AFP is reporting Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry as having told a hearing on President Obama's new policy of engaging Irag in negotiations that the United States no longer seeks Iranian "regime change":
"Our efforts must be reciprocated by the other side: Just as we abandon calls for regime change in Tehran and recognize a legitimate Iranian role in the region, Iran's leaders must moderate their behavior and that of their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas," said Kerry.
Kerry said his panel would release a report within days on the state of Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington and its European partners fear aims to develop an atomic arsenal.
A committee aide said the document may not be made public.
Unfortunately, the only country where President Obama seems to want regime change is Israel.
The anti-Israel crowd is ever eager to boycott Israel. They are quick to jump on opportunity to harm the Jewish state. But first they should take a look at this humorous response:
My opinion is that if they want to boycott Israel, let them. They will lose more than Israel will.
And by the way, note that the comparison map at 7:28 in the video is taken from our site here: Israel vs. New Jersey
Spectator.co.uk's Melanie Philips writes this scathing analysis asserting that the Obama administration is preparing to put Israel in peril and urges Prime Minister Netanyahu to appeal to the American masses lest the president actually throw Israel under the bus:
Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, and he’s getting American Jews to do his dirty work for him. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel.
Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.
Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-ordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralise power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.
Yesterday Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.
This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear program stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.
The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.
It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.
It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace.
But no. The repeated professions that America will never jeopardise Israel’s security are stomach churning when Obama is actually blaming Israel for measures it has taken to safeguard its security – the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered – and trying to force it to abandon them. Today comes further news that Obama will also try to force Israel to give up its nuclear weapons – which it only has as a last ditch insurance against the attempt to annihilate it to which several billion Arabs remain pledged.
Of course Obama doesn’t care that Hamas would run any Palestinian state. Of course he doesn’t care that Israel would be unable to defend itself against such a terrorist state. Because he regards Israel as at best totally expendable, and at worst as a running sore on the world's body politic... his administration is proceeding on the entirely false analysis that a state of Palestine is the solution to the Middle East impasse and the route to peace in the region. What that state will look like or do is something to which at best the administration's collective mind is shut and at worst makes it a potential cynical accomplice to the unconscionable. So Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank. Far from building a coalition against Iran, Obama is thus doing Iran’s work for it.
None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.
American Jews, meanwhile, are reacting as predicted – with a total absence of spine.... AIPAC was sending delegates to visit Congress to 'convince' Representatives and Senators to sign a petition calling for a two-state solution. Inspired! Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.
But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else...
This is shaping up to be the biggest crisis in relations between Israel and America since the foundation of Israel six decades ago. Those who hate Israel and the Jews will be gloating. This after all is precisely what they hoped Obama would do. To any decent person looking on aghast, this is where the moral sickness of the west reaches the critical care ward.
Syrian aid to Hezbollah is interpreted as an attempt to ensure that the militant Lebanese group is sufficiently armed for a possible confrontation with Israel.
Syria's intention... is to provide Hezbollah with sufficient advanced arms to raise its strength and capabilities to a level beyond what the group had prior to the Second Lebanon War in July 2006. Such capabilities would allow Hezbollah to embark on an offensive that would force Israel to fight on a second front in case of a regional conflagration, but allow Syria to prevent any fighting along the Golan Heights.
Israeli analysts believe that Syria is continuing to develop a military strategy strongly influenced by its analysis of the results of the Second Lebanon War. As such, the fundamental principle of the Syrian strategy is the acquisition of sophisticated defensive weapons, primarily air defense and anti-tank weapons.
In parallel, Syria is procuring sophisticated missiles that would enable it to target military bases inside Israel, in case a confrontation with Hezbollah escalates and Damascus is dragged into the conflict.
Syria is also stepping up its efforts to better its ties with the U.S. Officials in Damascus have expressed satisfaction with the pace at which progress has been achieved in contacts with the new American administration.
...There are signs suggesting Syria has made certain its border with Iraq has been calm in line with a U.S. demand, and has prevented jihadists from crossing the border on missions against U.S. forces there.
The group also monitored ships in the Suez Canal "to determine which ones were Israeli," before abandoning that initial plan to conduct attacks in the Arab country, the source said.
In addition, the source confirmed reports that two Palestinian suspects, who were members of Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades, had been planning to conduct terrorist operations "deep inside Israel" before they were caught.
Another suspect - an Egyptian in Sinai - was arrested on Sunday, increasing the number of those in custody to 22, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The rest of the alleged 49-member cell is still at large.
"For a limited time after the assassination of [Hezbollah operations chief] Imad Mughniyeh [in Damascus in February 2008], some of the individuals in Hezbollah thought that they would carry out a revenge operation against Israeli targets in Egypt, in Sinai," he said, noting that the cell leader known as Sami Shehab was among these individuals.
"They monitored Israeli tourist groups and they also observed ships which were crossing the Suez Canal to determine which ones were Israeli, but this operation was canceled. One of the accused said that... this idea was opposed by the [Hezbollah] leader Muhammad Qablan, and when the leadership higher than Qablan found out about that, it canceled the operation. It said, 'We don't want problems in Egypt, and Egypt is a red line'" that should not be crossed, the source said.
Egypt has accused the cell of planning attacks against Israeli targets and Egyptian installations throughout the country. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has admitted that one of the men - Shehab - was a member of Hezbollah, but he said that he and nearly 10 others had been helping to smuggle arms into Gaza and denied any intention to carry out attacks in Egypt.
Echoing statements from Hezbollah leaders, the source from the defense team said that "the issue is related only to offering logistical support to the Palestinian resistance inside the occupation, inside the occupied lands." He later clarified that he meant "against Israel."
"It is not related to any operations against Egypt," the source said.
Shehab has been detained for about six months, while others have been detained about four months, he said. The Egyptian government is currently trying to determine their sources of funding, he added, noting that the defendants had received "money transfers from abroad."
No date has been set for their trial.
The suspects include one Lebanese member - Shehab - two Palestinians and four Sudanese. The rest are Egyptian citizens, two of whom formerly had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
The suspects are accused of joining a secret group outside the bounds of law and using terrorism as the means to execute their goals. They are also accused of espionage on behalf of a foreign organization unacceptable to Egyptian authorities, and possession of weapons and explosives.
However, a formal indictment has yet to be issued, the source said.
In other words, the Egyptians are angry because this time the terrorists went too far and were considering attacks against Israelis in Egypt; apparently, had they continued to use Egypt as a conduit for bringing in weapons to attack Israel from Gaza that would not have been a problem.
A sleeper agent... pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring with al-Qaeda operatives, revealing new details about his clandestine activities and the danger he posed.
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, faces as many as 15 years in prison when he is sentenced this summer. But he could serve far less time if a judge gives him credit for time served -- nearly two years awaiting trial in a fraud case and 5 1/2 additional years the Qatari national spent without charges in a U.S. naval brig as the sole "enemy combatant" on U.S. soil.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. rejected efforts by defense attorneys to reduce Marri's prison time, a Justice Department official said, and prosecutors will argue against Marri getting credit for his brig time at the sentencing hearing in July.
In a statement, the attorney general said the deal "reflects what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which this nation was founded and the rule of law."
Accompanying Marri's plea deal was a statement of facts detailing his contacts with senior al-Qaeda officials and his plans within the United States.
The statement said that between 1998 and 2001, Marri attended terrorist training camps where he learned tradecraft such as prearranged codes to hide telephone numbers and e-mail messages.
In 2001, Marri was approached by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an operations chief for al-Qaeda, about assisting al-Qaeda operations in the United States, according to court documents, many of which were obtained by federal investigators who had seized an address book at an al-Qaeda safe house in Pakistan.
Marri knew at the time that he was providing himself to al-Qaeda to further their terrorist objectives, the documents said.
Marri was instructed by Mohammed to arrive in the United States no later than Sept. 10, 2001, with an understanding that he was to remain in the country for an undetermined length of time.
As part of the deal, Marri also agreed that an almanac that investigators recovered from his home "was bookmarked at pages showing dams, waterways and tunnels in the United States, consistent with al Qaeda attack planning regarding the use of cyanide gases."
A 63-year-old German businessman accused of selling Iran 16 tons of graphite, used to make rocket nozzles, has confessed to the charges, a German court spokesman said Wednesday.
...In a statement read out by his lawyer this week, the defendant confessed to the charges, the spokesman said.
The defendant is accused of breaking laws preventing illicit arms exports by declaring the graphite exported from 2005 to 2007 to be low grade. This would have avoided the need to apply for a government clearance which would almost certainly have been refused.
In 2007, Germany imposed a ban on exports of any graphite, even the low-grade type, to Iran.
German intelligence suspects the graphite was bought for Iran's missile program. Tehran is suspected of secretly developing nuclear weapons which could be delivered as the payload of the missiles.
The accused was chief executive of a firm that specialized in trading graphite.
Technical books say rocket nozzles are often made of graphite, which is a form of carbon.
Prosecutors said in February that the material was exported through a Turkish intermediary. Alert Turkish customs officers seized an additional 10 tons of graphite being trucked into Iran.
Molqui served 23 years of his 30-year jail sentence for his role in the hijacking and murder of a wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger.
Italian officials announced Molqui's release on Thursday. He is currently staying in a holding center, where he is fighting an expulsion order. He has married an Italian citizen, and claims that his marriage should grant him citizenship as well.
Probably all countries with naturalization processes exclude certain kinds of criminals from being allowed to attain citizenship. Normally one would expect convicted murderer/hijackers to be excluded, but the way things work in Europe today one can never be too sure.
Molqui escaped in 1996 while on leave from prison, but was recaptured and returned to jail.
It is not clear how escaping from prison while on leave constitutes "good behavior".
Molqui and three other members of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) terrorist group hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship off the coast of Egypt in 1985. The hijackers demanded the release of 50 terrorist prisoners in Israeli jails.
During the incident, the hijackers also murdered wheelchair-bound American citizen Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body overboard. Klinghoffer, 69, was singled out because he was Jewish.
A second hijacker, Ibrahim Abdel-Atif, was released from prison last year and is also fighting a deportation order.
