The Princeton Historian Mugged by Reality

 

On December 7, 2019, an American graduate student named Xiyue Wang was freed after 40 months in an Iranian prison. His captors roused him in his cell early that morning and put him on a plane to Zurich. The Swiss had offered to mediate a trade for Masoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist arrested by the United States for violating sanctions against Iran. At the airport, the Iranian ambassador to Switzerland exchanged a few words with Wang in Persian and told him, “Well, at least you learned Persian in prison.” Wang, who considers his treatment by the Iranians to have been torture, was unsmiling. The ambassador then turned to address the Swiss and objected to Soleimani’s arrest. Wang was meant to keep silent, but instead asserted his right of reply, unexpectedly, in French. “Excuse me,” he said, acidly. “But I did nothing wrong. I went to Iran to do research with the permission of the Foreign Ministry, but Iranian intelligence arrested me and forced me into confessing that I was a spy.” The Iranian ambassador was taken aback. “It seems M

r. Wang has not only learned Persian in prison,” a Swiss diplomat observed, “but French as well.”

[snip]

“I’m still psychologically struggling,” he said. The struggle is perceptible in his voice. Iran has let him go, but he will not let Iran go—and the sense that Iran might, in a Biden administration, be rewarded rather than punished for its serial kidnapping of innocent Americans, Iranians, and others, leaves him seething. “The homecoming has been deeply traumatic,” he told me.

“Forty months,” he continued. “That’s a lot of time to think about things.” He reflected on his months in prison but also on his months as a free man in Tehran, when he spent more time among Iranians than nearly any other American who is not a dual national. During that period, he said he met no regime supporters. “But to my surprise, when I came back to the United States, there were many sympathizers with the regime,” he said. These were in some cases people who disliked America—“people who thought because Iran is anti-American, there must be some redeemability there,” Wang told me. “Can you imagine how furious this makes me, every single day?”

Iran’s State News Anchor Resigns

More fallout from Iran’s shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner: a news anchor on Iran’s state television has resigned, apologizing to the people of Iran for “lying to you on TV for 13 years.”

Iran State TV's anchor resigns saying, "It was very hard for me to believe the killing of my countrymen. I apologize for lying to you on TV for 13 years."#IranProtests2020 https://t.co/XnTv72KDkZ

— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) January 13, 2020

Showing incredible courage.

I wonder if any of the paid liars at CNNMSNBCABCCBSNBCPBS or the Washington Post/New York Times will have the courage or face the fact that their professional lives have been devoted to spreading lies and follow this brave woman's lead?

From the comments; 'Iranians showing more respect for our flag than a good portion of the spoiled little sh*ts here in America"

 

Iranians putting their lives on the line for freedom from a brutal theocracy.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are running a scam to remove a duly elected President because he's managed to expose the fetid corruption at the heart of the Washington establishment. 

Iran Opens Fire On Demonstrators. Protesters Chant: ‘Our Enemy Is Right Here; They Lie To Us That It’s America’

The Iranian government opened fire with live ammunition against demonstrators who were protesting the Islamic regime for shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane last week and lying about it for days.

Democrats and the MSM side with the killers. Normal people side with the people defying death to demand freedom.

High-level pro-Iran militia commander is assassinated in Iraq by unknown gunmen

It's becoming dangerous to support Iran and go to war against America.

Campus Profs Go Wild

UMich prof: 'We have a mad bomber in the White House' 

 

It's Juan Cole

College admin suspended after suggesting Iranian leader pick American targets 'he would bomb' 

 

Claims it's all a joke.

Meanwhile:

Trump had a terrorist killed and every Democrat was screaming nonstop he was an unhinged monster starting WWIII.

The Iranian people are celebrating, protesting the regime, and every Democrat is utterly silent.

They wanted war as a campaign issue.

They’re that desperate.

— thebradfordfile™ (@thebradfordfile) January 12, 2020

pic.twitter.com/LxIoifU4Sf

— Let’s Flush Fake News Down The Toilet🚽 (@flushfakenews) January 12, 2020

WW III Didn't Happen, But Something Else Did

Soleimani killed thousands upon thousands, both Americans and others over the years. But secret war is never real until you put a face to it. Soleimani was the man, the Islamic Republic was the regime that no one was supposed to anger lest they turn their baleful glare on us instead of passing by to kill someone else.

That fact can't be hidden anymore, not even by the nuclear deal.

The end of the secret war phase has left Iran with the strategic problem of continuing a campaign it cannot afford to wage openly. But it also left Washington with a situation they can neither continue to deny nor fob off with nonbinding congressional resolutions. We have yet to learn how to survive in our globalized world with the monsters. As Andy McCarthy put it: "25 years ago today we started jury selection in the Blind Sheikh trial against jihadists who were making war on our country. The long war is not over, but our divisions are more threatening than our enemies. I wish I’d understood that better."

Near as I can tell, Soleimani was to be the keynote speaker at the DNC convention this summer. The struggle is real.

The headline is from a comment following this column:

American Trump Derangement Syndrome Is An Iranian Strategic Asset

What strikes me is how Trump Derangement Syndrome has overwhelmed the Democrat and media responses. This cannot be lost on the Iranians.

While the pleas for Mullah mercy from the likes of Rose McGowan and Michael Moore, and the woke rants of Colin Kaepernick, may be laughed off by the Mullahs as typical western weakness, the reaction of Democrat politicians is more serious and may lead to Iranian miscalculation that Americans will turn on Trump before they turn on the Mullahs.

It’s clear that Democrats are doing to the killing of Soleimani, who has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, what they did to Russia Collusion and every other anti-Trumpism that motivates their throbbing Trump-hating base.

If Iran is successful in attacking a U.S. target or targets, Democrats and the media will blame Trump, not the regime that has been chanting for our death since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It’s not unreasonable to believe based on their behavior that Democrats and the media are hoping Iran gives us a bloody nose or worse so that it can be used against Trump in the 2020 election.

Read the whole thing.

Richard Fernandez: The low chance of war with Iran

The war's no longer hidden and WWIII is not going to come because we killed the head snake.

With everyone wondering if Iran and the US will go to war it's pertinent to understand both nations are already in an undeclared conflict going back more than 40 years. "And often, it’s been a war that our political and intelligence elites have denied exists."

It began on November 4, 1979, when “radicals” loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran ... On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon ... Iran has also targeted U.S. soldiers on the battlefield, killing more than 1,000 U.S. troops with specialized improvised explosive devices in Iraq, placing a bounty on U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan, and most recently targeting U.S. forces in Syria.

The obvious question is why this conflict, which has claimed thousands of lives has remained in a state of limbo and why elites are at pains to deny it exists. One possible answer is that the combatants prefer it that way. Iran for its part is heavily engaged in proxy war with Saudi Arabia in far flung theaters including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Bahrain uprising, Lebanon and even Afghanistan. It can scarcely afford the additional cost of open conflict with the United States if it is to escape over-extension. It is in Iran's interest to keep its war with America undeclared so that it can pick and choose when to engage.

For analogous but different reasons Washington preferred it secret too. Undeclared conflicts are the only way to fight "forever wars" where the object is not the destruction of the enemy but rather its management and containment in such a way that the global public and markets don't notice.....

Hidden wars allows Western politicians to avoid World War 2 type political choices that might lead to binary outcomes like victory or defeat in favor of a chronic conflict flying just beneath the media radar. That way deal-making can continue with minor interruptions. From this perspective the really disruptive effect of Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian IGRC chief Qassim Suleimani was not the kinetic act itself but in forcing what past administrations and Iran wanted hidden out into the open.

All of a sudden the issue of Iran can no longer be locked up in a dark closet. To the question: "What will the IRGC do now that it has not already done? Kidnap foreigners? Strike military bases? Sack embassies? Assassination attempts? Target GCC oil interests? Send out militias to crackdown on adversaries?" the answer is simple. They have to own up to it.....

Whether intentional or not Trump's actions have eliminated secret war with Iran as an alternative. "President Trump has warned the US is 'targeting' 52 Iranian sites and will strike 'very fast and very hard' if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets." If Iran tries to dive into the murky waters of deniable conflict again the Donald has 52 depth charges to bring it to the surface. This puts enormous pressure on Tehran to either open another front against America or negotiate a ceasefire in its secret war against the US. As Shadi Hamid of the Atlantic put it, nobody really wants open war but Iran can stand it least of all.

Iran's rulers face discontent as U.S. pressure mounts

Without Barack Hussein Obama to prop them up, the ayatollahs are facing a popular revolt.

Mounting pressure from the Trump administration combined with discontent among many Iranians at the state of the economy are rattling the Islamic Republic, with little sign that its leaders have the answers, officials and analysts say.

Three days of protests broke out on Sunday in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, with hundreds of angry shopkeepers denouncing a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency.

The disturbances are a major challenge, but analysts expect the leadership will survive despite factional infighting and growing economic problems.

However, the weekend protests quickly acquired a political edge, with people shouting slogans against Iran's ultimate authority, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials, calling them thieves who should step down.

Bazaar merchants, mostly loyal to the leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are angry at what they see as the government's muddled response to the crisis, which they said had sent prices soaring and made trading almost impossible.

The rial has lost 40 per cent of its value since last month, when President Donald Trump pulled out of Iran's 2015 nuclear accord and announced draconian sanctions on Tehran.

These include an attempt to shut down the international sale of Iranian oil, Tehran's main source of revenue, a threat that has cast a chill over the economy.

"The country is under pressure from inside and outside. But it seems there is no crisis management plan to control the situation," said an official close to Khamenei's camp.

The full impact of Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal and Washington's move to stop foreign countries from doing business with Iran, may not be clear for months.

European signatories are hoping to salvage the deal - under which most sanctions were lifted and Iran curbed its nuclear program - but there are doubts they can keep it alive.

Already French companies Total and Peugeot, for example, have said they will pull out of Iran rather than risk being shut out of the U.S. financial system, as Washington threatens to use the dollar's reserve currency status to punish anyone who gets in the way of its ramped-up Iran policy.

Obama threw the "Death to America" merchants a lifeline. The regime appears to be more fragile than most thought.

How the U.S. Can Support Iran’s Anti-Regime Protests

Another way in which the United States can back the antigovernment demonstrators is by imposing non-nuclear sanctions should the Islamic Republic continue its violent crackdown on demonstrators. Phillips said the sanctions could include travel bans on authorities that commit human rights violations against the protesters. Taleblu said the Trump administration should target Ayatollah Khameini's business empire.

"If the Iranian people are out in the street saying death to the dictator, it helps for the U.S. government to actually have sanctions on that dictator and to impede the repression of that dictator and to block the financial assets of that dictator and to be in the process of dismantling that dictator's financial empire," Taleblu said.

Finally, both Phillips and Taleblu said the administration must urge European allies to engage in diplomatic isolation. Given that European states such as the United Kingdom and Germany have a greater stake in upholding the nuclear agreement, Phillips said the United States should threaten to reapply nuclear sanctions, in effect blowing up the deal, if those countries fail to cutoff their business dealings with the regime.

IF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC IS FALLING, IT’S BECAUSE OF TRUMP

In 2009, Iran was swept by demonstrations, just as it is now. But at that time, the protesters were shouting “Allahu akbar,” and there was no indication that they wanted anything but reform of the Islamic regime, not the end of the regime itself. This time, however, the protesters have been chanting: “We don’t want an Islamic Republic!” “Clerics shame on you, let go of our country!” Some have even chanted: “Reza Shah, bless your soul!”

What has changed? Donald Trump.

Reza Shah was the Shah of Iran from 1925 to 1941 and the father of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah who was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Reza Shah admired Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk and set Iran on a similar path of Westernization and secularization. In chanting this, the protesters are emphasizing that they do not just want economic reforms, as has been the line of the establishment media in the West. Nor do they want an Islamic Republic that is less corrupt. They don’t want an Islamic Republic at all.

Now why would Trump have anything to do with this? Because he has been singular among the leaders of the world, and the Presidents of the United States since 1989, in demonstrating his readiness to stand up to violent intimidation. President Trump has already made it clear in so many ways, most notably by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all spoke about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, but backed off from recognizing the fact as official U.S. policy, for fear that Muslims would riot and kill innocent people, and that such a recognition would jeopardize the chimerical and fruitless “peace process.”

So should terrorists decide where our embassy should be?...

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

About that "no scandals" Obama administration we now add this tidbit:

From Politico:

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

For those who get their "news" from the NY Times or Washington Post, here are 18 other scandals everyone else already knew about

The great “stimulus” heist
Operation Fast and Furious
Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress
ObamaCare - (some of the biggest presidential lies in history)
Spying on journalists
The IRS scandal
Benghazi
Hillary Clinton’s secret server
The Pigford scandal
NSA spying scandal
Bowe Bergdahl
Iran nuclear deal and ransom payment
Polluting the Colorado river
The GSA scandal
The VA death-list scandal
Solyndra
Secret Service gone wild
Shutdown theater

Reflections on Terrorism, Dumb and Smart

Peggy Noonan’s observation in the Wall Street Journal that the most recent jihadist mass murderer is “an idiot”—unlike the men who perpetrated 9/11, but like all who have struck us since—provokes more thought than likely went into it.

Noonan correctly notes that 9/11 led us to expect more attacks with comparable planning and execution. Instead, we’ve been hit by random idiots, the most sophisticated of whom (the Bataclan murderers) operate at an elementary infantry level.

So what? Our ruling class concludes that more and better policing has precluded attacks on the scale of 9/11, limiting Islamist terrorism to a level with which we can live. But this lumping of terrorism into a single category misunderstands how very different 9/11 was from what has followed—different kinds of perpetrators, different bases of support, a different relationship with Islamism, and different in the dangers they comport for us. Hence they misunderstand what military and police action can accomplish.

Focusing on these differences—especially in the light of the recently released Osama Bin Laden documents and their emphasis on al-Qaeda’s latter-day relationship with Iran—invites us to cut through the establishment’s parrot-chorus of “what everyone knows” about terrorism and to unravel the complexity what we are really up against. The following is the first of a four-part attempt to do this.

Far from idiots or zealous amateurs working from Afghan caves, the men who planned and ran the 9/11 attack forged passports, and used the international banking system, sophisticated intelligence, and logistics. With the sole exception of Mohammed Atta, they did not expose themselves to danger. So good was their security that, to this day, we do not know who most of the hijackers were: The names on the passports they used to board did not match the security camera photos and, whereas Atta sent the remainder of the money from the plot to an account linked to Bin Laden—openly—the world’s banking sleuths have been unable to determine from which accounts the money had come.

Wiping out records of money transfers is akin in sophistication to producing and altering passports—the kinds of things done not in Afghan caves, but by sovereign countries’ intelligence services. Though we don’t know who provided the passports with which most of the 9/11 hijackers came to America, we know that Saddam’s Iraq provided the ones with which Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Rahman Yasin came to America for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and that the crew who organized 1993 ran 9/11 as well. We know that, unlike the “idiots” who have hit us since, these people had no history of Muslim devotion. They were professionals, with the resources of sovereign countries’ intelligence services.

The billions of dollars in barbed wire, badges, intelligence, and policing inflicted upon America since 9/11 have neither prevented nor thwarted any plans to attack the United States with the sophistication and on the scale of 9/11. The primordial fact is, no one has tried.

And.

The Muslim world’s states and terrorists have always lived symbiotically. Because mobilizing for full-scale war exposes these states’ congenital internal fragility, they have always fought through proxy groups. Hence, willful ignorance has been required for the American ruling class to maintain the fiction that terrorist groups are independent. That fiction has served our ruling class’s ideological predilections and has provided terrorists the sine qua non for their operations. That is why the Bin Laden papers’ discussion of al Qaeda’s relationship with Iran (about which more in another article) is such a valuable reminder of reality.

Newt up: Reflections on Terrorism: Iran and Bin Laden

Covering up the $1.3 billion payoff to Iran

This window into the shenanigans the administration is using to implement its deal isn’t just about whether the latest move is legal. No one has yet said it broke the law.

One of the principles of newspapering, though, is that the scandal is often not about what’s illegal but what’s legal. How can the administration tap the taxpayers for $1.3 billion without the say-so of Congress?

This is one of the most basic prohibitions in the Constitution. “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law,” is the way the parchment puts it.

The government maintains the judgment fund is legit. It calls it an “indefinite, permanent appropriation.” The idea is that Congress didn’t want to be bothered with having to pass a law for every nickel-and-dime settlement.

Could it have intended to authorize a blank check to send $1.3 billion to a regime that calls us the Great Satan and threatens to wipe Israel off the map? What Congress in its right mind would do such a thing?

Obama Admin Won’t Tell Congress How It Paid Iran $1.3 Billion in Taxpayer Funds

Remember the bundles of cash paid as ransom for kidnapped Americans?  Here's a good question, how did Obama ship another $1.3 billion to the Mullahs in Iran?

The Obama administration is withholding from Congress details about how $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was delivered to Iran, according to conversations with lawmakers, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the administration is now stonewalling an official inquiry into the matter.

The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom.

Since this is not embarrassing, can we get a picture of Obama on his knees?

The Humiliation - Mark Steyn

There's no point pretending the illegal seizure and release of America's sailors is anything other a huge propaganda victory for Iran - and a humiliation for the United States. Insofar as there was a strategic calculation behind Obama's outreach to the mullahs, it was that the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions would incentivize the Islamic Republic to start behaving like any other house-trained member of the community of nations. In other words, they'd stop pulling this stuff.humi

As it was, Joe Biden and John Kerry could not resist bragging that the swift resolution of this situation was testament to the new hunky-dory Washington-Teheran relationship. Vice-President Biden:

They released them, like ordinary nations would do. That's the way nations should deal with one another. That's why it's important to have channels open.

Secretary Kerry:

I'm appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities... and I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago.

We don't have to imagine how a similar situation might have played out, you botoxicated buffoon, because it's played out before, with mind-numbing regularity. This time round they seized ten US sailors. Nine years ago they seized 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. One of the Brits was of the female persuasion. Here's what I wrote in 2007:

The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman...

Does that sound familiar? Why, golly, here we are in 2016, and this time round the token US gal was also made to wear a hijab.

...

Which is marginally less insane than the Biden-Kerry line that illegally seizing foreign sailors, forcing them to their knees and to submit to the dress codes of someone else's religion, using them for propaganda videos and making them issue public apologies testifies to how the new Iranian-American friendship is just peachy and going gangbusters.

In fact, the Iranians are doing exactly what they've always done. They got their nuclear deal, and it's business as usual. The only difference is that, a decade ago, they did it to America's allies but they never quite dared to do it to America itself.

Now they do.

Read the whole thing.

Trump: Iran deal was so bad it’s suspicious

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says the nuclear deal with Iran is so bad, he is close to wondering whether it was done poorly on purpose.

“It’s almost like there has to be something else going on,” he said Saturday night at a rally in Biloxi, Miss. “I don’t think there is, I just don’t think they’re competent.”

What's really going on?

Bu Norman mentions things not in the news.

That awful deal with the Iranian government regarding its nuclear weapons program has largely gone unmentioned since President Barack Obama announced it was done, even though that’s not the end of the story. ... even the United Nations admits that Iran’s recent inter-continental ballistic missile test violated any understanding of agreement ...

 

Obamacare is just as bad as ever, too, although that’s no longer news. By now the public knows that it won’t be getting an average $2,500 a year savings and won’t be able to keep its plans or doctors and that all the other promises that were made won’t be kept ...

 

Most of those Republican candidates also go unmentioned, of course, and judging by all the “Bernie” bumper stickers we’re seeing we think there’s more going in in the Democratic race than you’d know from reading the news.

In some cases the silence is becoming deafening.