Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday he shared with his US counterpart Israel’s concerns about the direction of talks between world powers and Iran on its nuclear program.
In an audio message released by Ya’alon’s office after his meeting with Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon, Ya’alon said they also talked about the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the US-Israel defense partnership.
“The Iranian issue indeed worries us,” he said in Hebrew. “The question of if there will be an agreement and what kind of agreement worries us. I’m talking about that here and behind closed doors we express our concerns.”
He also lashed out at Turkey, saying the country supported Hamas terrorists.
“We’ve said all along that better no agreement than a bad agreement and the question is what are they discussing at the moment, are they talking about how many centrifuges there will be and if so, why should they have centrifuges at all?” Ya’alon said.
“Are they talking about other elements of the Iranian military nuclear project such as missiles ready for nuclear warheads?”
In an October 1 meeting at the White House, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned President Barack Obama not to accept any Iran deal that would allow Tehran to become a “threshold nuclear power”.
The same week in New York, Netanyahu told the United Nations that Iran was trying to “bamboozle” the world into sealing a nuclear deal that would leave Tehran with the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
The nuclear threshold is the point at which a nation is considered to have the radioactive material, equipment and know-how to quickly produce a nuclear device, but has not yet taken the decision to do so.
1:03 P.M. Syria claims it destroyed two of three jets seized by Islamic State
Syria's information minister says the Syrian air force has destroyed two of three jets seized and test flown over Aleppo by the Islamic State group last week.
Omran al-Zoubi told Syrian TV late Tuesday that Syrian aircraft bombed the jets as they were landing on the runway of the Jarrah airbase in the eastern countryside of Aleppo province. He said the Syrian air force was searching for the third jet.
Syrian activists said Friday that IS militants flew three MiG fighter jets over the Jarraj air base with the help of former Iraqi air force pilots.
Those reports could not be independently confirmed. U.S. officials have said they had no reports of the militants flying jets in support of their fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Russia will have military control of the entirety of its 6,200 km Arctic coastal zone by the end of 2014, just a year after Moscow announced its ambitious plan to build military presence in the region, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has announced.
“We have set quite a pace in our foray into the Arctic,” Shoigu said during a military council meeting in Moscow. “By the end of the year we will already deploy most of our units in the region – from Murmansk to Chukotka.”
Moscow announced its intentions to create a special force grouping in the strategic region in December last year, with Vladimir Putin saying that Russia needs to activate “all the levers for the protection of its security and national interests” in the “promising region.”
The undertaking, which Shoigu labeled “fundamental,” is now in full flow.
“Many of the sites in the region have to be repaired. In fact, a lot of them, such as airfields, logistics facilities, water intakes, power stations will have to be built from scratch, which is what we are doing right now.”
Russia’s Northern Fleet, which is headquartered in Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula, has been assigned as the core of the new Joint Strategic Command, and also the main strike force.
Two Borey-class nuclear submarines, which will form the spine of the refurbished fleet, have been armed this year, and a third one has just completed trials. In total, eight Borey vessels are expected to be built by the end of the decade, though some of them may be re-deployed with the Pacific fleet.
Russia is also in the process of unsealing at least seven airstrips that were shut down following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Tiksi in Yakutia expected to house the bulk of the Arctic air force.
Work also began in September on a permanent base located on the New Siberian Islands in the Laptev Sea. A military group consisting of two brigades will be stationed in the far North as part of the new military district.
The Arctic has attracted an increasingly intense gaze from the powerful nations that border it in the past decade, not least because it is thought to contain up to 30 percent of the world’s oil and gas. As technologies have advanced, more and more of those hydrocarbons have become recoverable and viable. The stretch of sea can also provide new shipping lanes for goods traveling between Asia and America and Europe.
Regulators have informed a Christian school that it needs to have a Muslim imam come in to lead assemblies for its students in order to teach “British values” including diversity, or face the possible penalty of closure, according to a new report from the Christian Institute.
The threat comes as part of a series of new school inspections imposed by the government because of a “Trojan horse” scandal where several public schools in Birmingham, England, were taken over by their managers, who then introduced an Islamist teaching standard.
The nation’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills then demanded that all schools teach “British values,” including diversity, even in the face of mounting opposition from educators because of the ripple effect of such regulations.
According to a report by John Bingham, religious affairs editor for the Telegraph, inspectors claimed the school, which was identified only as a “successful Christian school,” was failing to promote “tolerance.”
Bingham reported the details were in a letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan from the Institute, which is providing guidance to the school.
“In the latest case inspectors are understood to have warned the head that the school, which was previously rated as ‘good’ that it would be downgraded to ‘adequate’ for failing to meet standards requiring it to ‘actively promote’ harmony between different faiths because it had failed to bring in representatives from other religions,” he reported.
The report said there would be further inspections “which could ultimately lead to it being closed.”
The Christian Institute, which is planning a legal challenge to the regulations, said the school was told “to invite a leader from another religion, such as an imam, to lead assemblies.”
A spokeswoman for the government agency told the newspaper, “Under Ofsted’s revised guidance for the inspection of schools, inspectors now pay greater attention to ensuring that schools provide a broad and balanced education for their pupils, so that young people are well prepared for the next stage in their education, or for employment and for life in modern Britain.”
The report found a “coordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham.”
But the Institute said the reaction was an overreach, and the rules call for teachers to “actively promote” the rights defined in the Equality Act 2010, including sexual orientation and transsexual rights.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) predicted we will learn that President Barack Obama had “cut a deal” with leaders in Africa to “bring people in” from areas in the region impacted by the Ebola virus after the election on Monday’s “Sean Hannity Show.”
“I can’t help but believe, just based on the way we’ve got all these nebulous excuses why not to have a travel ban. This president, I guarantee you, we’re going to find out, he has cut a deal with African leaders. They’re going to bring people in,” he said.
Gohmert added, “He has probably told them ‘Look, keep in mind, I’ll have a lot more flexibility after the election.’”
Gohmert also referenced the recently announced program to bring individuals from Haiti into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security defended the plan by stating “Legal authority for the HFRP [Haitian Family Reunification Parole] program is provided under the Immigration and Nationality Act which authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to parole into the United States certain individuals, on a case-by-case basis, for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” Additionally, The Miami Herald reported that activists “launched the push for accelerated family reunification in the days after Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.”
On Friday, Judicial Watch claimed that the administration was “actively formulating plans to admit Ebola-infected non-U.S. citizens into the United States for treatment.”
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Not shocked to see he plans to bring Africans here for "better" treatment.
ReplyDeleteIn the next breath, he's sending our military over with 4 hours training and the Adm announces that if they catch it, they will have to be treated "in place".
Mad does not even begin to approach........
The level of disrespect to our military from the white house is beyond egregious. Its communist. To leave our sons and daughters to die in a foreign land is treasonous.
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