.
I like how out of all the long history, Obama is the only POTUS mentioned.
That’s because Obama is the President Buchanan of the 21st century. America almost didn’t survive the Buchanan Administration, and I doubt there’s a Lincoln to save us this time—unless it’s possibly Vivek.
He indeed is the worst. The traitors around Buchanan had honor and left.
Although some Buchanan Administration officials actively transferred weapons and ammunition to southern-based military facilities right up to the end of the Buchanan Administration.
Yeah....that's why...Buchanan.
Well, it should come as no surprise that Iran, like every other anti-American regime, has its intelligence fingers in our government as we likewise do in theirs. That we are blessed with a free press that digs up the bodies and reports on the secret connections between the actors is our advantage and saving grace. This report is a prime example of the benefits of a free press. Good job Semafor ,and thank you FP for posting it.
And Hiss and the Rosenbergs are still innocent victims....lol.
Huh?
You sound very nonchalant about this story. It seems like it’s taking a very long time for this to come to light and so although it is wonderful that this has been reported on one has the wonder, what took so long? This is serious stuff.
And why is this not on the front page of the WSJ and other major newspapers throughout the country, as well as on NBC, CBS, Disne - uh, ABC, or even Fox News?
I guess it’s a little naive NOT to assume that stuff like this goes on in capital cities around the world, but we have to read and listen to news with a more critical mind.
Thanks SO much for this!
PS I couldn’t help but think of Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” when fatwa was mentioned! “Fatwa? No! No, fatwa!!!”
Brett Baier reported the story last night, but with little explication.
It isn't as if the Biden cabal wasn't warned about these traitors. "Iranian dissidents and Republican lawmakers expressed outrage when the Biden administration in 2021 tapped Tabatabai for a State Department post, arguing that based on her family's ties to the Iranian government and the policy views she has espoused, she should not be granted a top-secret security clearance, the Free Beacon reported." Now she's working at the Pentagon and the Pentagon flacks are defending her. Just another piece of evidence that the reptilian Biden Administration is anti-American to its core. Coddling Iran is no accident. Never forget their shrieks of outrage when Trump took out Soleimani - the Iranian terror chief who had the blood of American soldiers on his hands.
She's a double agent. Or a triple. Or maybe a multi agent!!!
Since 1979 they have been chanting on the streets, "Death to America". I am willing to take their word for that and nothing else.
I can’t help but wonder whether Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s foreign policy assistant (whose qualifications for the post was his ability for writing fiction) who was tasked with getting the public to support the JCPOA, knew about the IEI. After all, he did brag later of having created an “echo chamber” to fake the existence of a broad consensus.
The possibility of parallel but independent tracks cannot be foreclosed, but given the cross-over of personnel with Malley and both sides desire to push an agreement that seemed to undermine fundamental US interests (and should have been a treaty but lacked the required Senate support), some level of coordination suggests itself.
To this day, President Obama has never given a particularly compelling or coherent justification for his decision to embolden Iran, of which the JCPOA was only part of his larger strategy (a word I use loosely as that strategy remains opaque, at least to me).
Put slightly differently, the detailed critique given by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech to Congress remains unanswered. For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. Similarly left unexplained was how an inspection regime that exempted all Iranian military sites and providing a 24 day notice to all others, could legitimately be characterized as the most robust ever.
That Prime Minister Netanyahu was instead personally attacked for “insulting” the President by accepting Congress’ invitation to address Congress directly on the matter should have told everyone all they needed to know about the JCPOA’s merits.
And the concessions we made to Iran continue to reverberate. For instance, having agreed to allow Iran to enrich and have its own nuclear industry, it’s hard for the US to make the case to our ally Saudi Arabia that it won’t be allowed the same capabilities.
On the bright side, the JCPOA seems to have been an essential spur to the Abraham Accords and caused a significant change in the Kingdom’s public relationship with Israel.
Should all these ongoing tectonic shifts in the Israeli-Arab conflict somehow translate to Arab recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and lead to an economic renaissance in a now stabilized region, look to President Obama to attempt a victory lap and claim that was the real goal of his JCPOA all along. Don’t believe him.
"For starters, the “echo chamber” never explained how Iran could be forever barred from developing nuclear weapons by an agreement full of sunset clauses. "
I suggest that, much like foundation of body politic, it is explained by obfuscation(s) through [ab]use of the vernacular. Simply: lots of dense smoke/hot air!
As an aside Netanyahu in his recent speech to the UN called to "tear down the walls of emnity".
It is clear that Washington DC, government, politicians,as lobbyists and contractors are open for business without regard to impact on the country. Rather than allowing the corporate press to focus on sideshows of individual politicians, relatives, etc, the focus should be the across the board on the built in risks to the country from their actions. Until then, no one is really serious about fixing it.
I think it will take individual politicians and family members suffering consequences for selling American influence like common stock to start, start mind you, the fix.
How much money is spent in "think tanks" creating experts? Our society is swimming in experts of every kind. Is the world a better place because we have more of them? I would vote no. This article tells of people in think tanks, and Iran funds it. Is there any news here? As a government, Iran has national interests that it wants to influence. The Obama and Biden teams on Iran love diplomacy and talk. They come from the Neville Chamberlian School of Foreign Policy. For me, things like this will happen in a free society. But part of a great reform movement is to get rid of the funding for think tanks and make these people get real jobs.
Amazing story and worrying that US intel not good enough (or maybe it is) to know what is happening.
Mind you the UK can't talk. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) is a Sinophile and married to a Chinese woman who is high in the CCP and works in Chinese State Media - how did he ever get security clearance to be any where near Govt let alone one of the chief ministers!
Might be a good investigation and story for The Free Press......
That’s nauseating
It's funny how people have a problem with individuals from foreign nations using their positions in the government to benefit their homeland (even if the evidence for their subversion is purely circumstantial such as your finance minister) except for Israel, where in fact the opposite occurs, where people simultaneously lavish praise upon pro-Israel policy positions advocated for by Jewish government officials and hurl accusations of anti-Semitism at anyone who takes note of this overt conflict of interest. One could of course say that it's not a conflict of interest, because the interests of our two countries are so closely aligned, but this ignores both the historical record of Israel's reliability as an ally of the United States (which is very poor) and the underlying causes which led our interests to become so seemingly "aligned" to begin with.
This comment section is full of people decrying Iran and Iranians because of one (1) small think tank and a few Iranians using their power to benefit their own country (which is a very serious issue, don't get me wrong) but are completely blind if not welcoming of the exponentially greater presence of Zionist think tanks and dozens of Zionist Jews in our state department and hundreds if not thousands in adjacent foreign policy institutions, all of whom leverage their positions for the benefit of the state of Israel. This is blatant hypocrisy.
“People have a problem” “People lavish praise” “people accuse” … these are such subjective metrics. I think your framing of this double standard could be easily reversed and still sound plausible, as in: Why is there such a high burden of proof to accuse Iranian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, or those associated with them of collusion, but when it comes to Jewish Americans people assume they are foreign agents unless they take an anti-Israel stance?
You are correct to criticize my subjective phraseology, although I imagine it'd be easy to find polling data that more or less corroborates my points, however, I disagree that one could reverse my position and still have it hold the same weight. I never argued that there wasn't a high burden of proof to brand Iranians and Chinese as foreign agents--there very much is still resistance to that--my point was that even while there are occasional exposes such as this, and that our government works overtime to root out Chinese and Iranian spies, there is no such effort by the media or government alike to do the same with Israel. The most damning distinction is that Iran and China are categorically considered by policymakers, media outlets, and academics alike to be our enemies, while Israel is quixotically held up as an ally. Much of our reasoning for being at odds with Iran in the first place is because of the Iranian position in regards to Israel.
We have McConnell. He controls not only the Senate agenda but most Republican political funding.
Thank you for a very valuable story. It only continues the trail of influence peddling the Slow Joe regime is influenced by. Some millions here, some millions there, University Presidents bought and paid for and you have foreign policy dictated by those trying to destroy you. Makes as much sense as Iran or Russia on the UN Human Rights Commission. Yet there it is.
One can wager lots of money in betting this story never makes it to the so called main press (aka - fish wrap) or the talking heads who probably would say Trump did it or the Republicans prevented fixing a busted system. See the absolutely mentally unbalanced liberal mind set says; it's not them, it's really us causing the issues. Our actions make the governments of Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia, etc. act like they do. See way back when we were Imperialists and that somehow justifies their evil actions of today. Women and kids being killed, sold, or just plain enslaved, must be caused by the USA.
From Fang-Fang, other Dems and even Republicans connections via money and academic funding, is it any wonder our foreign policy is such a disaster. Only thing worse is the economy and the border. Yet the same liberal mindset will work to elect the same idiots again. This should be a major issue in the coming elections on foreign influence in elected officials and the academic realm. But it won't, why? We need to be worried about tranny issues and the ability to abort babies. Two main issues and to hell with selling the country for a few gold bars.
So the Obama-Biden bunch indulged in arguably treasonous secret outreach to America's sworn enemy? As disgusting as it is, sadly I am not surprised.