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In two statements in August 2014, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed that the Islamic State was a threat to the region. The danger does not recognize Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, or Druze, Yazidis, Arabs, or Kurds, he said. This monster is growing and getting bigger. He argued that ISIS threatened the Arab monarchies stretching from Jordan to the Gulf. Then he revealed the real goal of his Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. Going to fight in Syria was, in the first degree, to defend Lebanon, the resistance in Lebanon and all Lebanese.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Iran, Hezbollah, and the various Shia militias in Iraq that make up the Hashd al-Shaabi are riding a wave of victories. Never before have Irans proxies, extremist militias, had such legitimacy and power in some areas, while in others they play a polarizing role.

To fight Iranian influence, some have argued, ISIS and other jihadists should be encouraged to fight a war of attrition against Hezbollah and its allies. In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assads Irans, Hezbollahs, and Russias headache the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times on April 12. Friedman was the Timess Beirut bureau chief in 1982 and was posted to Jerusalem later in the 1980s. He was familiar with the initial rise of Hezbollah and with U.S. policy in Afghanistan, where America spent hundreds of millions aiding fighters resisting the Soviets.

Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies argued in August 2016 that the destruction of Islamic State is a strategic mistake. It would be best to keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets and hamper Irans quest for regional hegemony, he explained. In this theory, like the one Friedman later advanced, Hezbollah was being seriously taxed by the fight against ISIS.

From a moral perspective, ISIS must be defeated in Iraq and Syria because of its crimes against humanity, particularly its massacre of Yazidis, a religious minority, in 2014, and its selling 5,000 women into slavery. Those who argue that nonetheless ISIS should be left to bleed Iran and contend that this strategy is pragmatic, based on U.S. or Western interests.

The problem is that there is no evidence that ISIS has bled Iran, the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, or Shia militias any more than it has advanced Tehrans interests. Before ISIS attacked Iraq in 2014, the Baghdad government still had to pretend to curry favor with Sunnis. After ISIS arrived, Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued his famous fatwa calling on all Iraqis to defend their country. Tens of thousands flocked to the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units. In December 2016, they became an official arm of the Iraqi security forces.

As Iraq has battled ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has been a frequent visitor to the front lines: ISIS didnt weaken Iranian influence in Iraq, it put it on steroids. Before ISIS, Iran would never have been able to create a Shia militia coalition and make it an official part of the government. Its militias were seen as sectarian extremists. Now on the battlefields around Mosul, as I witnessed in a visit there in early April, the Shia flags fly everywhere, and they pose as liberators.

Similarly in Lebanon: On the arrival of pockets of ISIS on the border in 2014, Nasrallah, a turban-wearing blowhard who runs an extremist religious militia, spoke of barbarians at the gate. Hezbollah leveraged the crises with Syria and the supposed threat from jihadists to hold the presidency of Lebanon hostage for more than two years until it maneuvered Michael Aoun into power in 2016. Lebanons sectarian constitution requires that the countrys leader be a Christian, but Nasrallah wanted a Hezbollah-allied Christian. Fighting ISIS and other jihadists in Syria allows him to pose as a defender of Christians and minority communities in Lebanon. He continues to claim that Hezbollah is resisting Israel by fighting in Syria. How is that? Nasrallah claims that Israel supports ISIS.

The extremism of ISIS has discredited the Syrian rebellion. Prior to the arrival of ISIS and the beheading of Steven Sotloff and James Foley, the worlds attention was focused on the brutality of Bashar al-Assad. After August 2014, the U.S.-led coalition of 68 nations was busy bombing ISIS. The claim that letting ISIS off the hook would have somehow bled Assad is incorrect. In 2014, ISIS concentrated its war against Kurds in Syria and Iraq and rarely posed a threat to the Assad regime. That was threated by the Syrian rebels. The regime identified the rebels as ISIS and al-Qaeda, monsters. ISIS didnt counterweight Assad. It provided him legitimacy, as the lesser of two evils.

Supporting religious extremists, as the U.S. did in Afghanistan in the 1990s, is not a counterweight to other extremists. The struggle against Iranian hegemony must be waged alongside other pro-Western or allied administrations such as Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. Supporting jihadists leads to instability. It doesnt countervail Iran.

Seth J. Frantzman is a researcher, a Jerusalem-based journalist, and an op-ed editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Link:
Syrian Civil War -- ISIS Is No Counterweight to Iranian Influence ... - National Review

OC Media (blog)

OC Media (blog) Ukraine is to begin transporting agricultural products to Iran by railway, passing through Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to Ukraine's Minister of Infrastructure, Volodymyr Omelyan. Omelyan, met with a delegation from Iran in Kiev on 19 April, where ... and more »

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- OC Media (blog)

A judge wants to know more about the work of President Trumps pals to get U.S. charges dropped against a Turkish gold trader charged with helping Tehran dodge sanctions.

Even as President Donald Trump says Iran is not living up to the spirit of its nuclear deal, his friend Rudy Giulianiformerly a harsh critic of the mullahsis working to bypass the Justice Department and cut a deal for a Turkish gold trader accused of aiding Tehrans economic jihad.

A federal judge Monday will hold a conference about work done by Giuliani and Michael Mukasey, a former attorney general under George W. Bush, on behalf of a Turkish citizen accused by the U.S. of violating sanctions on Iran. That case, by far the most significant one against an alleged sanctions-buster as the Obama administration raced to reach a deal with Iran, was brought by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who Trump fired last month. (Trump has reportedly considered replacing Bharara with Marc Mukasey, who is Michaels son and also Giulianis longtime law partner.)

Federal prosecutors, now working under Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, say Reza Zarrab used a network of companies to help Iran evade sanctions by trading the country gold for oil and gas. He was arrested in Florida last year, while on a trip to Disney World with his wife and daughter.

Zarrab has been in federal lockup ever since, but Giuliani and Mukasey are trying to get him off the hook through diplomatic, rather than judicial, means.

Giuliani said in a deposition unsealed last week his role is to determine whether this case can be resolved as part of some agreement between the United States and Turkey that will promote the national security interests of the United States and redound to the benefit of Mr. Zarrab.

He and Mukasey have met with top-level leaders in Turkey, including autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, and in the U.S. to try and cut a diplomatic deal. Giuliani anticipates further meetings or conversations with senior officials of the governments of the United States and Turkey.

This turn of events is not entirely unexpected for Zarrab, who has ties to the Erdoan family, and who is married to a top pop singer in Turkey (who is believed to have filed for divorce). Foreign Policy reported he was at the heart of the probe in Turkey into a group of people accused of crimes including fraud, gold smuggling, and bribing high-ranking Turkish government officials. (Those charges were dropped after Erdoan intervened.)

In the U.S. case, Zarrab is charged with using a network of companies to make wire exchanges involving U.S. banks that would omit mentions of Iran. The plan supposedly arose after Iran was barred from the SWIFT international money transfer system, and instead routed the transactions through Turkish banks. The complaint also accuses Zarrab of conducting transactions on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Oil and other companies. But eventually they got tripped up. In May 2011, an American bank allegedly stopped a nearly 4 million transfer because of potential Office of Foreign Assets Control violations. Such warnings continued.

The prosecutors allege in their complaint that Zarrab received a letter in Farsi, prepared for his signature and addressed to the general manager of the Central Bank of Iran, detailing a plan by Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the bank that wisely neutralizes the sanctions and even turns them into opportunities by using specialized method.

It is no secret that the trend is moving towards intensifying and increasing the sanctions, and since the wise leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran has announced this to be the year of the Economic Jihad, the Zarrab family [] considers it to be our national and moral duty to declare our willingness to participate in any kind of cooperation in order to implement monetary and foreign exchange anti-sanction policies, the letter allegedly continued. Hoping that the efforts and cooperation of the zealous children of Islamic Iran will result in an upward increase in the progress of our dear nation in all international and financial arenas.

Less than a year ago, Giuliani didnt mince words when attacking Iran.

The ayatollah is insane. The people around him are insane, Giuliani said in September, also calling them suicidal homicidal maniacs, according to the Jerusalem Post.

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But in the affidavit, he dismissed Zarrabs alleged crimes as second-tier, because none of the transactions in which Mr. Zarrab is alleged to have participated involved weapons or nuclear technology, or any other contraband, but rather involved consumer goods.

Giuliani and Mukaseys role didnt go unnoticed by prosecutors, who pleaded with judge Richard Berman to investigate what they were doing. Zarrabs attorney Ben Brafman objected that Giuliani and Mukasey would never even appear in court, so their work was out of its purview and fell under attorney-client privilege.

But the judge decided the court has dual interests in the case: to protect the integrity of the judicial process, and to ensure that Zarrab gets a fair trial. And because the objections raised by the assistant U.S. attorneys included cries of potential conflicts of interest on the part of the mens firms, Berman opted for special precautions. (Both Giuliani and Mukaseys firms do business with U.S. banks designated as alleged victims in the complaint, and Giulianis firm is a registered agent of Turkey.)

Both Giuliani and Mukasey submitted court-ordered depositions ahead of Mondays hearing, outlining in the most general terms their work on the case. And Berman said he will appoint a separate lawyer to make sure Zarrab has a grasp of his new lawyers potential conflicts of interest.

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Rudy Giuliani Called Iran 'Insane.' Now He's Trying to Free an ... - Daily Beast

As President Donald Trumps foreign policies take shape, his approach to Iran marks the most pronounced difference from his predecessor.

In contrast to the repeated efforts made by President Barack Obama to reach out to Iran, culminating in the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday delivered a laundry list of Irans alarming and ongoing provocations that export terror and violence, destabilizing more than one country at a time in the Middle East. Its illegal pursuit of missile technology and deferred nuclear ambitions are evidence, he said, that Iran threatens the United States, the region and the world.

While the State Department on Tuesday said Iran is complying with the JCPOA, Secretary Tillerson said Wednesday that the agreement did little more than postpone the day when Iran acquires nuclear weapons. Indicating that the Obama strategy of kicking that can down the road was unacceptable, Mr. Tillerson declared, The Trump administration has no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran.

It is about time for some frank acknowledgement of these facts, many of which were sidestepped by the Obama administration out of concern that raising the issues might risk the nuclear agreement.

While it is too soon to predict how the new administration will comprehensively address these facts, President Trump has already sent Secretary Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis to Saudi Arabia to discuss how the two countries will address the evolving Iranian threat.

On Thursday President Trump calling the JCPOA a terrible agreement, and said Iran is not living up to the spirit of the agreement, I can tell you that. And were analyzing it very, very carefully and well have something to say about it in the not-too-distant future.

On Wednesday in Riyadh, Mr. Mattis praised Saudi Arabia for its efforts to help stabilize the Middle East and supported the Saudi effort to end the threat from Houthi rebels in Yemen who fire Iranian-supplied missiles into Saudi Arabia. Everywhere you look, if theres trouble in the region, you find Iran The nations in the region and others elsewhere are trying to checkmate Iran and the amount of disruption, the amount of instability they can cause, he said.

From its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been very clear about its foreign policy objectives, which include the destruction of Israel, the banishment of the U.S. from the Middle East, and advancing followers of the Shia sect of Islam to positions of power throughout the region. That policy that has brought it into direct conflict with Sunni-led regimes like Saudi Arabia and, if unopposed, could lead to Iran controlling all of Persian Gulf oil production, including the Saudi wells.

In the past dozen years Iran has escalated its efforts to transform the Middle East by protecting its investment in the Assad regime in Syria and its forward strategy against Israel, including support for the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and Hamas. It has expanded its influence in Iraq, challenged freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden, and opened a front against Saudi Arabia in Yemen. It is hard to find any parallel for such a broad, persistent aggressive campaign in world politics since the end of World War II.

While Irans pursuit of nuclear weapons is cause for alarm, it is clear that even without nuclear weapons Iran is already able to wreak havoc in many Middle Eastern nations and bring increasing military pressure on Israel. That is a threat that must be addressed, and it is welcome news that the Trump administration appears to be ready to do so.

Read more from the original source:
New focus on the Iran threat - Charleston Post Courier

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put hishat into Iran's presidential ring a couple of weeks ago, onlookers literally gasped.

The hard-liner had, of course, already run the countryfor eight years, as an isolationist with a talent for riling the West. His flawed reelection in 2009 sparked the GreenMovement, which brought thousands of protesters into the streets. In the ensuing government crackdown, hundreds of people were arrested. The government said at least 27 were killed, but rights groups put the death toll higher.

It was such a fraught time, and Ahmadinejad was so contentious, that the country's supreme leader urged him to stay out of politics. "I told him he should not participate in that matter," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last year, according to his official website. Its "not in his interest and that of the country." (Other former presidents have received similar advice.The media is banned from using the name or image of Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who led the country between 1997 and 2005. Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was barred from seeking another term in 2013. Irans first post-revolutionary president, Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, lives in exile in France.)

When asked by reporters, Ahmadinejad brushed off the ayatollah's words as advice, not instruction. He has been campaigning around the country, and even joined Twitter.

[What Ahmadinejads run says about the state of Iranian politics]

Turns out, he was wrong.

This week, the country's Guardian Council announced thecandidates for president in the May 19 election. About 1,600 men and women had applied to run; the final list includes six names. As was widely expected, incumbent Hassan Rouhani will seek reelection. Other contenders include Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric who is close to Khamenei; Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a conservative former military officer; and Eshaq Jahangiri, a first vice president in Rouhani's government.

Ahmadinejad's name was nowhere to be seen.

On social media, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, an Ahmadinejad ally, tried to downplay the decision, writing that Ahmadinejad registered to run only out of national, religious and revolutionary duty. Referring to Ahmadinejad and his former vice president, who was also turned down,Javanfekr wrote:Thank god, the Guardian Council removed the duty from their shoulders."

Others didn't take it as well."Disqualifying candidates is illegal. If Ahmadinejad has committed a crime, why hasnt been put on trial all these years? tweeted Iranian user @sahartwitt. We are opposed to the disqualifications of the Guardian Council, its not right for the council to decide what the people are meant to decide."

That anger may be just what Ahmadinejad intended. Like supporters of populists around the world, his base is already suspicious of the political establishment. The supreme leader's decision riled Ahmadinejad's base and burnished his image as an opponent of the establishment.

[Trumps first 100 days: Trump aides turn up the heat on Iran]

Experts say the presidential election is likely to be a tight three-way contest between the conservatives Raisi and Ghalibaf, along with Rouhani. Raisi, in particular, is a prominent Shiite cleric who is being touted as a possible successor to the supreme leader. (Jahangiri has already said that he will drop out of the race eventually that he is only running to defendRouhani's accomplishments when he appears in television commercials and in debates.)

Raisi and Ghalibaf belong to the same conservative coalition. If they both stay in the race, they may split the conservative vote and assure Rouhani's victory, particularly if the incumbent's moderate-reformist coalition holds. That's a big if, of course, especially in Iran.

Read more:
Iran bars Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running for president - Washington Post