OIAC Brief On Iran (BOI) – Feb 02, 2015

 Covert CIA Mission to Arm Syrian Rebels Goes Awry

HATAY, Turkey-It didn’t take long for rebel commanders in Syria who lined up to join a Central Intelligence Agency weapons and training program to start scratching their heads.

After the program was launched in mid-2013, CIA officers secretly analyzed cellphone calls and email messages of commanders to make sure they were really in charge of the men they claimed to lead. Commanders were then interviewed, sometimes for days.

Those who made the cut, earning the label “trusted commanders,” signed written agreements, submitted payroll information about their fighters and detailed their battlefield strategy. Only then did they get help, and it was far less than they were counting on.

….“We walk around Syria with a huge American flag planted on our backs, but we don’t have enough AK-47s in our hands to protect ourselves,” a leader of the Hazzm Movement, among the most trusted of the trusted commanders, told U.S. lawmakers in a meeting after Nusra’s advances.

The CIA recently stopped offering help to all but a few trusted commanders in Syria. Much of the U.S.’s focus is shifting to southern Syria, where rebels seem more unified but say they get just 5% to 20% of the arms requested from the CIA.

  A New Level of Refugee Suffering

Two essential requirements: congressional approval of any deal and new sanctions if the negotiations fail.

Anuclear-capable Iran is the gravest threat facing America today. The Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, the so-called P5+1 talks, were supposed to stop Iran’s rush to a nuclear bomb. Regrettably, what began as an unwise gamble has descended into a dangerous series of unending concessions, which is why the time has come for Congress to act.

There is an escalating row between Congress and President Barack Obama over Iran sanctions and the process of negotiations over that country’s nuclear program. Congress will introduce legislation within the next few weeks that would trigger sanctions if Iran fails to sign on to a compromise by theJune 30 deadline for nuclear talks.

The Obama administration has promised to veto any such legislation, arguing that its passage would spell the end of the talks, leading others to blame U.S. overreach for that failure. The president himself said recently, “My main message to Congress at this point is just hold your fire. Nobody around the world, least of all the Iranians, doubt my ability to get additional sanctions passed if these negotiations fail.”

But if the practical result is the same, why does it matter whether we pass the sanctions bill before or after the talks fail?

Contrary to the president’s warnings, there must be something different about the two situations. Advance sanctions legislation leaves no doubt that the United States is serious about securing a favorable nuclear deal. Conversely, the administration’s staunch opposition to that legislation suggests that it is staying true to a soft strategy that may let the Islamic Republic off the hook, whether by giving away sanctions relief in exchange for little Iranian commitment or by merely maintaining the status quo if talks collapse.

This was a bold statement by the president regarding the interim “Joint Plan of Action” governing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. In defending the talks against efforts in Congress to pass a sanctions package if the talks fail, the president made two key points: one, progress on Iran’s nuclear program has been “halted” and two, Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material has been “reduced.”

We realize that White House speechwriters probably don’t want to be bothered with technical issues in such a high-profile speech but here’s a case where some further wordsmithing was needed.  This isn’t the first time. A year ago, in the 2014 State of the Union, The Fact Checker handed out Pinocchios when the president claimed that the inspections allowed under the agreement were “unprecedented.” That’s way too sweeping a statement.

President Obama opposes the Iran sanctions debate in Congress, but action on Capitol Hill will in fact strengthen the president’s hand at the negotiating table.

On Tuesday, Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015. The bill would lay a tough new round of sanctions on Tehran should negotiators fail to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The act has strong bipartisan support, with eight Republican and six Democratic co-sponsors.

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama asked Congress not to move forward with the sanctions bill, saying it would make negotiations more difficult and could even lead to war. But Congress is taking a highly deferential approach. In a nod to White House concerns, Democratic backers of the bill agreed to hold off support for floor action until after the March 24 deadline the P5+1 nations have targeted for an agreement with Iran. In addition, even if the bill passes, sanctions do not kick in until July 6. Furthermore, the bill grants the president month by month waiver authority if a deal with Tehran is imminent.

The US House of Representatives has begun working on its own Iran sanctions bill rather than simply agreeing to pass whatever the Senate comes up with, Al-Monitor has learned.
The dual-track effort presents an additional challenge for the White House, which has repeatedly warned Congress that new sanctions could derail nuclear talks. It could, however, end up buying time for negotiators to strike a final agreement, since both chambers must pass the same bill for legislation to become law.”We feel very strongly that the House needs to play an important role, not just rubber-stamp whatever the Senate decides to do,” the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs panel, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., told Al-Monitor. “So we’re going to put our heads together [with Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif.] and see what’s the best way to proceed.”