Iran's Dirty Dealing

 

 

 

 

Intercepted Iranian Weapons: Glimpse of Covert War
- Yaakov Lappin
 

The IDF's interception of a ship that Iran sent to deliver powerful rockets to Gaza is a small glimpse into an ongoing, daily covert war. On one side is Iran, which is transporting powerful arms to terrorist organizations sworn to jihad against Israel. On the other side are Israel's intelligence agencies which use classified techniques to track the weapons' movements.
    

Islamic Jihad, which is Iran's official proxy in Gaza, would likely have taken possession of the M-302 rockets, but the weapons may also have been destined for Hamas, since Iran and Hamas have begun a dialogue to try to repair their divisions.

(Jerusalem Post)

 

 

What the Iranian Arms Shipment Means - Jennifer Rubin

 

In the wake of the seizure of advanced Iranian-supplied rockets by the Israeli Navy in the Red Sea, a former U.S. official observed that "the so-called [Iranian] moderates are presiding over an aggressive foreign policy designed to create instability throughout the region. If Rouhani is in favor of all this, he is no moderate; if he is opposed to it but cannot stop it, he has no influence....His only function is to mislead the United States into thinking he is a moderate, so that we change our policy toward Iran and weaken the sanctions."

 

As Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) pointed out, the Iranians are not only using the talks and sanctions relief for cover to continue their advanced research and missile program, but also they are inhibiting the U.S. from responding to Iranian behavior outside the talks.

 

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a key architect of sanctions, warns, "The nuclear talks with Tehran already have constrained the Obama administration's willingness to respond to a range of Iranian provocations including the arming of anti-American terrorists like Hamas, Hizbullah, Iraqi Shiite militias and the Taliban, extremist groups in Yemen and Bahrain, and rogue regimes like Assad's."

"Iran's threat network will be supercharged when the Islamic Republic becomes a threshold nuclear state and American willingness to push back forcefully will be even more severely constrained....That freedom for terror, after all, is a major reason why Tehran has pursued nuclear weapons capability in the first place."

Iran is a fundamentalist Islamic state that employs terror and murderous allies (e.g., Syria) to accomplish its aims, including the destruction of the State of Israel. In putting a friendlier face on its interlocutors with the West, the regime hopes to lift sanctions while keeping its sponsorship of terror going full tilt and its nuclear weapons program intact.

So far, it's working like a charm.

(Washington Post)

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UPDATE:

The False Urgency of the Peace Process - Jed Babbin 

Look at the "peace process" track record. In 2000 at Camp David, Bill Clinton wanted to rush things along. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered essentially the same deal that Obama wants now - a return to Israel's 1967 lines with land swaps. That fell apart when Palestinian chieftain Yasser Arafat abruptly left the negotiations and never asked to resume them.
     
In 2005, Ariel Sharon pulled back from Gaza and the West Bank - without land swaps - and the Palestinians launched rocket attacks on Israel. In 2008, Ehud Olmert presented Abbas with a map proposing a Palestinian state on nearly 100% of the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas left and never came back.
    
Now Obama is again pushing the same deal, cloaking it in an urgency that isn't there, because there is no flexibility whatsoever in the Palestinians' position, no compromise they will accept. The Palestinians' desire for peace was demonstrated Wednesday when the Israeli navy seized the Klos C carrying missiles for terrorists in Gaza that can reach almost all of Israel.
(Washington Examiner)
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