IT'S SMART BUSINESS TO GET OUT OF IRAN: Last Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on companies that have provided Tehran with financial resources for its illicit nuclear program. In Politico, FDD Executive Director Mark Dubowitz and Ilan Berman write:
These hearings aim to build on steps already taken by Congress to find a nonmilitary means to thwart Iran's nuclear quest. Indeed, legislators are in conference to iron out the most comprehensive Iran sanctions legislation in 14 years.
But a loophole may allow companies doing business in Iran's oil and natural gas sectors to evade stronger measures. ...
Iran's natural gas reserves, some 981 trillion cubic feet, are the world's second largest after Russia's. Oil already gives Iran enormous international leverage. Once it becomes a major natural gas exporter, Iran will have exponentially more influence.
More here on how this legislative loophole should be addressed.
Mark is now a contributor to Forbes' Energy Source blog. His first post on Iran's natural gas sector is here and another on foreign investment in Iran is here.
IRAN AND AL-QAEDA: Iran's proxies are expanding beyond the usual suspects. The Associated Press reports that Iran is allowing al-Qaeda leaders to roam free:
It's one of the enduring mysteries of the war on terrorism: What will become of the al-Qaida leaders and operatives who fled into Iran after 9/11 and have been detained there for years?
Their fate has long been a blindspot for U.S. intelligence. Recently, however, some al-Qaida figures have quietly made their way out of Iran, raising the prospect that the country is loosening its grip on the terror group so it can replenish its ranks, former and current U.S. intelligence officials say.
FDD’s Thomas Jocelyn weighs in with an article titled “Sweet Home Iran” at The Weekly Standard:
In written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2010, General David Petraeus echoed the State Department’s reporting. Petraeus warned that “al Qaeda continues to use Iran as a key facilitation hub, where facilitators connect al Qaeda’s senior leadership to regional affiliates.” While Iran does “periodically disrupt this network by detaining select al Qaeda facilitators and operational planners,” Petraeus noted, “Tehran’s policy in this regard is often unpredictable.”
Al Qaeda, in short, continues to operate from Iranian soil. The Iranian regime is like a corrupt cop in league with the mob, harassing the small fish once in a while, but leaving the big fish alone.
Tom wrote a full monograph on the subject for the Claremont Institute. Click here for the PDF.
MORE ON IRAN’S TENTACLES: What can we expect from an Iran emboldened with nuclear weapons? After Kuwaiti authorities broke up an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps cell, FDD Research Fellow Tony Badran notes:
The Iranian cell in Kuwait was reportedly monitoring, among other things, American movements and military bases in the country. While many might read such behavior as preparing retaliatory action in the event of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, there is an alternative interpretation: a nuclear-armed Iran, through cells active in the weak Gulf Arab states, will seek to pressure those countries to terminate American basing rights on their soil and agree to new security arrangements that enhance Tehran’s regional influence.
SHOULD IRAN SANCTIONS BELONG TO THE STATE DEPT? I say no:
The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act is taking its final steps toward congressional reconciliation. If passed, the new law will hammer Iran's lucrative energy sector, making it even harder for cash-strapped Tehran to finance its illicit nuclear program.
The act as it stands is an important step. But there's one more thing Congress should do to make sure the law's provisions actually work: hand over responsibility for enforcing sanctions to the Treasury Department instead of Foggy Bottom…
In retrospect, Congress probably should not have given the State Department this portfolio. The department's mission is maintaining and repairing relations with foreign countries, not antagonizing them by targeting foreign companies that do business with rogue regimes.
SAY IT OUT LOUD -- “RADICAL ISLAM”: In The Weekly Standard's cover story, Stephen F. Hayes and FDD’s Thomas Joscelyn ask an important question. After Fort Hood, the attempted airplane/underwear bomber, and now Times Square, why does the Obama administration find it so hard to utter the words 'terrorism' and 'jihad' and 'Islamic extremism'?
So, three attacks in six months, by attackers with connections to the global jihadist network -- connections that administration officials have gone out of their way to diminish.
The most striking thing about all three attacks is not what we heard, but what we haven’t heard. There has been very little talk about the global war that the Obama administration sometimes acknowledges we are fighting and virtually nothing about what motivates our enemy: radical Islam.
This is no accident. Janet Napolitano never used the word “terrorism” in her first appearance before Congress as secretary-designate of Homeland Security on January 15, 2009. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration had dropped the phrase “Global War on Terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operations.” And just last month, we learned that the White House’s forthcoming National Security Strategy would not use religious words such as “jihad” and “Islamic extremism.”
When asked why she did not utter the word “terrorism” in the course of her testimony, Napolitano explained that she used “man-caused disaster” instead to avoid “the politics of fear.”
The Department of Homeland Security was created after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to prevent further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. And the head of that department is worried that using the word “terrorism” is playing the politics of fear.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey also weighs in:
…the pre-9/11 criminal law paradigm is again setting the limit of Attorney General Holder's response, even to the point of considering the inapposite public safety exception to Miranda as a way to help intelligence gathering. He continues to press for a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others who had long since been scheduled to be tried before military commissions.
A significant lesson lurking in Shahzad's inadequacy, and the history that preceded it, is that one of the things terrorists do is persist. Ramzi Yousef's shortcomings in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center were made up for by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We should see to the good order of our institutions and our attitudes before someone tries to make up for Faisal Shahzad's shortcomings.
Watching Attorney General Holder testify before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Andy McCarthy, co-chairman of FDD's Center for Law and Counterterrorism, observes:
Mr. Holder would obviously rather get a root-canal than utter the words "radical Islam".
MORE HYPOCRISY AT THE U.N.: Via secret ballot, the United Nations General Assembly elected Libya's dictatorship to one of the 47 seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council. FDD Journalist-in-Residence and Longtime UN watcher Claudia Rosett laments:
At a U.N. so lacking in moral compass that all this counts for business as usual, the U.S. made no fuss…
In the calculus of the Obama administration all this may rate as mere diplomatic horse-trading. Apparently in the latest round of U.N. seat-filling, the State Department quietly succeeded in derailing Iran's bid for a seat on the Human Rights Council. As a consolation prize Iran got smooth sailing into a berth as an authority on women's rights. Meanwhile the gaggle of despotisms already on the Human Rights Council (including China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia) lost the chance to consort there with Iran, but can comfort themselves by collaborating with Libya.
For America to swim along with this is not smart diplomacy. It is at best naïve. It emboldens the worst violators of civilized norms, and further compounds the already alarming failings of the U.N., a sprawling and opaque collective which lends itself to exploitation by the most ruthless and corrupt of its 192 member states.
Richard Grenell, former spokesperson for four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. writes:
Now comes word that United States ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice wasn’t even at the U.N., let alone in the committee room, when U.N. members voted Iran onto the Commission on the Status of Women committee. Not only was our ambassador not in the room for the vote, she wasn’t even in the building. Wouldn’t you think that a female American ambassador would understand the importance of standing up against a country that has some of the world’s most hostile laws toward women? Shouldn’t Rice want to use the opportunity to highlight the regime’s record on women’s rights?
THE ROAD TO TIMES SQUARE: After the Times Square terror plot, Foreign Policy investigates the curriculum of terror training camps:
Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed plot to bomb New York City's Times Square, has told U.S. investigators that he received bomb-making training at a camp in Pakistan's Waziristan region. Given the botched, even amateurish nature of Shahzad's attempt -- he forgot to take the keys to his getaway car, for instance -- many observers are now asking: What exactly does one learn at a terrorist training camp?
Broadly speaking, most of the terrorists that have attempted to attack America in recent years have botched their operations. In AOL News, I list the top 10 dumbest attempts. Read them here.
CIVILIAN TRIALS ARE NOT THE ANSWER: In the Los Angeles Times, Vincent J. Vitkowsky and FDD’s David B. Rivkin caution against trying terror suspects in civilian courts.
The trial of [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed would be a long and dangerous ordeal for jurors. They would be forced to surrender years of their lives. They would have to be entrusted with classified information of value to Al Qaeda. Their identities almost certainly would become public knowledge, and they could easily be subjected to intimidation. Consider Osama bin Laden's threat on March 25 to execute all captured Americans if the defendants or any other Al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody are executed. Wouldn't jurors who vote to convict or impose the death penalty have reason to fear that they themselves could become targets for revenge attacks? Meanwhile, a juror who, however improbably, voted to acquit a defendant thought to be responsible for an attack that killed thousands of Americans is likely to be ostracized by many of his fellow countrymen. Either scenario would wreak havoc with civilian jurors' lives.
Karzai remains the same unreliable partner he was last month, when he threatened to join forces with the Taliban if the Americans did not stop criticizing him. With US troops preparing for a crucial offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, however, Obama has little choice but to placate Karzai and try to work with him — or around him.
… Karzai must allow US development funds to be distributed directly to local officials and tribal leaders.
…Karzai must also agree to stay on the same page with Washington when it comes to reconciliation talks with insurgent factions. If US and NATO forces are to avoid an indefinite involvement in Afghanistan, there will have to be some kind of negotiated peace agreement. But it cannot be a deal that delivers the women and girls of Afghanistan to the untender mercies of Mullah Omar’s Taliban fanatics.
Karzai is a maddening ally. But Obama must deal with the allies he has, not the ones he might like to have.
Read the entire piece here.
AWLAKI GETS LUCKY: Eli Lake reports:
Yemen's government has announced it will not extradite Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born jihadist cleric who is credited with inspiring the recent wave of anti-American terrorist plots by al Qaeda recruits.
Over the weekend, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Qirbi said Mr. al-Awlaki would be tried in the Arabian Peninsula state once he is captured...
-Jonathan Schanzer
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
"The U.S. government's market power gives us the capacity, I think, to influence the behavior of companies doing business with Iran and to give them a choice between doing business with us or doing business with Iran. ... We no longer should allow businesses to do both."
(5/12/2010) Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
"I for one, was born in the US, I lived in the US for twenty-one years. America was my home. I was a preacher for Islam, involved in non-violent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq, and continued US aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the US and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that Jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim."
(03/17/2010) Anwar al-Awlaki, spiritual advisor to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar (Translated by the NEFA Foundation, 5/14/2010).
"We have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have ... coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face."
(05/13/2010) Attorney General Eric Holder.
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