IAEA Closes Investigation Of Iran's Nuclear Program: The Last Obstacle To Nuclear Weapons Has Been Removed

Column One: US global leadership

[Below is just part of a long commentary from Caroline Glick - which details the significance of two recent events]

To understand just how high the stakes are, you need to look no further than two events that occurred just before the Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.

On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to close its investigation of Iran’s nuclear program. As far as the UN’s nuclear watchdog is concerned, Iran is good to go.

The move is a scandal. Its consequences will be disastrous.

The IAEA acknowledges that Iran continued to advance its illicit military nuclear program at least until 2009. Tehran refuses to divulge its nuclear activities to IAEA investigators as it is required to do under binding UN Security Council resolutions.

Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to its illicit nuclear sites. As a consequence, the IAEA lacks a clear understanding of what Iran’s nuclear status is today and therefore has no capacity to prevent it from maintaining or expanding its nuclear capabilities. This means that the inspection regime Iran supposedly accepted under Obama’s nuclear deal is worthless.

The IAEA also accepts that since Iran concluded its nuclear accord with the world powers, it has conducted two tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite the fact that it is barred from doing so under binding Security Council resolutions.

But really, who cares? Certainly the Obama administration doesn’t. The sighs of relief emanating from the White House and the State Department after the IAEA decision were audible from Jerusalem to Tehran.

The IAEA’s decision has two direct consequences.

First, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, it paves the way for the cancellation of the UN’s economic sanctions against Iran within the month.

Second, with the IAEA’s decision, the last obstacle impeding Iran’s completion of its nuclear weapons program has been removed. Inspections are a thing of the past. Iran is in the clear.

As Iran struts across the nuclear finish line, the Sunni jihadists are closing their ranks.

Hours after the IAEA vote, Turkey and Qatar announced that Turkey is setting up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf emirate for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Their announcement indicates that the informal partnership between Turkey and Qatar on the one side, and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State on the other hand, which first came to the fore last year during Operation Protective Edge, is now becoming a more formal alliance.

Just as the Obama administration has no problem with Iran going nuclear, so it has no problem with this new jihadist alliance.

Since Operation Protective Edge, the Americans have continued to insist that Israel and Egypt bow to Hamas’s demands and open Gaza’s international borders. The Americans have kept up their pressure on Israel and Egypt despite Hamas’s open alliance with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula.

So, too, the Americans have kept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at arm’s length, and continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate political force despite Sisi’s war against ISIS. Washington continues to embrace Qatar as a “moderate” force despite the emirate’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIS.

In other words, with the US’s blessing, the forces of both Shi’ite and Sunni jihad are on the march.

Putin Blasts Interventionist US Foreign Policy, Calls Forcible Regime Change "Intolerable"

"Let’s remember why we became part of a coalition to stop [Libyan dictator Muammar] Gaddafi from committing atrocities against his people.” 

That’s from Hillary Clinton who defended here foreign policy credentials in Saturday night’s third Democratic presidential debate. Hitting back at Bernie Sanders, who accused her of being “too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be,” the former Secretary of State said the US “will not get the support on the ground in Syria to dislodge ISIS if the fighters there - who are not associated with ISIS, but whose principal goal is getting rid of Assad - don’t believe there is a political diplomatic channel that is ongoing.” 

"I am not giving up on Libya and no one should," she added. 

Unfortunately, we probably should “give up” on Libya, because the power vacuum created by Gaddafi’s fall has turned the country into a lawless wasteland and a breeding ground for ISIS. For those who might have forgotten what “democratic regime changed” looked like in Libya, allow us to refresh your memory: 

Ah, yes, a peaceful transition in the true spirit of democracy.

For his part, Putin asked the following: "Who gave the West the right to carry out regime change?" Here's the clip from 2011: 

Well, in the wake of Hillary's comments during the debate, Putin is out with a bit of fresh criticism with regard to what Russia calls illegitimate attempts to bring about the downfall of governments deemed "undesirable" by Western powers. 

"Outsiders forcing change of legitimate powers in other countries is intolerable," Putin told Rossiya TV. 

While geopolitical disagreements are “inevitable and "all right", foreign policy needs to be conducted "by civilized rules”, he continued. We assume that "civilized rules" do not include arming and funding Sunni extremists especially ones who The Pentagon knows are likely to establish Salafist principalities within the borders of sovereign states.

Putin went on to say that by becoming a puppet of the US, "Europe has given up [an] independent foreign policy" thereby surrendering part of its sovereignty to US."

In the end though, Putin concedes that Russia has no catch-all solution for color revolutions. The "only recipe for how to deal with them is to strengthen international law," he concludes.

Exactly. Which means that at some point, the international community needs to insist that the US and its allies both in the Mid-East and Europe cease the ubiquitous practice of fomenting discord within sovereign states. It never works where "works" means a stable deomcracy takes root in the ashes of a dictatorship. Between Libya, Iraq, and Syria, the US truly has "become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Rockets hit northern Israel hours after Hizballah jihad murderer killed

At least three rockets landed early Sunday evening in open areas near the northern city of Nahariya in the Western Galilee, only hours after an alleged IDF airstrike killed Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, who had been previously jailed in Israel for his part in the 1979 murders of a family.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Air raid sirens warning of incoming projectiles sounded in towns and cities throughout the Western Galilee ahead of the rockets’ fall. Local residents later reported hearing several explosions.

Security forces were searching the area adjacent to Nahariya and along the border with Lebanon for other rockets that may have landed within Israeli territory. The IDF launched an investigation into the incident, and was attempting to determine who fired the rockets.

Lebanon’s Naharnet news site reported that two rockets were fired at Israel from the al-Hinniyeh area, and two more were fired from Tal al-Maaliyeh. Some reports by Lebanese media suggested that a fourth rocket may have landed in the sea.

Jacky Sabag, the mayor of Nahariya, and Shlomi Regional Council head Gabi Naaman ordered the opening of bomb shelters in their respective jurisdiction areas following the rocket landings.

Northern Israel has been bracing for a possible Hezbollah response since the killing of Kuntar overnight Saturday.

“We were expecting this after the assassination of Samir Kuntar,” said Rotem Azati, a resident of Nahariya. “But even so we were surprised,” she added.

Arab media reported that several Israeli Air Force missiles struck the Damascus suburb of Jaramana overnight, killing Kuntar and eight other operatives….

Reports said that Kuntar was assassinated not as revenge for his past actions, but rather because he was planning fresh attacks against Israel….

A Lebanese Druze, Kuntar became infamous for a brutal 1979 raid from Lebanon in which he helped kidnap an Israeli family from Nahariya, then smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl, Einat Haran, with his rifle butt, killing her. Three other Israelis, including her father, Danny Haran, were killed in the attack. He was 16 at the time, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.

He spent 29 years in an Israeli prison before being traded to Hezbollah in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. After that, he took on a senior role in the group, was honored by then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and by Syrian President Bashar Assad, and helped to organize Syrian Druze on the Golan Heights and elsewhere into terror cells charged with carrying out attacks against Israel.

Huge Fukushima Cover-Up Exposed, Government Scientists In Meltdown

Fukushima radiation just off the North American coast is higher now than it has ever been, and government scientists and mainstream press are scrambling to cover-up and downplay the ever-increasing deadly threat that looms for millions of Americans. 

Following the March 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, reactors have sprayed immeasurable amounts of radioactive material into the air, most of which settled into the Pacific Ocean. A study by the American Geophysical Union has found that radiation levels from Alaska to California have increased and continue to increase since they were last taken.

The highest levels yet of radiation from the disaster were found in a sample taken 2,500 kilometers (approx. 1,550 miles) west of San Francisco.

Kenn Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was one of the first people to begin monitoring Fukushima radiation in the Pacific Ocean, with his first samples taken three months after the disaster started. In 2014, he launched a citizen monitoring effort – Our Radioactive Ocean – to help collect more data on ocean-borne radioactivity.

The researchers track Fukushima radiation by focusing on the isotope Cesium-134, which has a half-life of only two years. All Cesium-134 in the ocean likely comes from the Fukushima disaster. In contrast, Cesium-137 – also released in huge quantities from Fukushima – has a half-life of 30 years, and persists in the ocean, not just from Fukushima, but also from nuclear tests conducted as far back as the 1950s.

The most recent study added 110 new Cesium-134 samples to the ongoing studies. These samples were an average of 11 Becquerels per cubic meter of sea water, a level 50 percent higher than other samples taken so far.

The reality however, is that radiation along the West Coast is expected to keep getting worse. According to a 2013 study by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, the oceanic radiation plume released by Fukushima is likely to hit the North American West Coast in force in 2017, with levels peaking in 2018. Most of the radioactive material from the disaster is likely to stay concentrated on the western coast through at least 2026.

According to professor Michio Aoyama of Japan’s Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, the amount of radiation from Fukushima that has now reached North America is probably nearly as much as was spread over Japan during the initial disaster.

The recent Woods Hole study also confirmed that radioactive material is still leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the crippled Fukushima plant. Cesium-134 levels off the Japanese coast are between 10 and 100 times higher than those detected off the coast of California.

Without directly challenging the U.S. government’s “safe” radiation limits, Buesseler obliquely references the fact that any radioactive contamination of the ocean is cause for concern.

“Despite the fact that the levels of contamination off our shores remain well below government-established safety limits for human health or to marine life,” he said, “the changing values underscore the need to more closely monitor contamination levels across the Pacific.”

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