Updates From The Middle East: Focus Iran

Rouhani Poses Challenge For Israel Ahead Of UN Meeting

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provided the UN with a memorable moment last year when he displayed a cartoon bomb illustrating what he said was Iran’s march toward the development of a nuclear weapon. When he addresses the world body next week, he is expected to again call for a hard line to stop Iran’s suspect nuclear program, backed by the credible use of force.

But the goalposts have moved a little: Some at the General Assembly’s annual meeting will be calling for a more nuanced approach by the world in response to the emergence of a relatively moderate Iranian president offering outreach in place of the saber-rattling and Holocaust denial of his more easily demonized predecessor. The world’s focus on Syria’s civil war, and the use of chemical weapons there, has further diverted attention from the Iranian nuclear issue.

This changing landscape has put Netanyahu in a difficult position. Convinced the latest signs of moderation by Iran are merely a ploy, the Israeli leader risks finding himself more isolated as the international community, including US President Barack Obama, tentatively engage the new Iranian president, Hasan Rouhani.

Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister for intelligence and strategic affairs, confirmed that Israel is alarmed by what he derided as Rouhani’s “smiley campaign.” He said that despite some friendly gestures, Iran has shown no signs of slowing its efforts to enrich uranium, a key step in the production of nuclear weapons.

“On the one hand, Iran is trying to appease the world with Rouhani’s moderate rhetoric. And on the other hand, Iran continues its approach toward nuclear weapons, and if nothing serious will be done, Rouhani will continue to smile, will continue to appease, and he will smile all the way to the bomb,” Steinitz told the Associated Press.

Netanyahu Is Said To View Iran Deal As Possible Trap

President Rouhani, in advance of his arrival in New York this week, has signaled a willingness to negotiate. The Obama administration, while professing wariness, is clearly intrigued by the possibility of resolving a problem that has bedeviled President Obama as long as he has been in office. And that, in turn, has deeply unsettled the Israelis.

“Iran must not be allowed to repeat North Korea’s ploy to get nuclear weapons,” said the Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“Just like North Korea before it,” he said, “Iran professes to seemingly peaceful intentions; it talks the talk of nonproliferation while seeking to ease sanctions and buy more time for its nuclear program.”

In his speech, the official said, Mr. Netanyahu plans to review the history of North Korea’s negotiations, with particular emphasis on an active period of diplomacy in 2005, when the North Korean government, in what was then seen as a landmark deal, agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for economic, security and energy benefits.

A year later, North Korea tested its first nuclear device. Israeli officials warn something similar could happen if the United States were to conclude too hasty a deal with Mr. Rouhani. As Iran is doing today, the North Koreans insisted on a right to a peaceful nuclear energy program.

Iranian President Brags About Deceiving The West

Rouhani, who is one of the most trusted figures of the Islamic regime’s supreme leader, has served the Islamic Republic at the highest levels since the 1979 revolution. He has been the deputy speaker of Parliament, the head of the Executive Committee of the High Council for War Support during the Iran-Iraq War, the deputy to the second-in-command of Iran’s joint chiefs of staff, a member of the Expediency Council, a member of the Assembly of Experts (the body that chooses the supreme leader), a former nuclear negotiator, and, most importantly, the representative of the supreme leader to the Supreme National Security Council since 1989.

Despite the recent charm offensive in the American media, a recently revealed video of an interview prior to the June Iranian election shows him bragging how he, in his role as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, deceived the West during negotiations on Iran’s illicit nuclear program even as Iran expanded its nuclear power. At the same time, Rouhani managed to relieve pressure by the West, especially in convincing the Europeans to avert possible military aggression by the Bush administration.

“The day that we invited the three European ministers [to the talks], only 10 centrifuges were spinning at [the Iranian nuclear facility of] Natanz,” Rouhani boasted on the tape. “We could not produce one gram of U4 or U6 [uranium hexafluoride]. … We did not have the heavy-water production. We could not produce yellow cake. Our total production of centrifuges inside the country was 150.”

In the interview, Rouhani said that after he took over the country’s nuclear project, the country’s 150 centrifuges grew to over 1,700 by the time he left the project.

Then Rouhani made his boldest statement: “We did not stop; we completed the program.”

He said that Iran’s nuclear activity was under the supervision of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and that he, as Khamenei’s representative, was to ensure this deceit.

In another column published on Irannuc.ir, which represents the Islamic regime’s official views on the nuclear program, Mohammad Mohammadi, an Iranian international affairs and nuclear program expert, stated that the Rouhani administration is trying to separate President Obama from the hardliners in America in an effort to get the American president to show flexibility toward Iran.

Rouhani is due to arrive in the U.S. Sunday and address the United Nations next week. He is set on a campaign blitz to charm the American media and possibly shake hands with Obama at the United Nations.

Why Has Mahmoud Abbas Given The Nod To Lone Wolf Palestinian Terror?

No word of condemnation has come from any Palestinian leader for the murders of two Israeli soldiers two days apart by West Bank Palestinians: Saturday, Sept. 21, Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, from Bat Yam, was found murdered in a water hole near the West Bank town of Qalqilya. Sunday, another 20-year old, 1st Sgt. Gal Koby from Tirat Hacarmel, was killed by a single Palestinian sniper’s bullet while on guard at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

The silence from Ramallah is well-orchestrated, a signal that Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is in favor of picking off Israeli soldiers every few days, so as to boost his hand in the US-sponsored negotiations with Israel.
Those talks have not advanced an inch, since the parties remain entrenched in their widely separate positions.

Like Arafat before him, Abbas does not issue written guidelines. He has used winks and nods from the right quarters to generate a permissive climate for terrorist action. Provided they limit their targets to uniformed Israelis, it is given to understand that they will not be bothered by Palestinian security and intelligence agencies.

Those agencies certainly know the identity of the Palestinian sniper who shot dead the Israel soldier in Hebron Sunday. If ordered by the Palestinian leader, they could quickly lay hands on him and pass him on to the Israeli authorities. The Palestinian Authority’s failure to do so has forced a crack in Kerry’s lid on the bubbling Palestinian stew. It remains to be seen whether or not Abbas continues to let the deadly attacks on Israeli soldiers continue, or even expand them. If he does, Netanyahu will have to turn away from domestic politics and give serious attention to countering the resurgence of Palestinian terror.

Also see:

Billy Graham: Now Is Time For 'Fresh Awakening'

In an exclusive interview with WND exploring the reasons behind My Hope America, Graham explained he believes the world is coming to the “end of the age, not the end of the world or the earth but the end of the age – the period that God has set aside for this particular time.”

“There’s a great deal to say in the Bible about the signs we’re to watch for and when these signs all converge at one place we can be sure that we’re close to the end of the age,” Graham said. “And those signs in my judgment are converging now for the first time since Jesus made those predictions.”

Recent polls indicate a substantial portion of the American public agrees with Graham, a man who has preached to more people – 2.2 billion – than any Protestant in history and who has appeared on Gallup’s list of the most admired men and women 55 times since 1955, more than any other individual in the world.

A recent OmniPoll conducted by the Barna Group found four in 10 Americans, and 77 percent of evangelical Christians, believe the “world is now living in the biblical end times.” A poll released Sept. 13 by LifeWay Research found one in three Americans see Syria’s current conflict “as part of the Bible’s plan for the end times.” One in four think a U.S. military strike in Syria “could lead to Armageddon.”

Paul McGuire, an internationally recognized Bible prophecy expert who is a regular commentator on Fox News and CNN and appeared on two highly rated History Channel specials, “7 Signs of the Apocalypse” and “Countdown to Apocalypse: Four Horsemen,” said a growing number of people are concluding the biblical end times have finally arrived and are turning to God.

Quantitative Easing Worked For The Weimar Republic For A Little While

[And the U.S. is headed down the same destructive path]

There is a reason why every fiat currency in the history of the world has eventually failed.  At some point, those issuing fiat currencies always find themselves giving in to the temptation to wildly print more money.  Sometimes, the motivation for doing this is good.  When an economy is really struggling, those that have been entrusted with the management of that economy can easily fall for the lie that things would be better if people just had "more money".  Today, the Federal Reserve finds itself faced with a scenario that is very similar to what the Weimar Republic was facing nearly 100 years ago.  Like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. economy is also struggling and like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt.  Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve has decided to adopt the same solution that the Weimar Republic chose.  The Federal Reserve is recklessly printing money out of thin air, and in the short-term some positive things have come out of it.  But quantitative easing worked for the Weimar Republic for a little while too.  At first, more money caused economic activity to increase and unemployment was low.  But all of that money printing destroyed faith in German currency and in the German financial system and ultimately Germany experienced an economic meltdown that the world is still talking about today.  This is the path thatthe Federal Reserve is taking America down, but most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening.

The behavior of the Fed is so shameful that even CNBC is comparing it to a drug addict at this point...

The danger with addictions is they tend to become increasingly compulsive. That might be one moral of this week's events.

A few days ago, expectations were sky-high that the Federal Reserve was about to reduce its current $85 billion monthly bond purchases. But then the Fed blinked, partly because it is worried that markets have already over-reacted to the mere thought of a policy shift.

Faced with a choice of curbing the addiction or providing more hits of the QE drug, in other words, it chose the latter.

So why won't the Fed cut back on the reckless money printing?

Well, as Peter Schiff recently noted, Fed officials seem to be convinced that any "tapering" could result in the bursting of the massive financial bubbles that they have created...

The Fed understands, as the market seems not to, that the current "recovery" could not survive without continuation of massive monetary stimulus. Mainstream economists have mistaken the symptoms of the Fed's monetary expansion, most notably rising stock and real estate prices, as signs of real and sustainable growth. But the current asset price bubbles have nothing to do with the real economy. To the contrary, they are setting up for a painful correction that will likely be worse than the one we experienced five years ago.

As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve is usually very careful not to do anything which will hurt the short-term interests of the financial markets and the big banks.

But at this point the Fed is caught in a trap.  If it continues to pump, the financial bubbles that it has created will get even worse.  If it stops, those bubbles will burst.  But as Doug Kass noted recently, it is inevitable that these financial bubbles will burst at some point one way or another...

So has quantitative easing actually been good for the U.S. economy?

Not really.

For example, while the Fed has been recklessly printing money out of thin air, household incomes have actually been going down for five years in a row...

Are you starting to get the picture?

What the Federal Reserve is doing is systematically destroying the U.S. dollar, and the rest of the world is starting to take notice.

Why should they continue to lend us trillions of dollars at super low interest rates when we are exploding the size of our money supply?

It is simply not rational for other nations to continue to lend us money at less than 3 percent a year when the real rate of inflation is somewherearound 8 to 10 percent and reckless money printing by the Fed threatens to greatly accelerate the devaluation of our currency.

Right now, the Fed is buying roughly half a trillion dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries a year, but the U.S. government issues close to a trillion dollars of new debt and must roll over about 3 trillion dollars of existing debt each year.

If the Federal Reserve eventually decides to buy all of the debt, then interest rates won't be a major problem.  But if the Fed goes that far our financial system would be regarded as a total joke by the remainder of the globe and we would reach hyperinflation much more rapidly.

If the Federal Reserve stops buying debt completely, the financial bubbles that they have created will burst and we will rapidly be facing a financial crisis even worse than what we experienced back in 2008.

And this:

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