Iran initiated a close relationship with Venezuela when Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, hosted the 2000 OPEC meeting in Caracas. (Shireen T. Hunter, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order [Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010], p. 233, not available on line, quoted here.)  Since then, Iran and Venezuela have consorted with Cuba and Colombia to create terrorist havens and missile bases with missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads in South America that have the southern half of the USA in their range.  Thousands of Arab and Iranian terrorists have infiltrated our southern border for a decade and reside among us, undetected, as sleeper agents.

How have decades of American Presidents allowed this to happen? — not for lack of knowledge.

In July 2003, A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division: Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America (Library of Congress, July 2003, now published in e-book form, and summarized here) alerted us to the threat of Arab and Iranian terrorist camps in South America where, since the early 1980s, Arab terrorists have been sending thousands of their cohorts to the almost inaccessible jungle and mountain region between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (known as the TBA, Tri-Border Area or La Triple Frontera).

Terror training camps and arsenals have been established, virtually out of the reach of local law enforcement or defense forces; and elements from Hezbollah, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Lebanese drug mafia operate in partnership, freely and openly in conjunction with local organized crime and corrupt government officials.

The TBA has become a virtual haven for Islamic terror groups and a base for terror operations against South American targets. The large and growing Arab population of these states (in excess of 750,000 by local estimates) provides a community highly conducive to the establishment of Islamic terrorist sleeper cells throughout the area.

On October 6, 2003, U.S. News and World Report alerted the world to a rising new star in the galaxy of anti-American terror-supporting nations: Venezuela. Unlike the TBA where Iranian and Arab terror organizations operate despite efforts of the host nations, Middle Eastern terrorists in Venezuela have the full support and collaboration of Hugo Chavez.

Thousands of terrorists now occupy an unknown number of camps in (northwestern Venezuela), and move about with the support and collaboration of the Venezuelan government. President Hugo Chavez plays host to a growing horde of Middle Eastern terrorists from some of the USA’s most notorious enemies, including Libya, Saddam’s Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan…These terror groups are known to work in conjunction with the Colombian anti-government insurgency group, FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia = Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces). They offer FARC terrorists safe haven in mountainous and unpatrolled regions of Northeastern Venezuela.

Chavez by then was America’s newest nemesis, with close ties with Cuba’s Castro and alliances with some of America’s most notorious enemies in the Middle East.

In July 2004 a small local Arizona weekly newspaper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed, reported that two groups of Middle Eastern infiltrators were caught by the Border Patrol (originally here. Now no longer available on line, but reproduced here and here).  The Tumbleweed verified that a flood of Middle Eastern males were caught entering Arizona illegally from Mexico.  A Border Patrol officer reported that since October 1, 2003, agents in the Tucson sector apprehended 5,510 illegals from countries other than Mexico, Central or South America, including large groups of non-Spanish speaking males.  About two-thirds of these were of Middle Eastern origin and spoke Farsi or Arabic. A large number of these, and other groups of similar ethnicity, escaped capture and disappeared into the United States.

Legal entry into the USA is very easy for citizens of Saudi Arabia, and normal legal channels are open for citizens of most Arab countries. So why sneak in illegally via Mexico if you are in the USA on legitimate business? It seems more than likely that some are terrorists who, once they have eluded the Border Patrol, can connect with established contacts in the American Muslim community and become sleeper agents preparing for future terror attacks within this country.

In December 2004, US concerns about security south of the border were heightened when a Libyan-flagged cargo ship with an Egyptian captain and Sudanese first officer was seized in Honduras, carrying 900 tons of unreported explosives.  The ship was bound for Venezuela.

Concerns were ratcheted even higher when an al-Qaeda agent, captured in 2004, revealed an al-Qaeda plot to move nuclear materials into cooperative South American countries for future nuclear attacks on the USA.  In chilling corroboration of this report was the theft, just a month earlier, of a crop-duster in Mexico, which disappeared into the United States.  The suspected thief, Adnan ash-Shukrijumah, is one of the world’s most wanted terrorists and a high-ranking official in al-Qaeda.  He trained as a pilot in flight schools in Florida and Oklahoma, and shortly after 9/11 he trained as a nuclear technician, along with three other al-Qaeda sleeper agents, at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada).  While there he stole 180 pounds of nuclear waste from McMaster’s nuclear reactor.  Nuclear waste can be used to create nuclear “dirty bombs.”  Later he was singled out by bin Laden to serve as the field commander for the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a nuclear attack code-named “the American Hiroshima.”  Attempts by American law enforcement agencies to access information on him from McMaster University have been rebuffed on the basis of student confidentiality. The latest “FBI Most Wanted” reports (1/19/2012) indicate that he is still at large, with his crop-duster.

Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials have been caught actively considering cyber attacks on the U.S., including ones that would be “worse than the World Trade Center.” In the frightening documentary, the U.S.-based Spanish language Univision also exposes subversive operations by Iran in Latin America.

The undercover operation began after a former computers instructor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University was recruited by another professor in 2006 for a cyber terror plot requested by the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The instructor, Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo, turned the tables on the Cuban government and later, its Iranian and Venezuelan allies. He said he’d go along with the plot and get some students involved to carry it out. In reality, he and his partners were starting a seven-month investigation that would expose the evils contemplated by these governments against the U.S.

Ledo and his team approached Mohamed Hassan Ghadiri in 2007, who was then Iran’s ambassador to Mexico. They discussed a plot to hack into American computer systems at nuclear power plants, the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and other critical sites from Mexico. A “digital bomb” would be implanted that would be “worse than the World Trade Center.” The footage of Ghadiri shows his excitement over the plot. He emphasized that the hackers should retrieve classified information because Iran needed to know if the U.S. was planning an attack.  Ghadiri admits to having met with the students but claims that the Iranian regime rejected their offer to attack the U.S.

In 2008, the team approached Livia Acosta, the cultural attaché of the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City. Like Ghadiri, she was interested in the cyber plot. She promised to put any information they provide into the hands of Hugo Chavez. She was particularly pleased when the team claimed it could access the computers of nuclear power plants, specifically Florida’s Turkey Point and Arkansas’ Nuclear One.

The documentary also revealed covert Iranian activities in Latin America. The journalists obtained footage from a failed terrorist attack against New York’s JFK Airport in 2007. It is widely known that Al-Qaeda was tied to the plot, but the involvement of Iran and Venezuela is less known.

The film reveals that the Iranian regime is still using Edgardo Ruben Assad, an operative involved in the 1992 bombing of Israel’s embassy in Argentina that killed 29 and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed 85. Ghadiri worked to try to get this terrorist operative into Mexico. One team member was recruited by Ghadiri to go to Iran to study Islam for two months so he could come back and preach the regime’s ideology. He bravely went there and he met Muslim converts from Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia who all arrived for the same reason.

The 35-year-old son of the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohsen Rezai, was found dead in a luxury suites hotel in Dubai on Sunday, a death his family deemed “suspicious.”

Ahmad Rezai had gone to Dubai on September 8 to visit his family, who maintain a residence in Dubai. He has been unable to travel to Iran since he was released from house arrest by the regime on May 1, 2008.

According to the Tehran Times, the younger Rezai “died after receiving an electric shock.” An opposition Iranian source told me he was followed back from Tehran by two members of the Quds Force who may have carried out the hit.

The younger Rezai’s murder was discovered just hours after a series of explosions rocked the main depot for the Revolutionary Guards stockpile of Shahab-3 missiles in the southwestern suburbs of Tehran, killing one of Iran’s top missile experts, Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghadam.

It’s unclear if the two events are related, as many bloggers have been suggesting. However, Gen. Mohsen Rezai commands a substantial following within the IRGC even today, fourteen years after he was replaced as IRGC commander. The murder of his son by another faction of regime thugs will surely have repercussions inside Iran.

To me, this feels like the murder of Ahmad Shah Massood in Afghanistan on Sept 9, 2001. I can still remember hearing of Masood’s murder and thinking at the time: this is the beginning of something really bad.

By the very fact that he lived in the United States and had U.S. citizenship, Ahmad Rezai gave his father an “American connection” the regime jinned up into a massive conspiracy. The fact that they couldn’t prove any of their allegations against him, despite many years of efforts, only convinced them further that father and son constituted a threat to the regime.

Combine this murder with the missile base explosion, the latest IAEA report that reveals ongoing nuclear warhead work – despite the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate to the contrary – and the intense factional warfare inside the regime that is pitting Ahmadinejad against Khamenei and splitting the IRGC into multiple, mutually-hostile factions – and you’ve laid the table for a dramatic series of events. Something bad is going to happen. And the target is likely to be Israel.

Family background

Gen. Rezai has twice run for president, both times against Ahmadinejad. After the stolen election of June 2009, he joined the other failed candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, in calling for a full investigation of election fraud.

But as street protests in Tehran and elsewhere intensified, Rezai caved into pressure from Ayatollah Khamenei – including threats to his family – and retreated to Mashad for several months where he lectured at the local university. (He holds a PhD in economics.)

Khamenei also threatened the family of Rezai’s boss at the Expediency Council, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, was arrested after the election on allegations of failing to pay import duties on large quantities of green “mantos” – the head to toe covering, usually in black, that Iranian women are forced to wear in public – she was planning to distribute thanks to grants from NGOs with ties to George Soros and his Open Society Institute.

Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Hashemi, was planning to return to Iran from London after the election, but was ultimately warned away from returning by Ahmad Rezai, who learned that the regime had issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi and fully intended to carry it out if he came to Tehran.

Ahmad Rezai has been in the gunsights of the regime ever since he defected to the United States in 1997 at the age of 22.

I first interviewed him in Los Angeles the following year, when he blasted the regime for carrying out terrorist attacks, including the Khobar Towers bombing.

“Three persons sign off on every order to commit a foreign terrorist action: Ayatollah Khamene’i, Rafsanjani, and Khamene’i's chief of staff, Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammadi-Golpayegani,” he told me in that interview.

In 1999, his father dispatched two people to lure Ahmad away from Los Angeles, where he had obtained political asylum, to the estate of a wealthy Iranian businessman in Costa Rica, on the pretext that Iranian agents in Los Angeles were trying to kill him.

Gen. Rezai was trying to get Ahmad to return to Iran, where he thought he could get the regime to “forgive” his outspoken radio and television interviews. At the time, President Khatami was leading a reformist movement that included a loosening up of the regime’s intelligence apparatus. Gen. Rezai was working with Khatami at the time.

In the end, the younger Rezai managed to return to the United States from Costa Rica, with help from the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which I founded in 1995. He learned English in my basement by watching Jackie Chan movies for three months while getting resettled into the United States.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released what is being called “the most damning report ever published” by the U.N. watchdog. The evidence in the report shows that Iran has a secret enrichment program, is simulating nuclear explosions, working on nuclear triggers, and developing a nuclear warhead. The report even says that Iran has made preparations for an underground nuclear test.

The IAEA report focuses on the Parchin military base 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. The base has hundreds of buildings, tunnels and bunkers and IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit. It is here that Iran is carrying out tests to simulate nuclear explosions. In 2003, one large test of high-explosives was done to assist with the development of a nuclear warhead that can be fitted onto a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. There is a chamber designed for a test of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives, a suitable amount for a nuclear explosion.

Iran has obtained the designs for a nuclear weapon and is actively working on a warhead. As of 2006, it was working on neutron initiators, often referred to as the “nuclear trigger” for setting off a nuclear explosion. There is no civilian application for this device. In 2008 and 2009, Iran was researching how to make the core of a warhead where the bomb fuel is stored. There have also been computer simulations of nuclear explosions. A Russian scientist named Vyacheslav Danilenko taught the Iranians how to develop nuclear triggers, test nuclear weapons and develop a warhead from 1996 to 2002.

The IAEA also discloses Iran’s  “Green Salt Project,” a secret uranium enrichment project hidden from U.N. inspectors. The program’s objective is to acquire uranium in order to create the nuclear warhead. The underground Fodor site near Qom, which was revealed in 2009, is part of this project. The mountain-based site is designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges, far from what is necessary for a domestic energy program but enough for nuclear bomb production. The report says at least 412 centrifuges have been installed there and it also houses a stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

Iran is even preparing for an underground nuclear weapons test. The IAEA has obtained Iranian government documents in Farsi discussing the necessary logistics for such a test. One document from 2008 mentions the existence of a 400 meter shaft about 6 miles from the “firing control point.” The report concludes that Iran could make a nuclear bomb in the matter of months.

The IAEA’s revelations come shortly after a former member of the Revolutionary Guards who spied for the CIA, Reza Kahlili, brought renewed attention to reports that Iran already has a nuclear arsenal.

Yossef Bodansky, who served as the Director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare from 1988 to 2004 and authored “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” presents the most detailed account of Iran’s alleged acquisition of nuclear weapons. In his book, “The High Cost of Peace,” he alleges that in the summer of 1991, the Iranian regime ordered its intelligence service to scour the former Soviet Union to search for nuclear weapons. It made contact with officials in Kazakhstan, and the Iranians sent a delegation to the country in early September.

The Kazakhs agreed to provide disassembled nuclear weapons and a team to help reassemble them after their arrival in Iran. The deal was finalized in December 1991, with Iran agreeing to purchase two 40-kiloton nuclear warheads, one aerial nuclear bomb for a MiG-27 and one 152-mm nuclear artillery shell. These weapons arrived in Iran and became operational by mid-1992. The aerial bomb was stored at the Shahid Babai Base in Isfahan. Bodansky claims that the Iranians envisioned using it in a nuclear suicide attack on a U.S. carrier by a North Korean-trained pilot. The two warheads went to a base in Lavizan in Tehran.

According to an account in Ken Timmerman’s “Countdown to Crisis,” Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major-General and future presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai led the delegation to Kazakhstan. His story likewise states that the weapons were disassembled and brought to Tehran, but that key parts were missing. The Iranians reached out to North Korea for help in filling the gaps, which proved more difficult than anticipated to fill.

The ongoing feud between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei escalated on Sunday when Khamenei, in a speech to students, hinted at future changes in Iran’s electoral laws that would allow parliament to choose the president. Such a move would emasculate the powers of the presidency since members of the parliament, or Majlis, are all vetted for office by the powerful Guardian Council, which is completely under the control of the Supreme Leader.

Khamenei’s suggestion, couched in terms that suggested the change would occur sometime in the future, nevertheless was a challenge to Ahmadinejad’s power and fed the growing rift between the two leaders.

The power struggle had an impact on the endgame that resulted in the release of the American hikers who had spent 3 years in prison after authorities accused them of being spies. And there has been some speculation in the US government that the quarrel may have played a role in the recent plot to kill the Saudi ambassador.

The feud may have burst into the open relatively recently, but the tension between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad has been simmering for months. Ahmadinejad and his loyalists wish to reduce the tremendous influence of the clerical establishment on his decision making as president, making Iran more nationalistic and authoritarian, while giving a bigger role to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader, is the nominal head of the clerical establishment, although he is not respected as an expert on the Koran or Islamic law. However, to guard their prerogatives, the clerics are supporting him in the feud down the line. This includes the extreme conservative Ayatollah Yazdi who has been Ahmadinejad’s biggest booster among the clerics in the past, but who has sided with Khamenei in the dispute.

As Supreme Leader, Khamenei commands the Guard, but Ahmadinejad is the first president with an independent power center within the IRGC. The Iranian president was a senior commander of the Qods Force, the extra-territorial arm of the IRGC, and has given numerous economic opportunities to key members of the Guard during his terms as president. There are many in the Guard who share Ahmadinejad’s ideology and believe in his confrontational approach in dealing with Israel and the the US. Khamenei, on the other hand, has not let his hatred of Israel and the West affect his more secretive attitude in foreign affairs.

The real challenge to Khamenei’s authority came last April when Ahmadinejad dismissed a crony of the Supreme Leader’s, Heydar Moslehi, who was serving as intelligence minister. Within hours of the announcement of Moslehi’s resignation, Khamenei reinstated him — despite the fact that the Iranian constitution gives the president the power to hire and fire ministers. This infuriated Ahmadinejad who went to Khamenei and threatened to resign unless Moslehi was sacked. Khamenei called Ahmadinejad’s bluff, telling him, in effect, to go ahead, but Moslehi was going to stay.

In protest, the Iranian president absented himself from cabinet meetings for two weeks and when he came back, refused to allow Moslehi to attend cabinet meetings. Finally, after the Iranian Majlis threatened to impeach him, he relented and gave in to Khamenei’s demands. As a result of his opposition, 29 of his confidantes were arrested. Suitably chastened, Ahmadinejad explained his actions in the context of wanting what was best for Iran. “I am convinced that a strong and powerful president would lead to dignity of the Leadership and especially the nation. A strong president can stand firm as a defensive shield, advance affairs of the state, and bring dignity upon it,” he said in a statement upon his return.

In this particular dust up, and in other conflicts between the president and the Supreme Leader, Khamenei holds most of the cards. He is seen as Allah’s representative on earth and going against him as Ahmadinejad did was considered a shocking transgression. Ayatollah Yazdi remarked that disobeying Khamenei was akin to “apostasy from God” — a sentiment echoed by senior leaders of the IRGC.

What is behind Ahmadinejad’s “apostasy” is nothing less than a struggle for the future of the revolutionary Islamic Republic. In the past, Ahmadinejad has chafed at ministers who have been imposed on him by not only Khamenei, but also former president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the cagey parliamentarian, Speaker of the Majlis Ali Larijani. In response, Ahmadinejad has fired a record 11 ministers during his term of office, replacing them largely with cronies and loyalists who may not have been the best qualified applicants to manage the ministries for which they were chosen to run.

Reprinted from Ynetnews.com.

Only one nation on this planet is regarded as virtually having no civilians: Israel. Back in the 1970s already, international law expert Yoram Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and incitement against Israelis constitutes genocide.

David Ben-Gurion’s famous statement “Oom, Shmoom,” meaning “The UN – who cares?” summed up Israel’s indifference to world opinion in the past. It has been a failed policy as Israel’s enemies are now using all global means at their disposal to undermine the Jewish State.

In a few days, Israel will mark Holocaust Commemoration Day. There is no better time to support the historical battle just initiated by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Centre for Violence and Genocide Prevention and backed by former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The campaign takes aim at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic religious leaders and the media for “inciting to commit genocide” and fomenting lethal anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the 1930s. The Jews are demonized using accusations of conspiracy and thirst for blood or power.

The Jews are described as sub-humans by expressions like “pig,” “cancer,” “filth”, “microbes” or “vermin”; hate material such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or school maps without Israel are being disseminated; the Jewish right to self-determination is denied, by claiming that Israel’s existence is “racist” and akin to “apartheid”; comparisons are drawn between Israeli policy and the Nazis; world Jewry is being held responsible, collectively for the actions of Israel.

The legal basis for this anti-genocide campaign is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified on January 12, 1951 by 138 states including Iran. At this time, Tehran calls for Israel’s destruction and dehumanization, denies the Holocaust denial and incites to commit mass murder.

An upcoming example of incitement is the UN’s “Durban III” conference in September 2011. Israel will be declared an “apartheid” and “criminal” state, and the Jews will be slammed as inveterate racists.

The first Durban conference was held in South Africa in 2001, where well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the Children attached their names to the racist parade. NGOs distributed leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Three months later the second Intifada broke out, with 1,500 Jewish civilians subsequently slaughtered in terror attacks.

Iran is not unique in inciting a new Jewish bloodbath. Another example of incitement is the fatwa issued by Muslim Brotherhood’s guru, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.

"Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities," Ali Shirazi, Khamenei's representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.

Iran does not recognize the Israeli state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often predicted its imminent demise.

Last Monday Israeli troops killed nine activists on board one ship in a convoy trying to deliver aid to Gaza, sparking international outrage, especially in Muslim countries.

Another ship was boarded on Saturday and pro-Palestinian activists have promised more as they challenge the blockade imposed four years ago with the stated aim of stopping arms getting to Hamas.

Shirazi said Iran should encourage more international efforts to break the blockade. "We should expose our enemies to a spontaneous global action and not let them achieve their heinous goals," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will continue to prevent ships from reaching the shore and creating "an Iranian port in Gaza," a reference to Iran's support for Hamas.

The Revolutionary Guards, with their own navy, air force and command structure separate from the regular armed forces, are seen as fiercely loyal to the Supreme Leader.

"If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships," Shirazi said. "It is Iran's duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza."

Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestine Authority, we are told, comprise the moderate Palestinian alternative to the Hamas-driven vision of mayhem and terror in Gaza.  This assurance is repeated despite Abbas’s well-established biography as someone antipathetic to Jews as a people.  In his doctoral thesis, written at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies, Abbas presaged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by denying the Holocaust.  As a top lieutenant to Yasser Arafat – he named a son “Yasser” for his mentor – he was a terrorist leader, even sporting a nom-de-guerre:  Abu Mazen.  In his prominent role within Al-Fatah, Abbas provided the funds that Abu Daoud used to perpetrate the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munic Olympic Games. During the period Abbas has headed the Palestine Authority on the land that Arabs call the “West Bank” and Jews call “Judea and Samaria,” he has honored mass murderers by naming town squares for them, has permitted mass media under his control to savage Jews as people, and even has allowed anti-Jewish vituperative to be taught in the curricula of his schools.

Now comes word that his Government – ever on the international prowl with outstretched hand seeking hundreds of millions of dollars and euros to cushion its bankrupt economy – has found $50 million to fund a new initiative.  The Palestinian Authority will pay Arabs not to accept employment in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Will American tax dollars indirectly be financing this “fund”?  Inexorably so. Only last year we pledged the Palestinian Authority and Gaza $900 million, then rushed them another emergency infusion of $200 million as their economy crumbled.  Yet, while the Palestine Authority may not be wealthy, their sense of irony is rich: If Israelis hesitate to employ Palestinian laborers, sincerely fearing terrorism in their midst, they are berated as “racist” and “apartheid.” Now, in the face of tens of thousands of Palestinians working amicably with Jews, Mahmoud Abbas will pay them to revert to unemployed rather than to accept employment within Judea and Samaria.

More than 20,000 Palestinian Arabs now work at the industrial parks and construction sites that employ them throughout Judea and Samaria.  Despite continual efforts by Mr. Abbas and Israel’s haters throughout the world to slander Israel as an “Apartheid” entity, the reality is that Arabs often earn from their Jewish employers twice the income they command within Mr. Abbas’s polity.  These are good salaries, and those wages support large families. The people whose lives would be affected by the cynicism – the workers in the industrial parks – do not want to give up those jobs.  The Associated Press interviewed Suhail Jaber, who supports his family of eight by working in a picture frame company in the community of Barkan in Samaria, an industrial park employs some 5,000 Arabs. Jaber told the AP that, if forced by Abbas to quit without being assured a new job, he might turn to stealing to feed his family.  Another employee, Samer Awad, “said he would sleep in Barkan’s furniture factory to avoid detection by Palestinian law enforcement, rather than quit.”

This is the season when pockets of Western campus radicals enjoy proclaiming on their respective campuses their annual day or week of anti-Israel hate.  (They mark May 15, 1948 as the “Day of Catastrophe” because Israel was proclaimed into existence as the Middle East’s first democracy on that day.) Curiously, the anti-Zionists actually are half-correct when they bewail the presence of Apartheid segregation and Nazi-like hatred in the Middle East.  There really is “Apartheid in Palestine.” There really is “Nazi-like hate” in the Middle East. The only tweak on those anti-Israel posters, Jew-hating sloganeers, and haters who call Israel-supporters the “new Nazis,” is that the Apartheid and venom of Nazi-like hatred in Palestine is perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs.  It is their unbridled insistence on demographic separation – complete, utter separation from Jews – and their concomitant dehumanization and demonization of Jews that sees them refuse to coexist permanently with a Jewish state next door or anywhere in the Middle East.  This social pathology mirrors the Apartheid and Nazi-like vitriol that sees the Coptic Christian minority persecuted in Egypt, the Berber minority persecuted in Algeria, the Christian minority persecuted in Saudi Arabia, African Christians persecuted in the Sudan, the Baha’i persecuted in Iran, Kurds mass-murdered in Iraq, and even Shiites persecuted in Sunni Muslim lands and Sunnis persecuted by Shiites. The affinity with Hitler’s Nazi paradigm of mass-murder and Jew-hatred may be traced back to the father of Palestinian nationalism, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

This pathological hatred of Jews transcends the worst images of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. At the core of Scripture, in its chapter five (“The Table”), Surah 5:57-62, the Koran discusses the “People of the Book,” portraying Jews as sub-human, despicable animals: “Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you . . . . Say: ‘People of the Book, do you hate us for any reason other than . . . that most of you are evil-doers?’. . . .You see many of them vie with one another in sin and wickedness . . . . Evil is what they do.”  Thus, Allah will lay his “worst reward” on the Jews, “transforming them into apes and pigs.”   The vicious ape/pig demonization of Jews recurs throughout the Koran (see, e.g., “The Cow,” 2:64-65), and that vicious imagery – a veritable Blood Libel – has been a central message propagated by the Palestine Authority in its mass media for years, even as it is a recurring Friday sermon topic telecast on Palestine Arab television – the literal demonizing of Jews as blood brothers or children of apes and pigs.

For all the hatred, perhaps nowhere in the world is Apartheid in Palestine more pernicious than . . . within the Palestine Authority.  Only within the Arab world do we find civilian populations in their thousands consigned to “refugee camps” for sixty years.  This perpetual consignment – indeed, virtual internment – constitutes one of the worst crimes against humanity we have witnessed in the modern era: the concerted persecution of Palestinian Arabs by cynical Arab regimes who have planted them in “refugee camps.”  Nowhere is the cynicism more manifest than it is within the Palestine Authority, which maintains “refugee camps” in cities like Jenin. Consider: If those denizens indeed are Palestinian Arabs, and if the Palestine Authority oversees the homeland of the Palestinians, then how in the world can people living in their own land, under a government freely elected by their own people, be deemed “refugees”?

Those “refugee camps” are historical anomalies, thoroughly anachronistic. Their residents are dumped onto international welfare rolls, under the rubric of a cynically anti-Jewish United Nations agency, the “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (UNRWA), which runs the camps and their schools.  The UNRWA has a vested interest – namely, preserving their own existence, preserving their own continued employment and pay checks, preserving their jobs –  in perpetuating the historical crime of refusing to let the residents be absorbed into their local environments.

During the last century, the world has seen so many tragically painful “population exchanges” play themselves out on the world stage. Greek ethnics were forced out of Bulgaria and into Greece, while Bulgarian ethnics were forced from Greece into Bulgaria. In 1922, under the League of Nations, 1.25 million Greek Orthodox ethnics were transferred from Turkey, and half a million Moslems were transferred reciprocally to Turkey from Greece. Fridtjof Nansen, who oversaw the population exchange, was awarded the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. In 1940, under the Treaty of Craiova, there was a massive population exchange: 80,000 Romanian ethnics were forced into Bulgaria, and 65,000 Bulgarian ethnics forced out of Romania. After World War II, between 14-16 million ethnic Germans were transferred out of Central and Eastern Europe, and into Germany. Poland and the Soviet Union exchanged populations: between 1944 and 1946, some 2 million people, Polish ethnics sent to Poland from the Ukraine and Ukrainians sent out of Poland, were transferred. More than 5 million Hindus and Sikhs were forced to India from the regions that became Pakistan, and more than 6 million Moslems were pushed from India into Pakistan.

Where are the languishing Bulgarian refugee camps? Greek refugee camps? Romanian/ Polish/ German/ Ukrainian/ Hindu/ Sikh refugee camps? Where are the Bosnian Moslem refugee camps?  Why is there no massive international welfare apparatus in the rubric of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for any of these  refugees? How is it that no one even thinks to ask?

Maybe, as Mr. Abbas directs $50 million to pay Palestinian Arabs to leave their jobs alongside Jews, and to return to the squalor of his homespun “refugee camps,” it is time for Americans to ask that question – before we write him our next billion-dollar check.

Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues.  He is author of general Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com.

TEHRAN, Iran -- The Iranian president on Tuesday demanded a strong U.N. Security Council resolution against Israel over its deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip.

In a speech broadcast live on state TV, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the Security Council to adopt a resolution that would "cut off" Israel's hands, thus preventing it from committing more "crimes."

At least nine people were killed when Israeli navy commandos raided the Gaza-bound flotilla Monday.

The U.N. Security Council called Tuesday for an "impartial" investigation of Israel's raid after an emergency meeting and marathon negotiations that lasted nearly 12 hours. It was weaker than what was initially demanded by the Palestinians, Arabs and Turkey.

"I ask the Security Council to keep the crimes of the Zionists on its agenda and to cut off their hands from committing crimes with a strong resolution," Ahmadinejad said during a provincial visit to town of Ilam, some 430 miles (700 kilometers) southwest of Tehran....

Ahmadinejad, who is known for his anti-Israel rhetoric, called Israeli commandos who rappelled onto the Gaza-bound flotilla "wild dogs" and criticizes Washington for its "weak and tendentious" stance in support of Israel.

He warned Israel against further raids on Gaza, saying that a "storm of anger from the nations of the region will uproot you."

The Left marches against America, calling America a terrorist nation.

With all the fabulous places to hike in America and Europe, why would three Americans choose terror-sponsored states for a summer vacation?  One can only assume they spent too much time hiking poppy fields before “accidentally” stumbling into a nation seeking world domination: Iran.

The U.S. cut off diplomatic ties to Iran in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution when 52 Americans were held captive for 444 days.  Iran is not Palm Springs and Westerners aren’t welcomed with the Four Seasons treatment.

The Ayatollah chants “death to America,” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad constantly threatens to attack America with nuclear weapons, he ordered Iranians protesting the tyrannical government to be arrested and killed, and his rule is violent: kidnapping Westerners, supporting those who murder Americans, and training in terrorism.

It’s not shocking three stupid hikers caught crossing Iranian borders face prison and possible death.  David Horowitz explains why leftists believe terror states are not dangerous foes:

The seeds of the contemporary opposition to the War on Terror were sown in the 1960s in the movement to oppose the Communist aggression in Vietnam…Now the West is engaged in a new war with a totalitarian enemy called radical Islam, which despises Western capitalism and democracies.  And once again, totalitarianism finds its most dependable allies on college faculties…tenured radicals teach their students that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” and that America is “the world’s greatest terrorist state.’…that America’s terrorist enemies are in fact the voice of the world’s ‘oppressed,’ and that by challenging the United States they are advancing the cause of ‘social justice.’

The hiker’s families naturally see the actions as harmless and pleaded Iran for their release, stating the three accidentally crossed Iraq’s borders into Iran.  Secretary of the State Hillary Clinton declared:

These three Americans—innocent tourists in Iraq’s Kurdistan region when they were detained on July 31, 2009—have been unjustly held for almost nine months without formal charges or access to legal representation.  We ask the Islamic Republic of Iran to release these three Americans and allow them to go home and be reunited with their families.

Americans are warned by the U.S. State Department not to visit any nation threatening America unless absolutely necessary.  Hillary knows this, the hikers certainly knew, but, as David Horowitz explains, “The lessons of history are not readily learned,” and three hikers who crossed over Iraq’s borders into Iran have been held since July 2009, accused of espionage.

Neither Iraq nor Iran is friendly to Americans.  Why visit unless you assume Islamic terror states are not as bad as they appear in jihadist’s Youtube videos?

Despite pleas from families and Hillary Clinton, Iran is not ready to release the hikers without a deal: release Iranian terrorists held in U.S. jails. The U.S., of course, has said no to the swap.

Perhaps Bill Clinton can fly to Iran on a “solely private mission,” cajole a “special pardon” for the hikers’ release, and hold a cushy press conference that makes terrorists look warm and friendly.

Leftists should reconsider non-terror states as vacation hot spots so the State Department can focus on its job versus rescuing ignorant sightseers.

Every five years or so the United Nations hosts a foreign minister level conference to review the implementation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).  The United Nations has been hosting the latest such review conference this month.

This year, Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to join the party.  He delivered, on the first morning of the review conference, his customary condemnation of Israel and of the United States while defending his country’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke later the same day, accusing Iran of being the only country attending the UN review conference that is acting with impunity when held to account by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Security Council.  Iran, she said, is consistently violating its obligations under the NPT.   That was a good start, but then she rhetorically crouched into a defensive position.

Clinton said that President Obama had come to office with “an open hand” extended to the Iranian regime.  We “reached out” in many ways, she said, without elaborating and without acknowledging the fact that we have wasted over a year in this futile exercise while Iran marches on towards developing nuclear weapons.

Then, in order to show how transparent the United States really is, Clinton announced that the Obama administration had decided to unilaterally reveal the number of nuclear arms in our arsenal.  She reiterated Obama’s unilateral pledge to develop no new nuclear weapons.  And, in an implied threat to Israel, Clinton said that the United States was “prepared to support practical measures” towards the objective of a nuclear-free Middle East – a stalking horse pushed by Egypt and other Muslim countries in the region to force Israel to give up its suspected nuclear arsenal without any means of assuring that Iran or the other Islamic countries would desist from pursuing their own nuclear arms ambitions.  This was not just feel-good rhetoric.  U.S. officials are reportedly in talks with Egypt over a plan to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Some have criticized Israel for not joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refusing to declare its suspected nuclear arsenal.  However, Israel has observed the conduct of rogue states that have joined the NPT like North Korea, which quit the treaty once it had successfully tested nuclear weapons, and Iran which regularly flouts its NPT obligations.  Faced with existential threats from Iran and its armed terrorist surrogates, Israel is correct in asserting that there must be real peace in the Middle East before agreeing to any nuclear-free zone.

Hillary Clinton also mentioned in her speech at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference that the Obama administration would submit Protocols to the Senate for ratification regarding nuclear-free zones in Africa and the South Pacific.  However, our Secretary of State said nothing about maintaining a nuclear-free zone in Latin America even though there is a real threat of the spread of nuclear arms technology from Iran and North Korea to Venezuela.  The reason for Clinton’s silence on Latin America, I believe, was not to embarrass Brazil, whose foreign minister addressed the UN conference immediately after Clinton.

Brazil, according to some reports, is busy moving forward with its own nuclear development program.  It has already had three secret military nuclear programs between 1975 and 1990, and is now embarking on the building of nuclear-powered submarines.  During his election campaign, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the NPT, calling it unfair and obsolete.  Although Brazil has signed the treaty, it has placed restrictions on inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and has defended Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has called Lula, as the Brazilian president is called, “my man.”  Obama said he “loved this guy,” calling him “the most popular politician in the world.” Yet Lula is the same man whose pals include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He is the same man who said that there was “no fraud in the Iranian election,” congratulating President Ahmadinejad on his stolen election.   He is the same man who decided to open a Brazilian embassy in North Korea shortly after Kim Jong Il’s missile testing. And he is the same man who laid flowers in the terrorist Yasser Arafat’s grave, but refused to follow the custom of other visiting presidents to Israel of laying down flowers in the grave of Theodor Herzl, revered in Israel as its founder.

Obama loves Lula and trusts him more than he trusts the leader of one of our closest allies, Israel.  He is willing to press Israel to give up its nuclear deterrent in pursuit of a nuclear-free Middle East that Iran is certain to ignore, while giving Lula (not to mention Hugo Chavez in Venezuela) a free pass to possibly pursue a nuclear arms capability.

Hillary Clinton’s speech to the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference was yet another demonstration of the appeasement policies that the Obama administration is recklessly pursuing.  It wants to show the world the virtues of nonproliferation by unilateral actions that put our security at risk.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is ineffective and Clinton even admitted in her speech that it would not be fixed anytime soon to give it the enforcement teeth that it would need.  Yet the treaty appears to be a centerpiece of President Obama’s nuclear disarmament policy along with unilateral actions he is taking.

Not once did we hear Clinton mention the only multilateral mechanism that has proven effective in preventing dangerous nuclear proliferation – the Proliferation Security Initiative.  This Bush administration initiative involved naval surveillance and interdiction to stop the transport of nuclear arms materials and missile technology to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern.  It was used successfully, for example, to effectively end Libya’s nuclear ambitions.

President Obama has expressed support for enhancing the PSI, but there is scant evidence to date that he means it.  Instead of emphasizing muscular diplomacy to stop dangerous nuclear proliferation backed by a credible threat of interdiction, Obama wants to lead the way to total nuclear disarmament.  He may lead the way, but the world’s dictators who get their hands on nuclear materials will surely not follow.

It’s bad enough that mainstream conservatives like Gov. Sarah Palin and Erick Erickson have endorsed Ron Paul’s son Rand in Kentucky’s Senate race.  But now that two more major conservative leaders—Dr. James Dobson and Sen. Jim DeMint—have done the same, the Right should be very troubled by the mainstreaming of the Paul family’s near-total abandonment of America’s national defense.

In particular, both Pauls might as well be de facto press secretaries for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The national defense page on Rand’s website only mentions Iran once, calling it “a serious threat” in this ad, but not saying what he’d do about it.  Campaigning for his father in 2008, however, Rand said that “our national security is not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon,” (hat tip: Lisa Graas) and defended their pursuit of nukes, blaming America for tension between the two nations:

He [Ron] thinks the buildup for war with Iran’s already begun, and all the discussion of saying they’re responsible for a lot of these weapons—there haven’t been any congressional hearings, there’s been no [inaudible] knowledge other than people claiming these are Iranian weapons.

Unfortunately, the “people claiming” Iran is giving weapons to America’s enemies happen to be the Pentagon.  Given what we know both about Iran’s generosity with conventional weapons and their desire for nuclear ones, no politician can responsibly ignore the very real possibility that Iran would share whatever nuclear weapons it develops with jihadist groups.  That Rand downplays the threat is, at best, a sign of deadly naiveté.

The other point is, that Iran feels threatened because we got troops in Iraq, and we have troops in Afghanistan, and we don’t wanna say the guy isn’t a, I think, loose cannon, their president, but we don’t want to—we have to understand their perspective that they feel threatened.

Sure, that must be the answer—it can’t possibly have anything to do with Ahmadinejad’s stated desire to destroy Israel, his jihadist sympathies, or a good old-fashioned desire for power. Nope, they’re obviously terrified of the country that couldn’t even stand up for Iran’s disenfranchised voters, and the president who downplayed the Iranian threat on the campaign trail, who has bent over so far backwards to appease them that he released the “Irbil Five,” Iranian commanders responsible for hundreds of American deaths (presumably using those weapons that didn’t really come from Iran), and who didn’t object to Iran’s seat on the UN Women’s Rights Commission.

Rand is, of course, following in the footsteps of his crackpot father.  In 2007, Ron claimed that the U.S. government was going to manufacture a phony crisis that would give them an excuse to invade Iran. As Ace (of Spades HQ) observed, Ron had no problem suggesting “that the US will phony up a fake attack by Iran on our troops (probably killing Americans, as we may have done on 9/11) in order to have a pretext to bomb the mullahs,” ensuring that “if Iran actually does fire on American warships, his supporters will know it’s actually all a contrivance by the US government,” yet it’s completely beyond the pale to notice Paul’s flirtations with the 9/11 Truth movement?

In January 2008, Ron reacted to a confrontation between US and Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz by taking Iran’s side: “It reminds me of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. We went to war there, then, later on, found out there was a lot of false information.” At the time, Gov. Mitt Romney responded by noting that “Congressman Paul should not be reading as many of Ahmadinejad’s press releases.”

In his own words, Ron “wouldn’t do that much about” Iran getting nukes, and to rationalize that position, he has disgracefully told several lies on Iran’s behalf.  Allahpundit’s October 2009 deconstruction of Tehron Paul’s spin demands to be read in full, but here are a couple of the worst examples:

3. An excellent point: He notes that U.S. intel apparently knew about the secret Qom site even before the infamous 2007 NIE declaring that Iran had halted its weapons program was released. Not so excellent: The conclusion he draws from this, apparently, is that the Qom site is nothing to worry about rather than the much more likely conclusion that evidence of Iranian weaponization was withheld from the NIE in a politicized bid to deny Bush any reason to take military action against Iran. Oh, also? No mention here that classified portions of that very same NIE declared that Iran had an estimated 10 to 15 secret nuclear sites. How come, Doctor?

4. “What does the law say?” wonders our hero, declaring Iran innocent of any international violations. In fact, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei acknowledged just this morning that Iran had broken the law. (In Paul’s semi-defense, this clip was recorded three days ago.)

5. He asserts that the IAEA has never found Iran’s nuclear program to be at fault, which (a) overlooks point 4 above and (b) ignores the fact that the IAEA has been credibly accused by western intel agencies — and not just America’s — of suppressing evidence that incriminates Iran in order to avoid military conflict. In fact, ElBaradei himself is an Iranian stooge of such longstanding that we’ve been writing about it since practically day one of Hot Air. The fact that even he’s been forced to get tough-ish is all the proof you need that Tehran’s in flagrant violation of its international commitments.

Prominent Republicans might have been drawn to Rand Paul’s candidacy out of a misguided infatuation with Washington “outsiders,” but by embracing them, they are also embracing something very different. Rand and his father represent nothing less than a rejection of the Right’s commitment to engaging and assessing the world as it really is, rather than as we would like it to be, and an embrace of the Left’s belief in appeasement and anti-Americanism.  If we abandon one of the last differences that remain between Right and Left—our moral fortitude & intellectual seriousness when it comes to protecting America from her enemies—we will have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are unworthy to resume the reins of leadership.  Once again, the words of an actual “true conservative” are worth repeating:

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.”

- Ronald Reagan

_____

Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also writes for the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was back in New York Monday, continuing his effort to intimidate and shame Barack Obama into dropping his policy of retaining first-strike capability against rogue states such as Iran. For 35 minutes at the UN, Ahmadinejad did his best impression of an anti-nuke crusader, working to eradicate these weapons for humanity's sake. Behind his peacenik façade (which is sure to take in many on the Left), however, lurks a reality that couldn't be more contrasting. [...]

This was the same Ahmadinejad, after all, who just weeks ago warned Israel not to attack the jihadists in Gaza who still shoot rockets into Israel and plot the destruction of the Jewish State: "An attack on Gaza would not make you mightier," he said, addressing the "Zionist entity," "and would not restore your damaged prestige. And you should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life."

What could end Israel's "inauspicious and filthy life" except...a nuclear attack? [...]

Ahmadinejad mocked Obama's impotence, telling him in an April 7 address that, faced with Iran's nuclear program, American leaders who were "bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn't do a damn thing, let alone you."

And indeed, the thuggish Iranian president is probably right about that. Barack Obama's wrongheaded and weak policy of "engagement" has put a swagger in Ahmadinejad's step. Besides funding Hamas and Hizballah and egging on their genocidal intentions toward Israel, Iran is training the Taliban in Afghanistan in the most effective use of roadside bombs, and continuing to meddle in Iraq.

For all this we have one man to thank above all: Barack Obama. After a year of Obama's dogged wooing of the Iranian mullahs, his scandalous refusal to support the anti-regime protestors in Iran, and his abject failure to do anything effective to counter the Iranian nuclear program, which even his own Secretary of State now acknowledges is working toward developing nuclear weapons, the only thing the president has to show for his policy is an increasingly confident, belligerent and assertive Iran....

Read it all. And find out why Obama is acting this way in The Post-American Presidency.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was back in New York Monday, continuing his effort to intimidate and shame Barack Obama into dropping his policy of retaining first-strike capability against rogue states such as Iran. For 35 minutes at the UN, Ahmadinejad did his best impression of an anti-nuke crusader, working to eradicate these weapons for humanity’s sake. Behind his peacenik façade (which is sure to take in many on the Left), however, lurks a reality that couldn’t be more contrasting.

“The possession of nuclear bombs isn’t a source of pride,” Ahmadinejad intoned piously, sounding like a spokesman for Greenpeace. “It is disgusting and rather shameful. And even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons, which isn’t even comparable to any crime committed throughout the history.”

And of course top on the Iranian President’s list of “disgusting” and “shameful” countries was Israel: “While the Zionist regime has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads…it enjoys the unconditional support of the United States government and its allies and receives, as well, the necessary assistance to develop its nuclear weapons program.”

Referring to Obama’s reservation of first-strike capability, Ahmadinejad said that signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty should consider “any threat to use nuclear weapons or attack against peaceful nuclear facilities as a breach of international peace and security,” and punish the offenders accordingly.

Delegates from the U.S., Britain and France walked out of the UN General Assembly during Ahmadinejad’s speech. Perhaps they didn’t relish having to sit through the absurd charade of a ruthless despot, the president of a country that gives aid to the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah and yearns to wipe Israel off the map, being allowed to enter the United States and accuse it of being a terrorist state — all the while defending his nuclear program.

This was the same Ahmadinejad, after all, who just weeks ago warned Israel not to attack the jihadists in Gaza who still shoot rockets into Israel and plot the destruction of the Jewish State: “An attack on Gaza would not make you mightier,” he said, addressing the “Zionist entity,” “and would not restore your damaged prestige. And you should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life.”

What could end Israel’s “inauspicious and filthy life” except…a nuclear attack?

These are favorite themes of Ahmadinejad’s public utterances. In mid-March, he declared: “Today, it is clear that Israel is the most hated regime in the world… It is not useful for its masters [the West] anymore. They are in doubt now. They wonder whether to continue spending money on this regime or not. But whether they want it or not, with Allah’s grace, this regime will be annihilated and Palestinians and other regional nations will be rid of its bad omen.”

How will Israel be “annihilated,” except by…a nuclear strike?

Iranian Major General Hassan Firouzabadi declared in early April: “If America presents Iran with a serious threat and undertakes any measure against Iran, none of the American soldiers who are currently in the region would go back to America alive.”

Not one? Not even one? How could the Iranians possibly accomplish that, except with…nuclear weapons?

Ahmadinejad mocked Obama’s impotence, telling him in an April 7 address that, faced with Iran’s nuclear program, American leaders who were “bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”

And indeed, the thuggish Iranian president is probably right about that. Barack Obama’s wrongheaded and weak policy of “engagement” has put a swagger in Ahmadinejad’s step. Besides funding Hamas and Hizballah and egging on their genocidal intentions toward Israel, Iran is training the Taliban in Afghanistan in the most effective use of roadside bombs, and continuing to meddle in Iraq.

For all this we have one man to thank above all: Barack Obama. After a year of Obama’s dogged wooing of the Iranian mullahs, his scandalous refusal to support the anti-regime protestors in Iran, and his abject failure to do anything effective to counter the Iranian nuclear program, which even his own Secretary of State now acknowledges is working toward developing nuclear weapons, the only thing the president has to show for his policy is an increasingly confident, belligerent and assertive Iran.

It was good that the Americans left the General Assembly hall while Ahmadinejad was speaking Monday. Now they should back this up by changing course, and showing more spine in the face of Iran’s bullying. But there is no sign that that is going to happen.

Apparently, according to the Left, a bunch of middle-aged people dressed up like the Founding Fathers is much scarier than a nuclear Iran.

What kind of politically motivated, Alinsky-style logic overwhelms a political Party that has control of both Houses of Congress and the White House to the point where they are paralyzed with fear over a group of peaceful protestors, and seemingly oblivious to the nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran?

The Alinsky methods that got Obama elected are beginning to make him look strange indeed as a President. Alinsky can help the Have-nots take down the Haves, but once you become the ones in power, Alinsky tactics begin to make you look just a little silly and quite petty.

So how does President Obama react to peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment rights? First, he pretends he doesn’t know they exist, and then he mocks them saying there are “folks out there waving tea bags around”.  When the demonstrators prove to be a more potent political force than he first thought he tells them that instead of protesting the inevitable higher taxes that will come with his preposterous overspending they “should be thanking him” because their taxes are “lower”.

Helping to overheat the political rhetoric and stoke the furnace of divisiveness, the talking heads at America’s new Soviet-style Pravda network, aka MSNBC, are uniformly castigating the Tea Parties as though they had assembled on the White House lawn with automatic weapons trained on anything that moves inside. Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews and most of the zealots at MSNBC are just as absurdly obsessed and inexplicably inaccurate about their reporting of Tea Party rallies as they are their reporting on Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is spinning centrifuges like a teenager on Meth spinning a hula hoop, and Kim Jong Il continues to test his missile capacity like he’s conducting some sort of grade school science project. Even in our hemisphere, Chavez continues to build a coalition of the insane while across the globe China is ratcheting up their military prowess at an unprecedented rate.

The President’s response to such global mayhem seems to be conciliatory at best and downright weak at worst; apologizing constantly and bowing when possible. It’s as if the parents are going out of town for the weekend and suddenly the world is a party house for religious lunatics and power hungry, narcissistic nabobs.

A religious lunatic hell-bent on destroying America and ushering in a religious apocalypse is developing a nuclear weapon as we speak. Experts tell us he’ll be capable of reaching the continental United States with his payload of hate and unspeakable destruction as soon as five years from now, but don’t worry America because tonight on MSNBC Keith Olbermann, as he always does, will take to the airwaves like a modern day Paul Revere, and in a delivery somewhere between Edward R. Murrow and a poorly trained Shakespearean actor he will once again sound the warning bell: somewhere, sometime, somehow, just maybe, in the not-too-distant future some “tea-bagger” might, perhaps become violent if we don’t stop this reckless, willy-nilly exercise of the first amendment.

As we have apparently abdicated out moral authority as global peace-keeper — being that the subtext of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is to cleanse distasteful “American arrogance” from the delicate palettes of world dictators — it is no surprise that Iran’s theocratic figurehead, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ratcheted up his bellicose rhetoric at the country’s annual “Army Day” this Sunday.

Via Al-Jazeera:

“The region has no need for alien troops and they should return home and let the regional states take care of their own affairs,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech marking the country’s annual Army Day on Sunday.

“They must leave the region and this is not a request but an order, and the will of the regional nations,” he said.

He said the deployment of US and Nato troops in Iraq and Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting terrorism had not only failed, but also increased insecurity in both countries.

Ah, yes. America’s so-called “War on Terror.” Which isn’t remotely related to a certain infamous attack by 19 so-called “Islamic terrorists.” It’s really America’s meddlesome, imperialistic arrogance infesting the region that’s the trouble. Just imagine the blooming cultural advancement and elevation of human rights places like Afghanistan have been denied for lack of being left to “their own affairs.” 

The living, breathing symbol of our arrogance is, of course, Israel, or the “Zionist regieme” as the Iranians refer to it. Which is why, on a day meant to showcase Iran’s military might, Ahmadinejad also took the time to pontificate on the need to wipe Israel off the map — er, I mean — “uproot” it:

The president also said that Israel, the “main instigator of conflict” in the Middle East, was on its way to collapse and that regional powers wanted it uprooted.

“This is the will of the regional nations that after 60 odd years, the root of this corrupt microbe and the main reason for insecurity in the region be pulled out,” Ahmadinejad said.

He said that except the “Zionist regime (Israel),” Iran considered all other countries as “friend and brother” with whom the Islamic state wanted peaceful co-existence.

On the day that Iran was exhibiting its latest military hardware, Ahmadinejad vowed that the country would use all its military potential in case of any armed aggression.

But remember: There’s nothing really to worry about with Iran. At least not according to our President, anyway:

I mean, the history of the Iranian regime, like the North Korean regime, is that, you know, you apply international pressure on these countries, sometimes they choose to change behavior, sometimes they don’t.

In other words, Iran’s belligerence is just part of the negotiation game. It’s just another step in the elaborate Terror-Tango which will eventually seduce the brutal regieme into giving itself over to lasting regional accord. Yet the reciprocity never seems to manifest — and the talking points on behalf of Iranians only seem to become more bold. 

So, the question I have in light of all this is clear: Can we finally dispense with liberal extend-a-hand-to-a-clenched-fist foreign policy? Can we finally divest the political discourse of such fantasy diplomacy before the Jews are finally “uprooted” and an aggressive, nuclear-armed Iranian state establishes a sphere of influence over the rest of the fanatical Middle East? I’m just wondering.

Projection Alert: of course it is Iran's nuclear program that is a tool of terror and intimidation, and Iran that is deceptively calling for non-proliferation. But Khamenei here accuses his enemies of what he himself is doing -- a recurring pattern among Islamic jihadists.

"Iran calls US nukes tool of terror, intimidation," from AP, April 17 (thanks to Nelson):

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader told a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on Saturday that the United States' atomic weapons are a tool of terror and intimidation.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said America deceptively calls for non-proliferation while holding on to its own weapons and failing to confront Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear bombs....

"The deceptive policy by the sole nuclear offender, which falsely claims to be advocating the non-proliferation of nuclear arms while doing nothing substantive for this cause, will never succeed," Khamenei said.

Iran's conference brought together representatives from 60 countries, including China, Russia, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey and France, as well as delegates from international bodies and non-governmental organizations, according to Iranian media.

The supreme leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and several other senior Iranian officials took turns at the podium to warn that America's nuclear policy was endangering the world and encouraging nations to consider withdrawing from the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.

If the U.S. meant what it said about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, Israel would not have been able to "turn the occupied land of Palestine into an arsenal with huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons," Khamenei said....

"The insistence of these governments on holding and increasing the destructive powers of these weapons ... serves as a tool of collective intimidation and terror," Khamenei said of the U.S. and other nuclear-armed nations.

Iran's supreme spiritual leader Ali Khamenei has said Islam precludes the use of nuclear weapons. In his message to the participants in an international disarmament conference in Tehran he said the people of Iran are fully aware of the danger of the spread of weapons of mass destruction. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for an independent panel to oversee nuclear disarmament. Delegates from 56 countries are attending the disarmament conference in Tehran....

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned the Zionist regime of Israel against any new attack on the Gaza Strip, cautioning that such a move would put an end to the life of the illegitimate regime.

Addressing a congregation of Iranian people in the country's northwestern city of Orumiyeh today, Ahmadinejad pointed to the recent media speculations about a possible Israeli attack on Gaza, and stated, "I want to warn the Zionists ...that you are making a mistake as you made mistakes in the past."

"Because an attack on Gaza would not make you (Zionists) mightier and would not restore your damaged prestige," Ahmadinejad added.

"And you (Zionists) should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life," the Iranian president warned.

He also deplored supporters of the Zionist regime, and pointed out, "If you support the Zionist regime in its new crimes against the people of Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon or Syria, you should know that the nations of the region will blacklist your name."...

"What I want to say to the Zionists and their supporters is enough with the crimes. Do not make your load (of sin) even heavier than this," he said.

The president said "the myth of Israel's invincibility is over" and Israel is merely seeking to maintain its image as a dreadful power to preserve its existence.

"They had created the illusion in everyone's mind that they (the Zionists) is invincible. But that myth was shattered after the regime suffered two defeats, once in Southern Lebanon and later on in Gaza," Ahmadinejad said.

"Now, they are trying to compensate (those defeats), as they know that they will reach the end if they lose the awe attributed to them and if regional nations no longer fear them."

More bloody threats from Iran, more dithering and empty gestures from Obama: "Iran will not beg to avoid sanctions: Ahmadinejad," by Hashem Kalantari for Reuters, April 8:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president said on Thursday he would not plead with opponents of Tehran's nuclear program in order to avoid sanctions as Russia and the United States said new measures might be necessary.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Wednesday called President Barack Obama a nuclear-armed "cowboy", said Iran would "try to make an opportunity out of sanctions" rather than change its stance to avoid them.

"We do not welcome the idea of threat or sanctions, but we would never implore those who threaten us with sanctions to reverse their sanctions against us," he was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

Ahmadinejad was speaking as Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty in Prague. The two were "working together at the United Nations Security Council to pass strong sanctions on Iran," Obama said.

Medvedev said he was unhappy with Iran's stance over its nuclear program which the West believes is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

"Tehran is not reacting to a range of suggested constructive compromise agreements. We can't close our eyes to this. That is why I do not exclude that Security Council will have to examine this question again," Medvedev told reporters. [...]

"If America presents Iran with a serious threat and undertakes any measure against Iran, none of the American soldiers who are currently in the region would go back to America alive," Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. [...]

"If America wants to have the region's oil and its markets then the region's markets would be taken away from America and the Muslims' control over oil would increase," he said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.