Neocons Powerless to Scuttle Nuclear Deal with Iran, but They'll Keep Trying

Now that Obama has locked in the support necessary to maintain a veto of any Congressional vote of disapproval of the P5+1 deal on Iran's nuclear program, discussion has quickly shifted to what the GOP and Likudnik Democratic dead-enders in the House and Senate can do to scuttle the agreement. The answer, based on Jennifer Steinhauer's story, "Republicans Weigh New Ways to Upend Iran Nuclear Deal," is very little. The principal idea at this point is reimposing economic sanctions:

Republicans have been thinking through alternatives for months, knowing that Mr. Obama would probably be able to fend off efforts to override his veto of a resolution scuttling the accord. The agreement’s implementation seemed assured Wednesday when Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, came out in support, the 34th Democrat to do so, providing Mr. Obama with enough votes to prevent an override of a resolution of disapproval of the deal.

For its part, the House will also consider the disapproval resolution next week when Congress returns. Democrats hope to assemble enough votes to sustain a veto in that chamber, as well. A veto override must pass both the House and Senate by a two-thirds vote. 

Approving new sanctions, even many set to be lifted as part of the accord, is one possible path, said several aides to lawmakers, because it would both send a message to Tehran and the White House and put Democrats in a difficult position.

Under the agreement reached with six world powers, Iran would be released from congressionally imposed sanctions related to its nuclear program. Still, Congress could pass new, even tougher terrorism-related sanctions on key Iranian leaders. 

The White House has repeatedly said the lifting of current sanctions would not lessen Washington’s resolve to counter Iranian aggression in the Middle East. But approval of additional sanctions could undermine the legitimacy of the United States with its negotiating partners. 

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, alluded to the strategy just before Congress left for its August recess. 

“One of the first things Congress will do when we finish this debate, I would say give it 60 days, we will pass that extension” on sanctions, Mr. Corker told reporters after a briefing with Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz.

***

Senators Mark S. Kirk, Republican of Illinois, and Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, both opponents of the current Iran accord, introduced legislation this year that would extend the Iran Sanctions Act, which expires at the end of 2016, for another decade. 

While most lawmakers understand the need to have legal authority to “snap back” any sanctions that are lifted, Republicans would most likely move to enforce those sanctions, putting Democrats in a bind in an election year by pushing for a vote on legislation to punish Iran for killing Americans and Israelis, and for supporting Hezbollah, leaving the president little choice but to veto because if he signed it, the Iranians would say they are no longer bound by broader agreement. 

Even if these sanctions are never reimposed, Republicans could use the issue in an effort to divide Democrats in 2016.

This is a perfect example of Congress confusing talking points with reality, which, as you know, if you have ever read The Federalists Papers, was a concern of the Founding Fathers. Create a national government with its own national capital and you create a situation where elected representatives will leave home (and their watchful constituents) for long amounts of time and take up residence in a remote city where they will be beset by agents with special interests. These agents will replace issues concerning the general welfare with their own special interests.

If Congress reintroduces sanctions after the United Nations has already validated the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran, so much the better for Europe, China and Russia. These countries won't have to concern themselves with competition from giant U.S. corporations.

At this point the only option remaining to the Saudis, Israelis and their neocon agents is war; and in order to have a war with Iran, control of the White House is a prerequisite. Hillary would be amenable to such an option, maybe a false-flag op that could be whipped into blackmailing Europe to readopt sanctions. Walker would do anything he was told by the neocons.

But the problem for the Saudis, Israelis and their neocon agents is the public has left them far behind. With the Taliban biding its time as the puppet government in Kabul gradually disintegrates, and with Islamic State celebrating the one-year anniversary of its caliphate in Syria and Iraq, not to mention U.S. participation in wars in Yemen and Libya, there is no appetite for more war. But since Congress and the Presidency exist at this point almost solely to wage war, they grow increasingly isolated from a public they are supposed to represent.

Some Thoughts on Seymour Hersh's "The Killing of Osama bin Laden"

It took the homeward-bound commutes of Tuesday and Wednesday to read in its entirety the 10,000-word, 20-page Seymour Hersh deflowering of the Obama administration fable of how it took out Osama bin Laden ("The Killing of Osama bin Laden"), but it was time well spent.

What the reader comes away with is a feeling that the state exists to manufacture lies. Lies abound. An ocean of lies. Obama might not have ordered the burial at sea of the slain Al Qaeda mastermind, as the fable relates (instead, according to Hersh, the Navy SEALs tossed the dismembered parts of bin Laden's corpse out of the helicopter as it ferried them back to Afghanistan), but his decision to promptly publicize the assassination of OBL, reneging on a agreement that he had with Pakistan, necessitated the manufacture of numerous cover stories.

If one has ever cheated on a spouse -- something, sadly, which I did in my youth -- you know that lying about what you did -- when, where and how -- and doing so consistently replicates in the mind schizophrenic effects. One often feels as if he were hallucinating, on a "trip." The lies stack up and you find yourself in a self-created maze; it is a giddy, vertiginous feeling.

In his 10,000 words this is what Hersh successfully conveys about the Obama administration: It is drugged-up on lies. So covetous of the political windfall of bagging bogeyman numero uno with a re-election year on the horizon, Obama went against his defense secretary, the rest of the military brass, and his Pakistani allies and promptly revealed the SEALs assassination mission.

But that revelation turns out to be a lot of bullshit. For one, Osama was not living freely, directing Al Qaeda attacks. He was a prisoner of Pakistanis who had nabbed him in the Hindu Kush in 2006. The Abbottabad compound he lived in was a jail with bars on the windows and barbed wire on the roof; he was under lock and key, guarded night and day, kept under wraps by Pakistan for its own purposes but also at the behest of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royals didn't want OBL talking to the CIA about where Al Qaeda's financial support came from for 9/11.

The U.S. found out about Osama's presence in Abbottabad not by super-sleuthing, a fiction presented in Zero Dark Thirty, but from a Pakistani walk-in who wanted the $25 million finder's fee. There was no tracking OBL down through the movements of his courier; rather, it was the U.S. confronting the Pakistanis with the evidence worked up from the walk-in. The Pakistanis, not wanting to lose out on the steady stream of cash provided by USG, fessed up and proceeded to cooperate in all aspects of the operation. Basically, the Navy SEALs mission was a heavily rehearsed execution of a jailed invalid, which Obama repackaged as a courageous display of American grit and derring-do.

The "money" passage for me in Hersh's "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" comes relatively early in the piece:

The walk-in had told the US that bin Laden had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains, and that ‘the ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him.’ (Reports after the raid placed him elsewhere in Pakistan during this period.) Bank was also told by the walk-in that bin Laden was very ill, and that early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment. ‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?”’

‘It didn’t take long to get the co-operation we needed, because the Pakistanis wanted to ensure the continued release of American military aid, a good percentage of which was anti-terrorism funding that finances personal security, such as bullet-proof limousines and security guards and housing for the ISI leadership,’ the retired official said. He added that there were also under-the-table personal ‘incentives’ that were financed by off-the-books Pentagon contingency funds. ‘The intelligence community knew what the Pakistanis needed to agree – there was the carrot. And they chose the carrot. It was a win-win. We also did a little blackmail. We told them we would leak the fact that you’ve got bin Laden in your backyard. We knew their friends and enemies’ – the Taliban and jihadist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan – ‘would not like it.’

A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’

Despite their constant public feuding, American and Pakistani military and intelligence services have worked together closely for decades on counterterrorism in South Asia. Both services often find it useful to engage in public feuds ‘to cover their asses’, as the retired official put it, but they continually share intelligence used for drone attacks, and co-operate on covert operations. At the same time, it’s understood in Washington that elements of the ISI believe that maintaining a relationship with the Taliban leadership inside Afghanistan is essential to national security. The ISI’s strategic aim is to balance Indian influence in Kabul; the Taliban is also seen in Pakistan as a source of jihadist shock troops who would back Pakistan against India in a confrontation over Kashmir.

Adding to the tension was the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, often depicted in the Western press as an ‘Islamic bomb’ that might be transferred by Pakistan to an embattled nation in the Middle East in the event of a crisis with Israel. The US looked the other way when Pakistan began building its weapons system in the 1970s and it’s widely believed it now has more than a hundred nuclear warheads. It’s understood in Washington that US security depends on the maintenance of strong military and intelligence ties to Pakistan. The belief is mirrored in Pakistan.

I found all this very helpful. The U.S. has the Pakistani national security leadership on payroll. The public display of the U.S. and Pakistan constantly at odds over the Taliban and drone attacks is all a bluff, a "Punch and Judy" for the little people who still read the newspapers.

Bear this in mind as stories circulate about Saudi vows to acquire a nuclear bomb to counter Iran's nuclear program, I'm sure al-Saud already has a covert program up and running.

Also bear in mind that the drum beat of stories about Syria's use of chlorine is just more lies meant to put pressure on Assad. The quality of the lies here is so poor one marvels at the temerity of the press to publish them. This is from today's story by Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt, "Traces of Chemicals in Syria Add to Pressure on Obama to Enforce a ‘Red Line’ ":

Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue of chlorine attacks during his talks with Russian officials in Sochi this week. The Assad government is the only force in Syria’s multifront civil war that has the aircraft that witnesses have said have been dropping chlorine bombs. But the Security Council, where Russia wields a veto, has yet to assign blame, and it is far from clear that Washington and Moscow can work together on the issue.

The statement that "The Assad government is the only force in Syria’s multifront civil war that has the aircraft that witnesses have said have been dropping chlorine bombs" is absurd. Where are the pictures from these witnesses? Everyone has a smartphone camera these days. Only Assad's government has helicopters? What about Turkey? What about the CIA, which is operating in the area? What about equipment that ISIS has captured?

Lies. Read the Seymour Hersh article on the slaying of Osama bin Laden and you come away knowing that is the primary role of the state -- the manufacture of lies.

U.S. Shows its Hand: Key to P5+1 Deal is Assad's Head

Kerry traveled to Russia yesterday to meet with Lavrov and Putin. Michael Gordon files the story, "Kerry Arrives in Russia for Talks With Vladimir Putin on Cooperation," which emphasizes that the talks dealt with Syria. Niqnaq posts a bit of speculation from El-Murid that the U.S. is attempting to cut a deal with Russia at Assad's expense. This makes a great deal of sense to me. Kerry's powwow with Lavrov comes just before he returns to D.C. to toast the sheikhs of the GCC. What better palliative to deliver to Wahhabi billionaires paranoid about the rise of Iranian power in the Middle East than the promise that Putin was cutting Syria loose? Short of a message from Obama that the U.S. is pulling out of the P5+1 negotiations, it is the sweetest music to the sheikhs ears. Syria under new pro-GCC/Western leadership would be devastating to Iran and even more so to Lebanon's Hezbollah; it might definitely be enough to buy the sheikhs' acquiescence in an Obama deal with Iran on its nuclear program

The Kremlin of course can be ruthlessly calculating as befits a great state power. But in this case, selling Assad down the river and shattering the Shiite crescent, would require a trade-off that the U.S. is unwilling to make; it would require the U.S. and EU to drop Russian sanctions and abandon their puppet government in Kiev.

That's not going to happen. So Kerry will return to Washington empty handed, and the spurious chlorine gas stories will multiple. No doubt the keening over Russian incursions into Ukraine will rise as well.

One thing that is helpful about Kerry's trip to Sochi is that it clarifies that the Obama administration believes Syria to be the key to unlocking the opposition to the P5+1 deal with Iran. (Israel would be mollified because it would be a huge body blow to Hezbollah.) Assad will have some sleepless nights from now until the end of June when a final deal with Iran on its nuclear program will either be completed or collapse.

Cracks in the Washington Consensus

The writings of Thomas Friedman, longtime foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, are a contradictory mishmash of Panglossian optimism (in American hegemony) spiced with paragraphs of accurate assessment. His column on Iran yesterday, "Deal or No Deal," is a good example. After repeating all the old stale thoughts on Iran being a rogue outlier led by an irrational ayatollah committed to mendacity and mayhem -- a more accurate description of Israel and the Gulf monarchies -- Friedman does a somersault and concludes his piece with the following prescient paragraph:

Finally, you have the regional challenge. Iran, with about 80 million people, is simply a more powerful and dynamic state today than most of the Sunni Arab states to its west, half of which have collapsed. Iran, even if it had good intentions, almost can’t help but project its power westward given the vacuum and frailty there. When Nixon opened to China, and helped unleash its economic prowess, China was largely surrounded by strong or economically powerful states to balance it. But an Iran enriched by billions in sanctions relief would be even more powerful vis-à-vis its weak Arab neighbors. Our Gulf Arab allies are deeply worried about this and are looking to the U.S. for both protection and more sophisticated arms. I get that. But unless we can find a way to truly ease tensions between Shiite Persians and Sunni Arabs, we will find ourselves unleashing Iran to the max while arming the Arabs to the teeth. Maintaining that balance will not be easy.

The first point, that Iran is the dynamic state of the Middle East, should be clear by now. I remember reading that during World War Two Goebbels complained that the U.S. was getting more out its population for the war effort than Germany. I am sure there are officials at Langley who are making a similar assessment about Iran.

The point can be expanded to include Russia and China, two nations that seem to be getting more from their people than the West is from theirs. Recently I watched a travel video produced by The New York Times, "36 Hours in Beijing," and I was blown away by how clean and prosperous the megalopolis looked, like San Francisco. I have been mentioning it to coworkers when the discussion veers to the perilous condition of the United States. After recently reading Tariq Ali's "The New World Disorder," I'm starting to repeat his line from that essay, something to the effect that, "A friend asked me what happened to the U.S. working class. I told him it is in China."

Ali downplays American declinism, seeing plenty of testosterone left in the corpus of the global Leviathan. But I am not so sure. There has been a dialectical shift in the U.S. since W.'s presidency; a combination of Citizens United and the abject failure of Obama as a progressive leader has led to precipitous collapse of confidence in the political system which resulted in the record low turnout in the 2014 midterms. Harvard academic Larry Lessig addresses this in a recent talk he gave imploring Elizabeth Warren to challenge Hillary.

It is going to be hard to overcome people's distrust in reformist politicians after the epic failure of Obama.

Which brings us to the Friedman's final point: Iranian dynamism is being translated into an arms race in the Middle East that will destroy the region and is leading to a new world war. How is that prevented?

Given that the U.S. is a pay-to-play system that the sheikhs and the Israelis seem to have wired, it is difficult to imagine a reformist situation that can change the ongoing addiction to warfare and destruction. What is needed are two things, which might be the same thing: 1) a crack in the Washington Consensus, whether a default by Greece, a Le Pen victory in France, a nativist rebellion in Germany that collapses Merkel's government, and/or 2) the war needs to come home; the leaders of the Western core nations need to feel the death and destruction that they export around the globe -- in Libya and Syria -- lap up on their shores. This is happening already.

About-Face by Obama on Senate Foreign Relations Bill Big Win for Iran

Yesterday after seeing the news (Jonathan Weisman and Peter Baker, "Obama Yields, Allowing Congress Say on Iran Nuclear Deal") of Obama's about-face on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Iran sanctions review bill I said to a coworker, the only one in a office of more than a dozen people who I know at least keeps an eye on the headlines, "This guy is even weaker than I thought." 

What other conclusion can we draw? Obama and Kerry had been promising to fight to the last gasp any encroachment by the Senate on the administration's agreement with Iran on its nuclear program only to meekly acquiesce to a Congressional role after a vote count revealed overwhelming Democratic support for Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker's draft legislation.

But this morning I think differently -- not that Team Obama is any stronger, but that Team Obama clearly won this round by its tactical retreat. A protracted fight over a veto of a sanctions review bill would have revealed a president without a party and accentuated Obama's lame duckness, at the same time undercutting negotiations on a final agreement in the remaining two months of the P5+1 talks in Switzerland. As Weisman and Baker point out:

White House officials blitzed Congress in the days after the framework of a nuclear deal was announced, making 130 phone calls to lawmakers, but quickly came to the conclusion that the legislation could not be blocked altogether. 

Moreover, officials increasingly worried that an unresolved fight could torpedo the next phase of negotiations with Iran. 

“Having this lingering uncertainty about whether we could deliver on our side of the deal was probably a deal killer,” said a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

No, Obama won this one. The sanctions review period was cut in half from 60 days to 30 (though after the time for a presidential veto and Congressional response is added, it comes to 52 days) and the White House does not have to certify every 90 days that Iran is not sponsoring terrorism. In the end, sometime in July, Congress will get to vote on the nuclear deal. A majority will vote against lifting sanctions. Obama will veto, and he will only need 34 Democrats in the Senate to maintain that veto, something I think he will be able to do:

As Congress considers any accord on a very short timetable, it would essentially be able to vote on an eventual end to sanctions, and then later take up the issue depending on whether Iran has met its own obligations. But if it rejected the agreement, Mr. Obama could veto that legislation — and it would take only 34 senators to sustain the veto, meaning that Mr. Obama could lose upward of a dozen Democratic senators and still prevail.

Proof that Obama got the best of the deal is the testy Congressional insistence that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee got everything it originally intended, which is clearly not the case:

White House officials insisted they extracted crucial last-minute concessions. Republicans — and many Democrats — said the president simply got overrun.

“We’re involved here. We have to be involved here,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat, who served as a bridge between the White House and Republicans as they negotiated changes in the days before the committee’s vote on Tuesday. “Only Congress can change or permanently modify the sanctions regime.”

***

“We’ve gone from a piece of legislation that the president would veto to a piece of legislation that’s undergone substantial revision such that it’s now in the form of a compromise that the president would be willing to sign,” Mr. Earnest said. “That would certainly be an improvement.”

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and the committee’s chairman, had a far different interpretation. As late as 11:30 a.m., in a classified briefing at the Capitol, Mr. Kerry was urging senators to oppose the bill. The “change occurred when they saw how many senators were going to vote for this, and only when that occurred,” Mr. Corker said.

Mr. Cardin said that the “fundamental provisions” of the legislation had not changed.

An important point to weigh here is that Obama would not have made this tactical retreat unless he had vetted it with his Iranian counterparts. The mild response by President Rouhani to the 19-0 Senate Foreign Relations vote shows that the Iranians can live with the bill and that the P5+1 talks will move along to a final agreement.

This does not mean that Obama will be able to deliver a final agreement even if he can maintain a veto of Congressional obstruction. Congress is controlled by the Saudi and Israeli interests. How else to explain the absurd statement by Tom Cotton?

The agreement “puts Iran, the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism, on the path to a nuclear weapon,” said Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, as he emerged from the briefing. “Whether that’s a matter of months or a matter of years, that’s a dangerous outcome not just to United States and allies like Israel but to the entire world.”

But the end game here appears to be isolation of Congress and its Saudi and Israeli paymasters from the rest of the world. As the Gray Lady makes clear in an unsigned editorial today, "A Reckless Act in the Senate on Iran":

Mr. Obama’s acquiescence might be a tactical move. He could veto the congressional vote on the final agreement, which is supposed to be concluded by the June 30 deadline, rather than expending political capital in vetoing this measure if it were to pass both chambers of Congress. But the Senate committee’s action puts him in an weakened position as the only leader involved in the negotiations who may not be permitted to fully honor commitments that were made.

The nuclear deal is the product of a multinational negotiation with Iran conducted by the United States, France, Britain, China, Germany and Russia. In no other country has a legislative body demanded the right to block the agreement. Even if Congress barred Mr. Obama from waiving American sanctions, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council could lift the sanctions they imposed, thus undercutting the American decision.

This is the bottom line: Unless Obama gets cold feet and kills the talks in the next two months, an international agreement on Iran's nuclear program will be concluded; at which time, even if Congress can prevent the U.S. from ratifying the agreement, it will not be able to block the rest of the world from doing business with the Islamic Republic.

That is why I think it is a pretty safe bet that Israel and al-Saud will gin up some sort of attack on Iran.

Russia Attempts to Save P5+1 Talks: S-300 Missile Batteries to Iran

Russia did its part to support the nuclear deal with Iran by announcing the sale of a S-300 antiaircraft missile system to the Islamic Republic (Neil MacFarquhar, "Putin Lifts Ban on Russian Missile Sales to Iran"). Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying that supplying the missile system to Iran is meant as a spur the to the nuclear talks:

“It was done in the spirit of good will in order to encourage progress in the talks,” Mr. Lavrov said in a televised statement. “We believe that the need for this kind of embargo, indeed a separate, voluntary Russian embargo, has completely disappeared.” 

The missile deal does not pose a threat to Israel, Mr. Lavrov said, emphasizing that the S-300 is a defensive weapon.

This move is directed at the Saudis, who along with ten other nations (including the the U.S.) are bombing impoverished Yemen into rubble, the Israelis, who immediately cried foul, and the U.S. Senate as it sets about hijacking the P5+1 talks ("Senate Leaders and White House Make Their Cases on Iran Deal Legislation" by Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear). The message is clear. The costs for scuttling the nuclear agreement have just gone up:

The five S-300 squadrons cannot shield all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, said Simon Saradzhyan, an expert on arms control and Russia at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, while noting that Russia just sold China the more sophisticated S-400 system. The official Tass news agency reported that in February Moscow offered Tehran an air defense system more modern than the S-300, but that no decision had been made. 

Still, military experts said the highly capable S-300 system would make it much harder for the United States or Israel to stage airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The question is whether Russia will actually deliver the missile battery. As was the case with delivery of the S-300 to Syria, often these announcements are used as bargaining chips, with Moscow suspending or delaying shipment; hence, the qualified support from an Iranian official:

“If Russia fulfills its commitment to deliver the S-300 missile system to Iran, it will be a step towards boosting the relations and collaborations between the two countries,” Iran’s deputy defense minister, Reza Talaei-Nik, told the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency on Monday. “It will be a step forward.”

But I do think a marker has been laid down by Russia, and it is not just the threat of increased costs for a future attack on Iran. The bigger message that Russia is broadcasting is that absent a broad, international understanding with Iran, sanctions, cobbled together over years, will be undermined:

Although the full details have not been disclosed, the Russian news media reported that Moscow had negotiated an oil-for-goods exchange with Iran that would involve acquiring some 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day in exchange for Russian equipment and goods. Iran has long been one of the main buyers of Russian wheat, for example.

As Obama beseeches Jewish lobbyists and wealthy donors in the White House to support the tentative nuclear agreement, the Senate is trying to comb out the poison pills from whatever bill Congress passes, poison pills that will prevent an override of an Obama veto. Right now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is wrestling with two provisions: 1) White House certification every 90 days that Iran is not engaged in terrorism, and 2) a 60-day review period by Congress before the president can waive any sanctions.

My sense is that Congress will deliver a bill, and that Obama will be forced to veto it. Congress will deliver because wealthy, powerful interests -- Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel and her supporters -- demand it.

Obama -- never having challenged the false narrative of Iranian aggression; in fact, he has actively promoted it -- has no one to blame but himself. He is not operating from a position of strength. His point of view, that of a reasonable hawk, the realpolitik of a Zbigniew Brzezinski, does not have the broad public support of say the know-nothing, hard right "bomb, bomb Iran" or the well-read, anti-war progressive.

So Obama is sunk, as is the Democratic Party. The Democrat Party is hopelessly split. The activist base is antiwar, but the party apparatus actively supports the warfare state.

Whether Congress can override Obama's veto is almost beside the point. Obama is a lame duck, his antiwar stance never anything much more than a campaign promise. More war is coming.

Iranian Nuclear Deal D.O.A.

Obama is likely headed for full-fledged lame duck status by Memorial Day.

Now that Hillary has announced, and, as Paul Krugman points out in his column today, the Fourth Estate will be preoccupied by "endless attempts to psychoanalyze the candidate, endless attempts to read significance into what she says or doesn’t say about President Obama, endless thumb-sucking about her 'positioning' on this or that issue," Obama will necessarily become an ever-diminishing figure from this point forward.

But the mortal wound for Obama will come when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins crafting an Iran sanctions review bill on Tuesday. The principal goal of the legislation, as Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer explain in "Seeking Voice in Iran Deal, Lawmakers Are Set to Act," is to give Congress the ability to block Obama's lifting of some its sanctions, thereby scuttling the deal on Iran's nuclear program:

The Iran review legislation is complex and often misunderstood. It would prevent the president from waiving any economic sanctions against Iran for 60 days as lawmakers review a final accord. After that review, lawmakers could vote to approve or disapprove the lifting of sanctions Congress imposed in 2010 — or take no action. The president would then be able to veto that resolution of disapproval.

Supporters of the bill say the measure would not stop Mr. Obama and the five other nations negotiating with Iran from concluding an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a loosening of sanctions. It would do nothing to stop the European Union or United Nations from lifting its sanctions, or the president from waiving sanctions imposed by executive action. In a phased loosening of economic penalties, a final lifting of congressional sanctions could be put off until after Mr. Obama left office.

An override of a veto on the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act would not mean the votes would necessarily be there to override a subsequent veto of a resolution against the final lifting of sanctions, supporters say.

But White House officials say any action could have major repercussions as diplomats try to turn the ambitious framework reached this month into a final agreement by the end of June.

The Iranians would walk away from the tentative deal reached two weeks ago if suddenly in the eleventh hour they were confronted with new conditions and essentially the introduction of a new party, the Israeli/Saudi controlled U.S. Congress, to the P5+1 negotiations, particularly after Khamenei made it clear that Iran expects all sanctions to be promptly removed once a final agreement is signed in June.

The Republicans and their Likudnik allies in the Democratic Party know this. The biggest barrier at this point to scuttling the Iran nuclear accord is overreach:

But the biggest threat to the bill might come from committee Republicans, whose amendments could strengthen Mr. Obama’s argument that the bill would torpedo international negotiations. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, is expected announce his candidacy for president on Monday and then fly back to Washington on Tuesday to introduce an amendment making approval of the deal dependent on Iran’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, another committee Republican, will push an amendment demanding Iranian compensation for the victims of the hostage taking at the United States Embassy in Tehran 35 years ago.

“As we debate our foreign policy toward Iran, it seems more appropriate than ever that we compensate the victims of the Iran hostage crisis, who were forced to endure unimaginable fear, despair and torture for 444 days,” he said.

This coming from a country that officially acknowledged the role it played in the 1953 coup of Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, installing in his place the Shah, a brutal dictator.

The important takeaway here is that some sort of Congressional oversight is going to emerge from the Senate. Team Obama is hoping that it will be so bellicose that when he vetoes it the veto will not be overridden:

For now, the White House — which is increasingly realizing that it cannot prevent some form of congressional oversight — must pin its hope less on Democratic efforts to dilute the legislation than on Republican efforts to toughen it so much that it loses its veto-proof support. At least 50 amendments by both parties are ready to go.Continue reading the main story

“The more we see the true agenda of the right wing coming out, which is war with Iran, I think the better it is for us to try and stop this, because I know Americans don’t want another war,” said Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Boxer is right. Americans don't want another war. But she assumes that Congress answers to the American people. It does not. Most know this. That is why Congressional approval ratings are at an all-time low.

Even if Obama is able to maintain his veto, significant damage will have been done. Confidence that Iran is a safe place to make an investment will be undermined given that every current front-runner for the White House is more hawkish on Iran than Obama.

Right now I'd say Obama has a 50-50 chance of maintaining a veto, but that this in no way guarantees a final agreement with Iran. I think the odds of that are looking worse. Saudi Arabia's ongoing assault on Yemen,with the active support of the United States, promises to make the next two months very dangerous.

Obama's Weakness on Full Display in Interview with Tom Friedman: Too Many Lies Make Delivering Final Nuclear Agreement Unlikely

Obama sat down in the Oval Office on Saturday with his preferred midwife, the reliable sycophant Thomas Friedman, to expound for 46 minutes why the recent tentative agreement negotiated with Iran over its nuclear program is the best deal possible. Friedman's account, "The Obama Doctrine and Iran," was featured prominently on the home page of The New York Times yesterday; at the top of the story is a video of Friedman's interview of Obama in its entirety.

I watched all of it last night. And what I can tell you if you have yet to view the interview but plan to do so is prepare to be aggravated. Obama wholeheartedly embraces all the lies that have the resulted in the current ongoing destruction of the Middle East, principal of which is that Iran is a hostile, terrorist aggressor in the region and that America's "friends and allies," Israel and the Gulf sheikhdoms, are positioned in a merely defensive posture.

This is of course a Bizarro world retelling of facts on the ground. The fact is that Israel is an undeclared nuclear power with an arsenal of over 500 warheads that unilaterally attacks its neighbors in the region (Syria and Lebanon), while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the global export king of Wahhabi extremism -- from Fredrikstad, Norway to Bloomington, Minnesota, and myriad points in between -- the chief source of terrorism in the world today. It is Iran and its allies in Hezbollah and Syria that are playing defense.

Not once in Obama's discussion with Friedman did I hear a pitch to the American people as to why peace and prosperity with Iran is in their best interests. Most of the pitching was done to Israel, more specifically the hard-line American Jews who have been funding an exodus to the Republican Party; then after that an obsequious sales job to the despotic Gulf kleptarchies that Obama slickly re-branded the "Sunni states."

In both cases -- Israel and the Gulf monarchies -- Obama made a significant commitment to their defense and territorial integrity. Peter Baker in his frontpage recapitulation of the interview this morning, "President Obama Calls Preliminary Iran Nuclear Deal ‘Our Best Bet’," highlights the commitment to Israel at the top of his story -- "we've got their backs" -- but ignores the commitment to the Wahhabi despots entirely.

This omission bodes ill for the future of nuclear agreement. As long as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, U.A.E., Qatar are allowed to skirt any official responsibility for instability in the region they will continue to export their maximally destabilizing terrorism. The Iranians will be blamed by the United States, the despots have their guarantee of protection from the U.S., and the endless cycle of death and destruction will continue.

In March, after the Netanyahu soft coup in his speech to a supine Congress and the Cotton letter to Iran, I thought that Obama was locked into an agreement for purely tactical domestic reasons. Failure at this stage would guarantee very little presidential leverage in his remaining two years in office. But in the last couple of weeks I thought that Kerry might walk away over the issue of how quickly sanctions would be removed.

It turns out, as Baker ably sets forth, the sanctions issue was fudged in the tentative agreement, along with the issue of how invasive inspections would be. (You'll recall from Scott Ritter that the Iraq inspections were completely compromised by spooks from Israel and the United States; that recent experience makes it hard to believe that Iran will agree to intrusive inspections of its military facilities):

Under the agreement, Iran would limit enrichment of uranium at its Natanz facility to a level useful only for civilian purposes; cut back the number of installed centrifuges by approximately two-thirds; convert its Fordo deep-underground enrichment facility into a research center; and modify its Arak heavy-water reactor to render it incapable of producing plutonium for a bomb.

But the structure of international inspections was left vague, as was the timing for lifting sanctions.

Mr. Obama said that inspectors would be able to watch “the entire nuclear chain” and that a “procurement committee” would examine Iranian imports to be sure equipment would be appropriate for peaceful nuclear uses, not a weapon. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, “can go anyplace.” 

But the administration has been vague about how to define “anyplace,” and Iran has said it would not be required to allow inspections of military bases.

“Iran could object,” Mr. Obama acknowledged, “but what we have done is to try to design a mechanism whereby once those objections are heard, that is not a final veto that Iran has but in fact some sort of international mechanism will be in place that makes a fair assessment.”

Mr. Obama said sanctions would be lifted only after Iran lived up to its commitments. “There are still details to be worked out,” he said, “but I think that the basic framework calls for Iran to take the steps that it needs to around Fordo, the centrifuges and so forth. At that point, then the U.N. sanctions are suspended.” 

He said the United States would “preserve the ability to snap back those sanctions if there is a violation.” And he added that separate sanctions imposed for other reasons, namely Iran’s sponsorship of terrorists and its ballistic missile program, would remain in place.

Administration officials said they envisioned Iran being able to take the required steps within months or a year of an agreement, at which point nuclear-related economic sanctions would be removed. But a major sticking point in the coming months will be the issue of additional sanctions imposed for other reasons.

Mr. Obama said almost nothing about how the United States and its allies would force Iran to answer questions about suspected past work on weapons designs. For years, Iran has blocked inspectors from visiting laboratories where such work is believed to have been conducted.

In the final paragraph you will notice the way forward for the neocon warmongers who want to hijack the nuclear deal. They will force Iran to answer to falsified evidence, the famous pilfered laptop containing evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

No, the game is not finished for the neocons, not by a long shot. Lindsey Graham has promised Obama that he will back off until a final agreement is revealed in June. But Obama's bowing and scraping to Bob Corker, calling the Tennessee senator who takes his orders from Israel and Saudi Arabia, a "good and decent man," is a very bad sign. Obama is weak. His interview with Friedman proves it. At this point I don't think he can deliver a final agreement.

Joint Arab Military Force: Saudis Decide to Emerge from Shadows

The bill for Saudi support of Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi's coup has come due. The Egyptian president and former general who ousted Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, beginning a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and a rollback of the Arab Spring, announced at an Arab League meeting in Sharm el Sheikh over the weekend the formation of a joint Arab military force. David Kirkpatrick has the story, "Arab Nations to Form Military Force to Counter Iran and Islamist Extremists":

“The challenges facing our national Arab security are grave, and we have succeeded in diagnosing the reasons behind it,” Mr. Sisi said, without specifying those reasons. The meeting, he added, was “pumping the blood of hope in the arteries of Arab cooperation.”

Egypt has long considered itself the shield and protector of the oil-rich but sparsely populated gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia. Yet Mr. Sisi has an especially close relationship with the Saudis and their gulf allies because they supported his ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. The gulf monarchies have contributed tens of billions in financial assistance to Egypt since then, including new pledges of an additional $12 billion announced this month.

Last year, Mr. Sisi also allowed jets from the United Arab Emirates to take off from Egypt for airstrikes against an Islamist-allied political faction in Libya. This year, the Egyptian Air Force carried out a strike of its own in Darnah, in eastern Libya, in retaliation for the beheading of a group of Egyptian Christians by an arm of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Both Egypt and its gulf allies remain acutely concerned about Libya’s civil strife and the Islamist groups that have flourished as the government and other national institutions have crumbled.

The idea of a joint military force “has been there before but not so seriously,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. He noted that Arab joint defense treaties date to 1950 and a joint military command was previously formed for a time in the mid-1960s. That was during the era of Pan-Arab nationalism, when Arab governments joined forces against Israel. That vision ended in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, with a humiliating defeat.

“It is the renewal of an old idea,” Mr. Soltan said, “but this time the level of seriousness looks higher, even if we do not know yet whether the outcome this time will be different than in the past.”

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia provided ample financial and diplomatic backing for Sisi's coup government. A dictator presiding over a ruthless police state is what the Saudis prefer to see worldwide. For all his talk of democracy and new beginnings in the Arab world, Obama quickly fell in line with the Arab Spring rollback.

But the Gulf Sheikhdoms are apoplectic, as are the Israelis, over the P5+1 talks with Iran on its nuclear program; that, and the reluctance of Obama to bomb Damascus to rubble and take out the Baathists in Syria once and for all. Now there is the Houthi movement in Yemen who easily toppled the Saudi stooge Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

So the despots presented Sisi with his bill: the formation of a combined Arab military force, the foot soldiers, the cannon fodder to be supplied in large part by Egypt.

It will be interesting to see the extent of Sisi's servility. Will he invade Yemen? Despite the obvious foolishness of such a move, it seems like a foregone conclusion. The problem for the Saudis, as the Kirkpatrick wryly notes, is that the Houthis are seasoned fighters, certain to hold their ground and bloody any invaders that come their way:

Speaking at the meeting in Sharm el Sheikh, Nabil el-Araby, the secretary general of the Arab League, vowed that the Saudi-led airstrikes against the Houthi movement would continue until the Houthis had surrendered, apparently leaving little hope for negotiating a prompt end to the violence.

The campaign “will continue until all Houthi militias retreat and disarm, and a strong unified Yemen returns,” he said, declaring that the intervention had saved Yemen from sliding into the abyss.

The Houthi movement, which originated in the north of Yemen and follows a strain of Shiite Islam, has seized control of the country’s capital, Sana, and other large cities in part by allying itself with military and security forces still loyal to Yemen’s former strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Mr. Saleh was removed in 2012, after an Arab Spring uprising, in a transitional deal brokered by Saudi Arabia and the other gulf countries. While the Houthis have received financial support from Tehran, the Iranians do not seem to exert a strong influence over the group as they do, for example, with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Houthis have previously fought as many as a half-dozen different civil conflicts against Yemen’s central government since 2004. None of the previous battles have succeeded in eliminating or fully disarming the movement.

One positive that can be taken away from Sharm el-Sheikh is that the Saudis have gone above board; they are not dealing with every geopolitical problem by means of a cut-out, whether the Pentagon/CIA or Wahhabi terror groups like Al Qaeda or Islamic State. Granted, Sisi fills the role of a front man, but the Saudis are front and center on Yemen. They are leading the campaign. So a loss in Yemen will bring the war home to the Kingdom. Maybe then there will be a reevaluation of the wisdom of perpetual war.

GOP Plans To Run the World from Congress + Good News Out of Tikrit

Hillary should thank her lucky stars that her Tuesday press conference, where she defended the use of her personal email account to conduct official USG business while she was Secretary of State, coincided with an open letter to Iran penned by junior Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of  Arkansas, that threatened to abolish any agreement reached by the Obama administration on that country's nuclear program. The Cotton letter, signed by 46 other Republicans in the Senate, created a social and mainstream media firestorm, which effectively bumped the Hillary email imbroglio from the top spot in the cultural consciousness. With Kerry appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there was plentiful soundbite video of Team Obama vs. GOP presidential aspirants.

The permanent circus of partisan conflict has spread from government funding measures and Obamacare to the conduct of foreign policy. Republicans are feeling their oats. Wading into foreign affairs to undercut ongoing White House diplomacy is the GOP's way of saying, "We're not going to lose Congress in the foreseeable future. We might not win the presidency. But we don't have to. We'll run everything from the House and Senate."

One silver lining here is that Obama's ISIS AUMF request appears to be dead in the water. And the good news out of Iraq is that Islamic State has been all but defeated in Tikrit without the assistance of U.S. air power. Anne Barnard reports this morning in "Iraqi Forces Claim Western Areas of Tikrit From ISIS":

BAGHDAD — Iraqi government forces and allied militias took control of the western neighborhoods of Tikrit on Thursday, military officials said, leaving only one area, including a palace complex once used by Saddam Hussein, in the hands of Islamic State militants. 

Military officials said they were confident of declaring victory within a few days in Tikrit, a central objective in rolling back the militants and the government’s largest operation against the Islamic State since it swept into much of the country’s north and west in June. 

Top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, visited troops near the front lines on Tuesday night and Wednesday. They called for security forces to facilitate the return of displaced civilians from Tikrit and surrounding areas. 

Bringing civilians back without revenge attacks or continuing conflict will be the next test for Iraq’s government if it holds its gains and completes the operation in Tikrit. The government mustered a 30,000-strong force, the bulk of it fighters from Shiite militias, in an effort to retake the city.

Note the last paragraph. This is the talking point for why the U.S. sat out the Tikrit offensive. The presence of Shiite militia backed by Iran risks the sectarian cohesion of the Iraqi state. Never mind that Islamic State fighters have been slaughtering Christians, Yazidis and Shiites and desecrating antiquities, as well as raping, crucifying and immolating. Let's play up rumors of Shiite atrocities.

And this is what reliable, pro-USG scribe Anne Barnard does farther down in her story:

Iraqi officials said they would investigate reports of atrocities, filmed and posted in recent months on social media, and committed by armed men in uniforms with the insignia of a special forces unit and other regular government forces. 

The images have been circulating on social media, and they were compiled and presented to Iraqi and United States officials by ABC News. The images raised the question of whether Iraqi forces may have run afoul of a measure that requires the United States government to cut off aid to foreign militaries that commit human rights abuses.

One video shows what appears to be a 12-year-old boy being shot to death in the street after being accused of working with the Islamic State. Another shows two civilians being shot after insisting they were not involved with the militant group; fighters then riddle their bodies with bullets. Another apparently shows a civilian being beheaded, and other images show a head propped on the front bumper of a military vehicle that appears to be an American-made Humvee.

Iraqi officials have showed footage to the BBC that they said proved that the Islamic State was using chlorine gas in roadside bombs. The images show orange clouds rising from the bombs as Iraqi ordnance disposal teams detonate them. Chlorine, while not as dangerous as substances like sarin, banned by international treaty, can cause coughing and burning eyes and in close quarters can be fatal.

What is going on is the U.S. is getting pressure from its GCC allies to cut off its support of Iraq. The last paragraph about ISIS using chlorine bombs is illuminating. I'm sure Barnard and/or her editors included it to maintain a semblance of balance.

Soon, if the reconstituted military of Iraq continues its battlefield successes against Islamic State, we shall see the jihadi ratline from Turkey in full flower once again. ISIS is a GCC/Western cat's paw. The target has always been the Shiite Crescent.

Officials Walk Back Talk of U.S.-Iraq Split While Hope for P5+1 Agreement Dims

Two stories today both confirm the importance of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq's efforts to defeat Islamic State at the same time quoting Iraqi and U.S. officials denying that there is any rift between the two countries.

First, Helene Cooper, reporting from Washington D.C., writes in "U.S. Strategy in Iraq Increasingly Relies on Iran" that

“The only way in which the Obama administration can credibly stick with its strategy is by implicitly assuming that the Iranians will carry most of the weight and win the battles on the ground,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former special adviser to Mr. Obama who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too — the U.S. strategy in Iraq has been successful so far largely because of Iran.”

***

Landon Shroder, an intelligence analyst for corporations in Iraq who was in Baghdad last summer when Mosul fell, countered that the worry that Iran will gain influence in Iraq ignores the reality that Iran’s Shiite government is already a key Iraqi ally.

“By this stage, everybody who observed what happened in Iraq with the Islamic State should know that the main influencer in Iraq is Iran,” he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “That’s an unpopular perception in the United States, after spending so much money and lives lost in the conflict, but it’s reality.”

Mr. Shroder said that at the moment, the only force with the ability to bring Kurdish troops, the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militias together to fight the Islamic State is Iran.

Rafid Jaboori, the spokesman for Mr. Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, said in an interview Wednesday that Iraq had urged the United States and Iran not to play out their bilateral conflict in Iraq’s battle against the Islamic State.

“So far in general there was no clash within the two,” Mr. Jaboori said.

He drew a comparison to World War II. “Countries with different ideologies, different priorities, different systems of government, cooperated to defeat the Nazis,” he said. “It’s foreseeable that we see countries which might not get along very well in terms of their bilateral relations working to help Iraq to defeat this threat.”

Then, Anne Barnard in "Iraqis Want Lead Role in Driving ISIS From Mosul":

But as the battle continued in Tikrit, American officials, as well as some of their Iraqi counterparts, insisted that the countries’ relationship was healthy and that close military collaboration would continue against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or by the Arabic acronym Daesh.

Even though United States warplanes are not participating in the Tikrit battle, as they have in others, the Iraqi government still welcomes continued international assistance, said Ali al-Alaaq, a close aide to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. 

“Today in Salahuddin, we were hoping that the Americans could participate in the battle against ISIS, but we have launched against ISIS alone,” he said. “We are expecting that the support will be continued, especially since we are facing a very important task in Mosul and other cities in Iraq.” 

American officials, too, tried to play down signs of strain between the United States and Iraq. 

“The United States is proud of its partnership with Iraqi forces, which has made huge impacts in weakening Daesh, and we are looking forward to more coordination with the Iraqi forces,” the United States ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones, said after meeting with Adnan al-Zurufi, the governor of Najaf, in southern Iraq. He appeared to be reassuring Iraqi officials that the United States did not oppose the use of Shiite militias known as popular mobilization forces. They have played a crucial role in the ground fight since many regular army units disintegrated as ISIS seized much of northern and western Iraq in June.

“Our direct coordination is with the Iraqi security forces, and we count on the security forces to coordinate with the popular mobilization forces and other forces that are cooperating in the fight against Daesh,” Mr. Jones said.

The problem for the Obama administration is that it has to deal with Israel's Likudniks and the sheikhs of the Gulf Cooperation Council.  Both groups are dead set against anything that smacks of a victory for Iran, including a deal on its nuclear program emerging from the P5+1 talks in Switzerland.

Michael Gordon's opaque "John Kerry Flies to Saudi Arabia to Discuss Iran Nuclear Talks" is clear enough for the reader to discern that the make or break aspect of the negotiations center on how long uranium processing restrictions should remain in effect. Ten years? Fifteen years?

Obama administration officials have said that a central goal of accord would be to preclude Iran from being able to develop enough nuclear material for a bomb within a year, should it decide to repudiate the agreement. American officials have said the breakout restrictions should last at least 10 years. Mr. Kerry, who took no questions from reporters in his appearance here, said the United States would be interested only in the “right deal.”

“Time is of the essence,” he said, “and important decisions need to be made.”

American officials have not said how long the agreement with Iran might be in effect. One possibility that has been discussed is an accord that lasts 15 years, with restrictions on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium relaxed during the final years.

This will be the petard Obama and Kerry will be hoisted upon. No sunset date will be long enough for the venal pay-to-play Congress and its Saudi and Israeli paymasters. Obama can rescind some of the Iranian sanctions himself, but he needs Congressional approval to relax all of them.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's signaling his willingness to push legislation requiring Congressional approval for any agreement that results from the P5+1 talks prior to their March 24 deadline points to the eventual necessity of an Obama veto.

If the P5+1 talks fail we will have to wait and see if there is a spillover effect on U.S.-Iranian cooperation in the war against ISIS. Failure to reach an agreement will create an even messier mess in a region that is already cracked and reeling.

Obama Impugns Menendez's Virtue + U.S. Mendacity on Iran's Nuclear Program + KSA Spotlighted for Flogging Blogger + Dying Oceans

A juicy morsel this morning from Michael Shear, "Obama and Senator Robert Menendez Spar on How to Handle Iran," about a mano-a-mano face-off between the feckless POTUS Obama and the ultra-corrupt AIPAC shill Bob Menendez. It took place yesterday during a Senate Democrat Issues Conference at the Baltimore Hilton. According to Shear,

[Obama's] exchange with Mr. Menendez occurred near the end of a question-and-answer session after Senator Angus King of Maine — an independent who caucuses with the Democrats — asked for an update to the nuclear talks.

According to one of the senators and another person who was present, the president urged lawmakers to stop pursuing sanctions, saying such a move would undermine his authority and could derail the talks. Mr. Obama also said that such a provocative action could lead international observers to blame the Americans, rather than the Iranians, if the talks collapsed before the June 30 deadline.

The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took “personal offense.” 

Mr. Menendez told the president that he had worked for more than 20 years to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and had always been focused on the long-term implications. Mr. Menendez also warned the president that sanctions could not be imposed quickly if Congress waited to act and the talks failed, according to two people who were present.

There you have it, assuming the account is accurate: POTUS acknowledging that Iranian sanctions are donor driven, and in response, Bob Menendez, a prime recipient of AIPAC largesse and a co-sponsor of legislation calling for additional sanctions against Iran, bolts upright and claims his integrity has been impugned.

For a helpful summary of U.S. perfidy in regards to Iran's nuclear program take a moment to read Gareth Porter's "Four Ways the West Got the Iran Nuclear Issue Wrong." From the outset the idea that Iran has been secretly pursuing nuclear weapons has been a canard:

The first failure, which set in train all the others, involved the US trying to strangle the nuclear programme of the Islamic Republic in its cradle and then blithely acting as though it bore no responsibility for the resulting shift in Iranian nuclear policy. It all started with a decision by the Reagan administration early in the Iran-Iraq war in 1983 to put diplomatic pressure on its allies to stop all nuclear cooperation with Iran. France was pressed to forbid a French-based multilateral consortium from providing the nuclear fuel that Iran had counted on for its lone nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

The US State Department acknowledged at the time that it had no evidence that Iran was working on or even wanted nuclear weapons. That US effort to choke off any nuclear assistance to Iran thus represented an extremely serious violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guaranteed Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology.

Not surprisingly Iran responded to that US denial of its nuclear rights by defying US wishes and acquiring the technology to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel itself on the black market and later through negotiations with China and Russia. US aggressiveness toward Iran’s nuclear programme had backfired. 

But instead of recognising that it had made a serious error, Washington compounded the original policy blunder by treating the Iranian response as prima facie evidence of nuclear weapons intent. In 1995 Secretary of State Warren Christopher, in the course of explaining an order by President Bill Clinton banning all US trade and investment in Iran, accused Iran of having an “organised structure dedicated to acquiring and developing nuclear weapons.” That was an obvious reference to the Iranian efforts to acquire centrifuge and other enrichment technology. The Clinton administration thus acted as though there was no relationship between Iran’s interest in obtaining gas centrifuge technology and the US denial policy that preceded it.

Porter goes on to list several obvious and egregious U.S. intelligence blunders. But the principal argument for the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program is the Grand Ayatollah's fatwa:

The belief of Western governments that Iran must have pursued nuclear weapons has been based on their ignorance of a pivotal historical episode that should have caused them to question that belief. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Saddam’s troops attacked Iran with chemical weapons many times, killing 20,000 Iranians and severely injuring 100,000. Yet Iran never retaliated with its own chemical weapons, as Joost Hiltermann’s A Poisonous Affair, the authoritative source on chemical attacks in that war, has documented.

That fact poses a fundamental challenge to the Western narrative on the Iran nuclear issue, because there is no credible explanation for the Iranian failure to retaliate with chemical weapons other than the fact that supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had forbidden the possession and use of all weapons of mass destruction as illicit in Islam. The Revolutionary Guards acted on their own to acquire the capability to produce mustard gas weapons, as the wartime Iranian Minister for military procurement has confirmed in a recent interview. But his account of his meetings with supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini also confirms that Khomeini pronounced a fatwa against such weapons early in the war and repeated it in 1987.

The implications of that historical episode for an understanding of the politics of WMD policy in Iran are obviously far-reaching. It lends strong credibility to the Iranian claim that the current supreme leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons is an absolute bar to Iran possessing such weapons. But the news media has continued to dismiss the problem by clinging to an old narrative, which was based on false information that Iran not only had possessed chemical weapons but also had used them.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has landed some unwelcome attention over its flogging of a blogger, Raif Badawi. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein of Jordan, yesterday called for a halt. Nicholas Kristof devoted a column, "An Islamic Reformer, Lashed," to it the other day, placing Badawi's flogging in the proper context of KSA's support for Islamic fundamentalism, the Charlie Hebdo massacre and Free Speech. It is hard for the United States to make a stink over human rights and press freedom in nations it regards as adversaries (Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela et al.) when a principal ally, if not the principal ally, is caning a blogger 50 lashes every Friday until 1000 lashes have been meted out (19 more Fridays, the end of May).

Fariborz Saremi has a piece, "Iran’s Changing Role," about the Islamic Republic's improved status among Gulf Cooperation Council member states relative to KSA and Bahrain:

Political and economic relations between the smaller Gulf states and Iran are rather diverse: Kuwait and Iran, for example have had positive relations since 1991 and are currently expanding their economic ties. Oman and Qatar have a long history of fairly good relations towards Iran. While the UAE has had a troublesome relation with Iran in the past, in particular due to the three island dispute, their relationship is currently improving. All this indicates that Saudi Arabia might not be able to hold its own house together when it comes to confrontation with a regional power like Iran. Many GCC states welcomed the election of President Rouhani but remain skeptical about the depth of change in Tehran especially the overall influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Before signing off, let's quote at length from Carl Zimmer's "Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says" about a big, new study published yesterday in Science, "Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean":

There are clear signs already that humans are harming the oceans to a remarkable degree, the scientists found. Some ocean species are certainly overharvested, but even greater damage results from large-scale habitat loss, which is likely to accelerate as technology advances the human footprint, the scientists reported.

Coral reefs, for example, have declined by 40 percent worldwide, partly as a result of climate-change-driven warming.

Some fish are migrating to cooler waters already. Black sea bass, once most common off the coast of Virginia, have moved up to New Jersey. Less fortunate species may not be able to find new ranges. At the same time, carbon emissions are altering the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic.

“If you cranked up the aquarium heater and dumped some acid in the water, your fish would not be very happy,” Dr. Pinsky said. “In effect, that’s what we’re doing to the oceans.”

Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish we consume within 20 years. Bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble. Whales may no longer be widely hunted, the analysis noted, but they are now colliding more often as the number of container ships rises.

Mining operations, too, are poised to transform the ocean. Contracts for seabed mining now cover 460,000 square miles underwater, the researchers found, up from zero in 2000. Seabed mining has the potential to tear up unique ecosystems and introduce pollution into the deep sea.

The oceans are so vast that their ecosystems may seem impervious to change. But Dr. McClenachan warned that the fossil record shows that global disasters have wrecked the seas before. “Marine species are not immune to extinction on a large scale,” she said.

Until now, the seas largely have been spared the carnage visited on terrestrial species, the new analysis also found.

The fossil record indicates that a number of large animal species became extinct as humans arrived on continents and islands. For example, the moa, a giant bird that once lived on New Zealand, was wiped out by arriving Polynesians in the 1300s, probably within a century.

But it was only after 1800, with the Industrial Revolution, that extinctions on land really accelerated.

Humans began to alter the habitat that wildlife depended on, wiping out forests for timber, plowing under prairie for farmland, and laying down roads and railroads across continents.

Species began going extinct at a much faster pace. Over the past five centuries, researchers have recorded 514 animal extinctions on land. But the authors of the new study found that documented extinctions are far rarer in the ocean.

Before 1500, a few species of seabirds are known to have vanished. Since then, scientists have documented only 15 ocean extinctions, including animals such as the Caribbean monk seal and the Steller’s sea cow.

While these figures are likely underestimates, Dr. McCauley said that the difference was nonetheless revealing.

“Fundamentally, we’re a terrestrial predator,” he said. “It’s hard for an ape to drive something in the ocean extinct.”

Ayatollah Connects Ferguson to P5+1 Talks

Returning home from the holidays, reading the Gray Lady in an aisle seat on a full flight, I was pleased to see Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, weighing in on Ferguson (Thomas Erdbrink, "Iran’s Supreme Leader Backs Further Nuclear Talks"):

The ayatollah also made reference to the riots this week in Ferguson, Mo. The unrest in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, shows “the gap between the American people and their administration.”

There was a more expansive story in Business Insider (Hunter Walker, "Iran's Supreme Leader Says Ferguson Shows What's Wrong With America") which noted that Khamenei, in several Tweets on Ferguson, not only explained how the riots in St. Louis County and around the country prove that USG is battling its own people, who do not trust the government, but also how Israel, through a "Zionist network" that controls the "lifeline" of U.S. politicians by threat of blackmail, is preventing the federal government from publicly embracing a deal with Iran on its nuclear program as well as justice for Michael Brown.

The Khamenei Tweet on the Zionist connection to Ferguson is as follows:

#Zionist network blackmail US officials &if they act agnst their will, they're forced to resign,face defamation and death threats. #Ferguson

Here are the two Khamenei Tweets on Ferguson. The first, mentions low voter turnout during the recent midterm elections:

US isn't honest w its nation. The recent US election turnout was so low. At events in #Ferguson US is fighting w its ppl. #BlackLivesMatter

The next, reasserts the obvious, that the U.S. public does not trust its government:

We don't seek to gain the confidence of US; we don't need that. We don't trust you; your ppl do not trust you either. #Ferguson

All of this is fairly unremarkable and obvious. But it will set off some tongue-clucking among brainwashed Western liberals and conservatives.

Can anyone deny Zionists have a stranglehold, a veto on most aspects of U.S. foreign policy?

Khamenei's assertion that the "Zionist network" has a stake in maintaining the U.S. system of institutional racism and white privilege is more novel. Certainly Israel's deep bonds with the Southern Baptist Convention, ties that have been developed over the last 20-plus years, support such an assertion.

Immersing myself in the broadcast television coverage of Ferguson from Tuesday until this morning it is interesting to note the playbook that is followed whenever there is an outbreak of dissent, protest, riots, whatever.

The primary play in that book is to focus on the "violence" of the protests and loss of property. The source of the outrage is given short shrift. Only the News Hour -- from what I saw -- provided a cogent explanation of why the grand jury process, a process that should have resulted in an indictment of Darren Wilson, was totally skewed towards blaming the victim, the teenage Michael Brown.

The three-day's worth of coverage I saw was heavily weighted toward the suffering of Ferguson's small-business owners and employees not knowing if they were going to be able to pay their bills.

Obama is almost certain not to pursue any federal civil rights prosecution here. The least one would expect would be some sort of Department of Justice monitoring process for the local police of St. Louis County. But don't expect it. Holder is on his way out, and so too is Barack. There is no will to take on white privilege and institutional racism; just as there is no will to cut back the warfare state.

Which means it will be up to the young and and young at heart, those who want to see a more egalitarian society, to stay mobilized and maintain the struggle.

P5+1 Talks to Continue but Future Still Clouded by War

The charade has been played out. Though it was a foregone conclusion that the P5+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program would be extended again, the canard had to be maintained that negotiators were making a hard charge to finalize a comprehensive agreement by today's deadline. Now, thankfully, that is behind us.

Michael Gordon and David Sanger report this morning, "Negotiators Plan to Extend Talks on Iran’s Nuclear Program," that

Hours away from a Monday deadline for completing a new accord to curb Iran’s nuclear program, negotiators planned to extend negotiations and expected to reconvene next month, a Western diplomat said. 

A location for the December talks has yet to be chosen, but over the past month, Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Muscat, Oman, and in Vienna. 

American officials and their negotiating partners have yet to explain if any substantial progress was made in the latest round of talks here and what gaps remain. President Obama had said in a television interview on Sunday that there were still “significant” differences between the two sides. 

It was also unclear how long the talks would be prolonged, as negotiators try to resolve crucial issues, including how much nuclear fuel Iran could produce, how long the accord would last and how intrusive inspections would be. 

“Given progress made this weekend, talks headed to likely extension with experts and negotiating teams reconvening in December at a yet to be determined location,” said a Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions related to internal planning.

The reason why the P5+1 negotiations have to be maintained is the alternative is either more sanctions emanating from the U.S. Congress or an Israeli attack. As Sasan Fayamanesh noted in
"Is Israel Losing the Battle to Wage War on Iran? On the Long-Term Agreement Between Iran and the P5+1," which appeared on the Counterpunch online weekend edition, Israel has been trying mightily to derail the P5+1 process:

Failing to stop the JPA [last November's breakthrough Joint Plan of Action], Israel then tried to nullify it by passing a new and severe set of sanctions through the US Congress. The move was led by Kirk and Menendez, two senators who often appear on the list of the biggest recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel public actions committees. The Kirk-Menendez bill, titled “Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act,” was introduced on December 19, 2013, with the sole purpose of ending the agreement between Iran and the P5+1. The bill gained momentum as various Israeli lobby groups, particularly AIPAC, exerted pressure in the Senate. On January 4, 2014, AIPAC had a summary of Kirk-Menendez bill on its website and was instructing its members to “act now.”

The number of senators signing the Kirk-Menendez bill rose from 33 in early January to 59 in mid-January, 2014. This was despite the fact that some officials in the Obama Administration, including Secretary Kerry, referred to the bill as an attempt to push the US into a war with Iran. This was also in spite of Obama’s threats to veto the bill. On January 28, 2014, in his State of the Union Address, Obama reiterated his stance on any congressional bill intended to impose a new set of sanctions on Iran and stated that “if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it. ”

Israel, its lobby groups and its conduits in Congress, nevertheless, pushed for passing the resolution. However, they could not muster the strength to get the two-thirds majority in the Senate to make the bill veto-proof. They threw in the towel and AIPAC declared on February 6, 2014: “We agree with the Chairman [Menendez] that stopping the Iranian nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support . . . and that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure.” As many observed, this was the biggest loss for Israel, its lobby groups and its conduits in the US Congress, since Ronald Reagan agreed, contrary to Israel’s demand, to sell AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. Subsequent attempts to nullify the JPA also failed. This included an attempt by some Senators, a few days before March 2014 AIPAC policy conference, to include elements of “Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act” in a veterans’ bill.

In the end, Israeli lobby groups had to settle for a few letters written by US law makers to President Obama, telling him what the final deal must look like. The AIPAC-approved letter in the House of Representative on March 3, 2014, was circulated by Eric Cantor and Steny Hoyer. The Senate letter was posted on AIPAC website, dated March 18, 2014, and, as many Israeli affiliated news sources joyously reported, the letter gained 82 signatures. Finally, 23 Senators also signed the Cantor-Hoyer letter, as Senator Carl Levin’s website posted it on March 22, 2014. If some of the harsh measures proposed in these letters were to be adopted by the Obama Administrations, no final deal could be reached with Iran.

The JPA was supposed to lead to a final settlement in six months, and, consequently, there were many rounds of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 before the deadline. The final and the most intense negotiations that took place behind closed doors in July 2014 lasted for more than two weeks. However, in the end there were “significant gaps on some core issues,” as a statement by EU Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif read on July 19, 2014. It was therefore decided to close the so-called gaps by November 24, 2014.

We are now approaching the 2nd deadline for reaching a long-term agreement between Iran and the P5+1. It is unclear whether the gaps can be bridged. It is also unclear how much of these gaps are due to the relentless Israeli pressure that is still being exerted even on the Obama Administration and its team of negotiators. We know that these negotiators, as they have readily admitted, consult Israel before and after every meeting with Iran. Indeed, even after the latest round of meetings between Iran and the US in Muscat, Oman, Kerry called Netanyahu to “update” him on the negotiations. Yet, we also know that Israel does not have the clout that it once had in the White House. The most influential Israeli lobbyists have left the Obama Administration and their policy of tough diplomacy is in tatters. Israel has also been unable to stop the short-term P5+1 agreement with Iran, it has failed to nullify the agreement after it passed, and it has not even been able to garner the two-thirds majority in the Senate to make veto-proof a Congressional bill designed to start a war with Iran. In other words, in the past two years Israel has been losing the battle to engage the US in another military adventure in the Middle East. But has Israel lost the war to wage war on Iran? The newly configured US Senate is already seeking a vote on another Israeli sponsored war bill called “Iran Nuclear Negotiations Act of 2014.”

As long as negotiations are underway Obama can easily veto any war bill coming out of the Republican-controlled Congress and expect that the veto will not be overridden. A veto becomes more difficult to maintain if the P5+1 process breaks down.

There is something unsavory about Kerry racing to the airport in Geneva to personally fellate the Saudi foreign minister. Gordon and Sanger reported yesterday, "Iran Nuclear Negotiators, Facing Key Differences, Weigh Extending Deadline" that

Mr. Kerry also rode to the airport here Sunday to talk with Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. While Saudi Arabia is not involved in the talks, it has long been worried that an agreement might allow Iran to keep more of its nuclear infrastructure than Saudi Arabia is comfortable with. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, also flew here to join the talks.

The reality is that U.S. foreign policy is dominated by the Saudis and Israelis. This isn't to say that they get every single thing they want; rather, they wield enormous influence and, because of their pull with a pay-to-play Congress, can effectively block any administration initiative.

This is prominently displayed with regards to Syria. Obama cannot cut a deal with Assad to roll up the jihadis because Israel and the Gulf monarchies won't allow it.

So what you get is a dissociative identity disorder where the United States is at war with itself. One part of USG is at war with another. The covert campaign run by the CIA to oust Assad metastasizes into region-wide war that requires a Department of Defense intervention.

It is the Al Qaeda formula that goes back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. and Israel support Al Qaeda in southern Syria, while the U.S. battles its epigones elsewhere. It is a formula for perpetual war.

As Obama green-lights a combat mission for U.S. forces in Afghanistan through the end of next year, reneging on his pledge to end fighting there by December, it should be apparent to even the laziest of observers that the U.S. is first and foremost a warfare state.

How to sell this to the voting public?

I don't think it can. That's why you will see continuing efforts to disenfranchise the poor while exacerbating the impact of dark money.

Eventually there is going to be some sort of reaction, whether in the form of a popular democratic uprising or a Thai military-type coup.

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I'm out of town for the rest of the week; back Friday.