Young King Obama Hasn’t Taken Advice of the Elders
The Novice President Led Jews Into a Valley of Death
Pressure is Building Up on all Fronts in the Middle East
President Obama Stuck HIS Diplomatic Dialogue Mouth,
Novice Charm, With Surrender Speeches In Middle East,
Which Have Contributed to Stirring a Middle East Chaos!
August 31, 2012
http://www.tribulationperiod,com/
Begin Excerpt 1 from YNet News
Ecclesiastes 10:8-16 – He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him. [9] Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby. [10] If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct. [11] Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better. [12] The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself. [13] The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness. [14] A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him? [15] The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city. [16] Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!
The Syrian curse
Op-ed: Obama’s US should stop seeking new models of intervention in disputes it knows nothing about
Guy Bechor
August 30, 2012
When President Barack Obama took office, when he still had illusions regarding an American alliance with the Muslim and third worlds, he wanted to make Bashar Assad a key figure in this alliance.
So he tried to improve relations with Assad, almost at any price, and sent an ambassador to Damascus. The White House was willing to ignore evidence of Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 and the dire human rights situation in Syria; it was also willing to ignore the aid Damascus was providing to terror groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad; and ignore the ties between Syria’s proxies and extremist Iran.
And who was the lobbyist who led the efforts to strengthen US relations with Syria? Who convinced the Obama administration to send the ambassador back to Damascus? Tom Dine, a Jewish American who served as AIPAC’s executive director between 1980 and 1993 and was a close friend of the late Yitzhak Rabin. The Syrians and Americans share the same concerns, he said at the time and was hailed by all those American columnists who understand the Middle East so well.
All of this collapsed, of course, with the eruption of the civil war in Syria, which further exposed the Assad regime’s murderous ways – for those who needed more proof. The White House never gave any explanation for its erroneous policy and never offered an apology.
Now the Obama administration’s pendulum has shifted to the other side. Now Assad is evil and the Sunni rebels must be supported in their fight against him – with surface-to-air missiles for example. But this policy is also foolish and short-sighted.
These rebels are divided amongst themselves. Many of them are already leaning towards militant Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, and the ethnic cleansing they are committing against the Christian or Alawite minorities is atrocious. Tens of thousands of Christians are being banished from their homes in Homs and Aleppo and no one in the world says a word, because they are being expelled by the “good guys.”
The Obama administration has lost nearly all of the US’ allies in the Arab Middle East, and Syria was never an ally that should be saved. So why is Obama so keen on getting involved in Syria’s affairs? Russian President Putin was right when he said that any foreign intervention only exacerbates the situation in this miserable country.
And what will happen after the “evil” Assad is overthrown? Will the “forces of good” rise to power? Not necessarily. Syria will become the new Afghanistan, with dozens of militias and ethnic forces hostile to one another. Syria will become a major burden on its neighbors and the situation there may lead to regional anarchy. There are no good guys in this story.
Obama’s America would be wise to stop seeking new models of intervention in disputes it is not familiar with. Any intervention will only cause more damage. The developments in Syria, and what is likely to happen in Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and other countries – these are processes are forming new entities in the Arab and Muslim Middle East to replace the fake nation states that had been established in the region over the past 100 years. These states did not coincide with the ethnic, religious, tribal or racial divisions in the region, so these processes will occur regardless of whether the US and the West decide to intervene.
Israel’s policy of non-involvement is wise. Syria is not an ally of the US or the West, and it won’t become one when the Assad era ends. The Obama administration should refrain from investing efforts in this dispute, particularly because this policy does not seem to be serving any US interests, apart from self-righteousness.
Begin Excerpt 2 from YNet News
Netanyahu to address UN’s General Assembly
PM scheduled to travel to New York after Yom Kippur to deliver harsh speech against Iran and ‘tell the truth about the terror regime of Iran’
Attila Somfalvi
August 30, 2012
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday he will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month. “Today in Tehran, 120 countries’ delegates heard blood libels against Israel and said nothing.
“That is why I am going to the UN’s General Assembly to tell the nations of the world in a clear voice the truth about the terror regime of Iran which represents the greatest threat to world peace”.
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Meanwhile, efforts to arrange a meeting between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama continue. Relations between the two are tense over disagreements on the timetable for a possible military operation in Iran.
The prime minister is planning to speak out against Iran’s nuclear program in a particularly poignant speech in order to increase pressure on the international community in the hopes it will work to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon
Meanwhile, senior state officials insinuated that the US will back any decision Israel will make on a strike in Iran ruling out a possible diplomatic crisis between the two nations.
“We are not worried about a crisis with the US, no matter what we decide,” a state official said.
Netanyahu is scheduled to depart for New York immediately after Yom Kippur and will return to Israel three days later
Begin IAEA Report Excerpt 3 from YNet News via Reuters
IAEA: Iran doubles underground nuclear capacity
UN watchdog quarterly report says number of centrifuges at Fordo facility more than doubled to 2,140 from 1,064 in May; new machines not yet operational
Reuters
Iran is preparing for a possible major expansion of uranium enrichment in a fortified underground facility, a UN nuclear watchdog report showed, underlining Tehran’s defiance in the face of Western pressure and the threat of an Israeli attack.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report also said “extensive activities” – a reference to suspected sanitisation efforts – at Iran’s Parchin military complex would hamper its investigation of possible past nuclear weapons development work there, if inspectors were granted access.
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The number of enrichment centrifuges at Fordo, buried deep inside a mountain to better protect it against any enemy strikes, had more than doubled to 2,140 from 1,064 in May, showed the quarterly report released on Thursday. However, the new machines were not yet operating, it said.
Iran, which denies developing nuclear weapons technology, says it needs this material to fuel a medical research reactor, but it also takes it significantly closer to making potential bomb material.
The report is likely to add to Western alarm about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and may further fuel speculation that Israel might launch air strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
Fordo, where Iran is refining uranium to a level that takes it significantly closer to weapons-grade material, is built to house roughly 3,000 centrifuges – machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the fissile concentration.
The May report said Iran had installed a total of 1,064 centrifuges, of which 696 were operating, in some six cascades
Iran says it needs this higher-grade uranium for a medical research reactor in Tehran. It is enriching uranium to lower levels at its main such plant in Natanz, where diplomats say it is also installing more centrifuges.
While the newly added centrifuges at Fordo are not yet operating, the expansion reaffirmed Iranian defiance of international demands to suspend enrichment, which can have both civilian and military uses depending on refinement level.
“There is reason to be concerned by increased tempo of enrichment, the larger stockpile of enriched uranium and, most importantly, the additional centrifuges installed in the deeply-buried facility at Fordo,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies think-tank.
It may reinforce the belief in Israel that diplomatic and economic pressure is failing to make the Islamic Republic curb its uranium enrichment program.
Iran denies allegations it seeks a nuclear weapons capability and says all its atom work is for peaceful purposes. It has threatened wide-ranging reprisals if attacked.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday told heads of state from developing countries at a meting in Tehran that the country has no interest in nuclear weapons but will keep pursuing peaceful nuclear energy.
Begin Excerpt 4 from YNet News
Looming Near Eastern crisis
Op-ed: Israel must closely monitor emerging safe havens for jihadists in Syria, Lebanon
Riccardo Dugulin
August 30, 2012
In the region there is a common understanding that may be summarized by the following adage: The road to Beirut goes through Damascus. Since the 1980s the political situation of Lebanon has in fact been closely linked to the mood of the Syrian regime and its Lebanese supporters.
The current state of affairs gives the full meaning to this maxim. While the revolutions that took place in Tunisia and Egypt greatly changed the local and regional political balance, they did not result in direct widespread violence. On the other hand, the Syrian uprising has gone through all the textbook phases leading to a full blown civil war engaging diverging international interests.
This situation is not only grave for its toll on the Syrian population but also represents a major threat to the current weak equilibrium which has guaranteed a fragile peace since 2006. If the fall of the present form of government in Damascus may no longer be doubted, the time and the shape of its demise are likely to bring about strategic shifts in its neighboring countries.
When analyzing the Syrian uprising, a major issue is the lack of cohesion of the different opposing parties present on the field. If the Syrian National Council was formed to coordinate political efforts inside and outside the country to gain and maintain unity and support, the body is now openly challenged by an increasing number of factions with competing interests.
If the jihadi presence in Syria should not be overblown, the existence of foreign fighters, mainly from Libya, Chechnya and Gulf countries, is reshaping the nature of the conflict. The growing challenge posed to the regime by former Syrian insurgents who participated in urban combats in Iraq is also causing the multiplication of the centers of power in a war torn country.
The reality today is that the Syrian uprising can no longer be considered as led by a single opposition against the Bashar Assad regime; it has to be seen as a number of loosely coordinated, if not competing one against the other, opposition movements acting inside the country. Along with that, the strategy chosen by the Free Syrian Army may be equated to some extent to the Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. Major battles are not being won on the ground by small unit actions.
The regular army possesses superior fire power and materiel. It is through a low intensity warfare based on attrition and through the creation of safe havens that the FSA and its partners plan to overthrow the regime. A strategy which is costly and is likely to create a long term impasse which may well be the synonym of a major regional spillover.
WINDS OF WAR
Along with a possible stalemate in Syria, a Near Eastern implosion may be characterized by the international inaction toward the issue. The United States and European powers are especially shy over taking the lead of a crisis they do not fully grasp. Small scale weapon supplies, unofficial rumors of tactical support and a cacophony of politically motivated statements do not provide any long term solution for “the day after.” If Assad were to fall today, it appears that neither the US nor the EU has prepared a contingency plan which would prevent the region from falling into deeper troubles.
Analysts in the US are focusing on the short term implications of a prolonged civil war in Syria, mainly in relation to its positive effects in blocking the Iranians expansionist policies. There is nevertheless a complete lack of evaluation of the tangible jihadi and Salafi threat posed by sizeable parts of the Syrian oppositions. If these elements do remain only a fraction of the rebel movements they do represent a well-armed and highly trained force, which in the near future may realistically turn its weapons against parts of the Syrian society along with US and Israeli targets in the region.
Adapting a well-known proverb regarding the relation between France and Algeria, it may be said that when Syria coughs, Lebanon gets a cold. The last weeks have witnessed a drastic increase of confessional and politically motivated clashes in Tripoli going hand in hand with a partial retreat of the State from strategic areas of interest. In an instable moment, Hezbollah does understand that its grip on power is not eternal and the likelihood of rushed action to maintain its top-spot in the Lebanese political scene is increasing.
The rapidity with which the situation may deteriorate in Beirut and the rest of the country is of the greatest importance as the creation of areas outside of State (or Hezbollah) control may recreate a situation similar to the one of the early 1980s when Palestinian terrorists where able to effectively use the Lebanese territory to attack Israel.
Only this time, war-proven jihadists with training from Iraq and Afghanistan would be taking up these regions to undermine the Lebanese stability and the security of Israel. The presence of foreign fighters will only further ignite an already tense situation in a highly divided country.
The implications for Israel are clear. If none of these threats may appear as a full blown existential challenged to the Jewish State, they nevertheless do implicate a necessary change of strategic posture. Since 1973, the border with Syria has mainly been defended considering a conventional attack.
The development of safe havens for terrorist organizations deep inside Syrian territory and Lebanese hinterland will require a high state of alert in a period during which winds of war with Iran are taking a great part of the Israeli security apparatus. Israel’s medium term challenge will then be not to overstretch its home front defensive lines, from the Sinai to the Golan, while designing a strategy to successfully respond to the Iranian nuclear threat.
Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master degree from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International Security. He is currently working in Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance company. He has worked for a number of leading think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut.
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