Brief On Iran- BOI- News letter- Feb 23-2015

And the White House is still pretending it hasn’t unleashed demons on the country it once could have saved.

Contless memories haunt me after a decade of service in Iraq. Gripping the hands of an assassin-felled member of the provisional government as the life slipped out of her body in 2003; watching al Qaeda’sbeheadings of American hostages in 2004; seeing photos of young Sunni prisoners raped and tortured by Iran-backed Shiite militias serving within the Iraqi police in 2005; and sitting helplessly at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as news came in of al Qaeda’s 2006 bombing of al-Askari Mosque, one of the holiest sites for Shiite Islam, ushering in the civil war.

But after countless visits to Arlington National Cemetery and Walter Reed Medical Center, nothing upsets me more than the fact that thousands of American soldiers, diplomats, intelligence officers, and contractors are now enabling and emboldening a government in Baghdad that is simply beyond redemption.

 This February marks the anniversary of a momentous event in the modern history of democracy and extremism. Protests swept the country and the Shah who lived in tremendous excess and enforced a repressive, unpopular agenda by way of secret police, torture and executions was overthrown.

The 1979 revolution was certainly a time of hope and the Iranian people were grateful for it, defying curfews and taking to the streets, chanting slogans against the Shah’s dictatorship.  But these chants turned into chants against the West, against secularism and against anyone who opposed the equally radical and oppressive agenda of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

By usurping the leadership of a genuine revolution seeking freedom, the Ayatollah planted the seeds of Islamic extremism and the foundations of global terror. The Iranian regime has long been a major supporter of terrorism, from the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Lebanon in 1983, to the Jewish Community Center bombing in Buenos Aires in 1993, to its campaign of terror through its Shiite proxies in Iran since 2003, and to its support for the Assad regime and beyond. But today, the regime’s support of the Assad regime is at unprecedented levels, it has stepped up sponsorship of Shiite militias and deployed troops in Iraq and backs the Houthi militia, which just took over the government in Yemen.

 As the White House races to conclude a deal with Tehran on Iran’s disputed nuclear program by a March 24 deadline, the American people should take a moment to consider the party we are trying to negotiate with. Iran is a tyrannical and theocratic regime that is extending its reach across the broader Middle East, exacerbating sectarian conflicts, and fostering opposition to Western interests — all while stringing along the United States and exploiting the Obama administration’s goodwill.

Nonetheless, no one in the international community has yet had the guts to confront Iran’s aggression in the region — including in Iraq and Syria — and its suppression of domestic dissent, including mass murders to enforce its anti-democratic idea of theological purity. We silently acquiesce to these threats and affronts in order to chase a nuclear deal that has eluded us year after year, and which the world wants far more than Tehran does.

Notwithstanding the stacks of evidence of Iran’s role in global and domestic terrorism – including the U.S. State Department’s own designation of Iran as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism and Amnesty International’s detailed reporting on shocking levels and methods of executions — the Iranian opposition gives us an insider’s look at the extent of Iran’s brutality. In fact, the National Council of Resistance of Iran offers a political as well as a cultural alternative to Islamic fundamentalism. It is led by a charismatic Muslim woman, Maryam Rajavi, and enjoys broad-based support among Iranians as well as Western politicians and policymakers.

On the contrary, the coalition has provided critical support that enabled its Iraqi and Syrian partners to contain ISIS and achieve a number of successes: rescuing thousands of Yezidi civilians in Sinjar; retaking the strategic Mosul Dam; retaking Iraqi Kurdish areas initially lost to ISIS; liberating Kobane; and pushing ISIS out of Baiji. The U.S.-led coalition has also supported the Sunni tribes and Iraqi Army across Anbar.

There have been successes by Iran-backed Shiite militias against ISIS in Diyala. However, there are troubling reports that those militias are also committing acts of sectarian cleansing to push Sunnis away from the Iranian border and to punish Sunnis collectively for the crimes of ISIS. If true, such actions will exacerbate Iraq’s problems by increasing sectarian tensions and strengthening Sunni extremism, whether on the part of ISIS or its successors. Moreover, even with successes achieved to date, there is a long way to go to achieve the goal of destroying ISIS.

Over at Mosaic Magazine, former Bush aide Michael Doran claims that the Obama administration has had a secret strategy to engage Iran from the time it took office. He’s right, but he neglected to mention that George W. Bush and his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, adopted the same strategy from the same source in November 2006, after the Republicans got crushed in the 2006 congressional elections. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got a pink slip, Vice President Dick Cheney got benched, and “realist” Robert Gates-the co-chairman of the 2004 Council on Foreign Relations task force that advocated a deal with Iran-took over at Defense. Michael Doran reports all of this, all, that is, except Gates’ central role in the plan. That would place a good deal of the blame at Bush’s doorstep.

Writes Doran:

When he arrived in Washington in 2006, [Obama] absorbed a set of ideas that had incubated on Capitol Hill during the previous three years-ideas that had received widespread attention thanks to the final report of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan congressional commission whose co-chairs, former secretary of state James Baker and former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, interpreted their mission broadly, offering advice on all key aspects of Middle East policy.

The report, published in December 2006, urged then-President Bush to take four major steps: withdraw American troops from Iraq; surge American troops in Afghanistan; reinvigorate the Arab-Israeli “peace process”; and, last but far from least, launch a diplomatic engagement of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its junior partner, the Assad regime in Syria.

While the Obama administration systematically engages Iran as the centerpiece of a Middle East strategy, my distinguished colleague, David Goldman, writes that President George W. Bush adopted a similar strategy after 2006 based on the guidance of Robert Gates, former secretary of Defense.

Relying on the work of Michael Doran, erstwhile Bush aide, Goldman notes that the Iraq Study Group – a bipartisan commission including former Secretary of State James Baker, former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and Gates – proposed a diplomatic engagement with Iran “and its junior partner, the [President Bashar] Assad regime in Syria.”

Moreover, the history of this proposal has its origin in a Council of Foreign Relations report written by Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser. In this report, the U.S. is criticized for creating security concerns on Iran’s western border after toppling Saddam Hussain’s Iraqi regime. “By contributing to heightened tensions between the Bush administration and Iran, the elimination of Saddam’s rule has not generated substantial strategic dividends for Tehran. In fact, together with U.S. statements on regime change, rogue states, and preemptive action, recent changes in the regional balance of power have only enhanced the potential deterrent value of a ‘strategic weapon.'”

DUBAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Iran is sidestepping Western sanctions and managing to sell hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fuel oil every month through companies based in the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates, trading sources told Reuters.

The U.S. and EU sanctions that came into force in 2012 prohibit the import, purchase and transport of Iranian petroleum products to pressure Tehran to halt its disputed nuclear programme. Washington has also pressed its allies around the world to clamp down on the shipping of Iranian oil products.

But Tehran has been using innovative methods to circumvent the restrictions, several Middle East-based trading sources said.

They include tankers switching off their tracking systems, ship-to-ship transfers, discharging and loading at remote ports, blending Iranian products with fuels from another source to alter the shipment’s physical specification and selling them with Iraqi-origin documents, the sources said.

The Iranian fuel oil is mainly offered from the UAE port and bunkering hub of Fujairah, through trading firms acting as middlemen for buyers who may not know the cargo is from Iran, the sources said.