|
In this mailing:
by Khaled Abu Toameh
• February 8, 2016 at 5:00 am
- "The Patient
Ones," Al-Sabireen, are seeking Palestinians as a group to become
an Iranian proxy in the region, and redoubling efforts to eliminate
the "Zionist entity" and replace it with an Islamist empire.
- Loosed from its
sanction-based constrictions, Iran is now free to underwrite terror
throughout the region. This is precisely what is happening in Lebanon,
Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
- Iran's
infiltration of the West Bank should serve as a red flag not only for
Israel, but also for the U.S. and other Western powers. An Israeli
pullout, leading to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, has been a
subject of concern. Now, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians
are wondering if such a vacuum will provide an opening for Iran.
Al-Sabireen's Gaza commander, Ahmed Sharif Al-Sarhi
(left), was responsible for a series of shooting attacks on Israel before
he was fatally shot in October 2015 by IDF snipers along the border with
the Gaza Strip. The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new
terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles (right) that
are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
Emboldened by its nuclear deal with the world powers, Iran is already
seeking to enfold in its embracing wings the Arab and Islamic region.
Iran's capacity for intrusions having been starved by years of
sanctions. Now, with the lifting of sanctions, Tehran's appetite for
encroachment has been newly whetted -- and its bull's-eye is the West Bank.
Iran has, in fact, been meddling for many years in the internal
affairs of the greater region. It has been party to the civil wars in Yemen
and Syria, and, through the Shiite Muslims living there, continues actively
to undermine the stability of many Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and
Bahrain.
The lives of both the Lebanese and the Palestinians are also subject
to the ambitions of Iran, which fills the coffers of groups such as
Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
by Peter Huessy
• February 8, 2016 at 4:30 am
- North Korea used
both the Agreed Framework and the NPT as camouflage to cheat
and proceed with its covert nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons
are apparently an integral part of North Korea's strategy eventually
to reunify the Korean peninsula under North Korean communist rule.
- According to
Hwang Jang-Yop, highest-ranking North Korean defector in history,
North Korea's goal is to remove American military forces from South
Korea. Once that withdrawal is achieved, the North would use its
nuclear arsenal to deter Japan and the U.S. and prevent these two key
South Korean allies from coming to the defense of the South once the
North invades it.
- Arms control,
since the height of the Cold War, has cut both the U.S. and Russian
strategic deployed arsenals by nearly 90% and thus can hardly be
described as part of any "arms race" that might have
compelled North Korea to build nuclear weapons.
- The idea that the
U.S. deciding to replace aging nuclear systems, some half-century
after the last modernization, is somehow perpetuating an "arms
race" is without foundation.
Kim Jong Un, the "Supreme Leader" of North
Korea, supervises the April 22 test-launch of a missile from a submerged
platform. (Image source: KCNA)
"Military critics" are already anticipating how to
disembowel critical elements of the U.S. military -- especially its aging
nuclear deterrent -- when the defense budget will be unveiled by the
administration and sent to Congress February 9, 2016. In two recent essays,
for instance, Gordon Adams, previously at the Office of Management and
Budget in the Clinton administration, and Lawrence Korb, at the Center for
American Progress, are both calling for dismantling the U.S. nuclear
deterrent.
Korb has long claimed that nuclear deterrence itself is obsolete. He
blames U.S. nuclear modernization plans for providing an excuse for North
Korea to test and build nuclear weapons of their own. It is an echo of
Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 warning that when things go wrong in
the world, many critics of American policy will "always blame America
first."
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment