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Anyone paying attention to President Donald Trumps policy on Israel over the last three years is not surprised by the contents of his administrations so-called peace plan, which was rolled out on Tuesday. Yet many are still shocked by how brazenly the United States has legitimized the ethno-religious domination of Palestinians.

The Swiss cheese cut-out map of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, showing enclaves reserved for Palestinians, strikingly resembles the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. In fact, the map simply mirrors the reality on the ground as it exists today in the occupied West Bank. The proposed ceding of Israeli territory for additional Palestinian enclaves near Gaza might seem magnanimous, until one realizes that these areas sit atop a nuclear waste dump.

Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The U.S.s apparent aim is to facilitate Israels desire to take the maximum amount of Palestinian land with the least number of Palestinians. To this end, two relevant stakeholders were at the White House this week: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the leader of the Israeli opposition Benny Gantz. No Palestinians were needed, since the Deal of the Century is, in effect, a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel over how much Palestinian territory to annex.

The plan doesnt foreclose Israels taking of even more Palestinian land in the future. This is because, before Palestinians can even hope to have a state of their own, they must declare that the Greater Israel envisioned under Trumps plan is the nation state of the Jewish people. Once Palestinians recognize those expanded borders, make the above declaration, and meet other unattainable benchmarks including ending all resistance to their ongoing oppression negotiations can begin. Only then will the U.S. support designating territory for a future [Palestinian] state.

Regardless of whether Palestinians accept the plan, Israel now has Americas blessing to annex most of the West Bank, with the promise that the U.S. will extend political recognition to those territories. As such, there is no way to understand this plan or look at the attached conceptualized map without calling it by its name: apartheid, designed and sanctioned by the U.S. government.

The reaction of the international community thus far has largely been milquetoast. The EU reiterated its support for a two-state solution, as did several Arab states. Democrats have been more critical, calling the plan an attempt to influence foreign elections, but the remedy is the same: a return to bilateral negotiations and a viable two-state solution.

This position ignores the elephant in the room. What has made a peace agreement illusive between Israelis and Palestinians is not the lack of active U.S. engagement with both parties, or insufficient rounds of bilateral negotiations. There has been no peace agreement because Israel, backed by the U.S., is unwilling to address the root cause of the conflict: the forced mass displacement of Palestinians and the expropriation of their land that began before 1948 and continues until today. Americas failure to compel Israel to accept its responsibility for Palestinian exile, to engage in meaningful negotiations, and to end Palestinian statelessness is what has emboldened Israels ongoing colonization.

The subjugation of Palestinians and the disregard for their rights and humanity did not begin with the Trump administration. President Bill Clintons peace parameters showed similar indifference when he called on Palestinians to cede parts of Arab East Jerusalem for the benefit of Jewish settlers, and to temper their expectations regarding the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes.

Likewise, President George W. Bush was not concerned for Palestinian rights when he assured Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in writing that the U.S. did not expect Israel to completely withdraw from the occupied territories. Bush also accepted the demographic changes resulting from Israeli settlement as immutable, and declared that all Palestinian refugees should be resettled in a future Palestinian state not their historical homes.

President Obama went further by stating that everyone knows . . . a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people. The Obama administration believed that by supporting such a parameter, Israel might be encouraged to end settlement expansion and accept Palestinian statehood. It in fact had the opposite effect: settlement building accelerated during Obamas eight years in office.

Despite this, only days before President Trump was to take office, the Obama administration officially made Palestinian recognition of Israel a parameter for negotiations. This, along with the permissive environment created under Trumps administration, gave the Israeli Knesset a green light to pass the quasi-constitutional Jewish Nation-State Law in July 2018, which ensures that Jewish people have the exclusive right to self-determination anywhere Israel decides to extend its sovereignty.

That the Trump plan requires Palestinians to first recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people before the U.S. even contemplates designating territory for a future Palestinian state should be understood not only as a way to end refugee claims and legitimize land expropriation, but as an opening for the displacement of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the future. The plan hints as much by referring to the possibility of ceding communities within Israel that have a high density of Palestinian citizens to a future Palestinian state. Those Palestinian citizens, like the rest of their brethren, need not be consulted.

What is needed now is not chest-pounding or handwringing about returning to bilateral negotiations and a viable two-state solution. What is needed is for policy-makers in the U.S. and abroad to reassess their support for political solutions that would sanction the supremacy of one people over another. If that conversation does not take place now, in a world where ethno-nationalism is on the rise, Trumps Deal of the Century will become the shame of the century.

This article was originally published by +972 Magazine.

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From Clinton to Obama, U.S. Peace Deals Have Paved the Path to Apartheid - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Last week, President Trump triggered the left when he tweeted a Photoshopped picture that portrayed former President Barack Obama perched midair outside Trump Tower, binoculars and listening device in hand.

The liberal outlet Vox condemned the president for his increasingly bad tweets, before declaring theres no evidence the Obama administration spied on Trump. Vox then regurgitated the false narrative that, while the FBI did surveil former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, that didnt happen until after Page left the campaign.

For years, conservatives tried to correct the record, noting that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order gave the government access to Pages past emails and other electronic communications with members of the Trump campaign, but the mainstream media ignored this reality. That the liberal and legacy press continue to push this narrative now, following the release of Inspector General Michael Horowitzs report on FISA abuse, is beyond baffling, because the IG report established that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign, and the spying was much worse than previously thought.

The FISA warrants, of course, gave the FBI authority to spy on Page, and now that the government has finally made a mea culpa, we know that surveillance was illegal. But contrary to the continuing narrative, that spying wasnt limited to Page. It included internal Trump campaign communications.

The IG report acknowledged this, noting that Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, the chief of the Office of Intelligences Operations Section, explained that the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign.

Horowitzs report added that, based on our review of the Woods Files and communications between the FBI and [Office of Intelligence], we identified a few emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign related matters. The Woods file is a record of compliance with procedures intended to ensure accuracy with regard tothe facts supporting probable cause.

Dont let the few emails mislead: The FISA surveillance didnt just accidently sweep in a few random campaign communications. Rather, the few campaign communications the IG identified came from its limited review of the Woods file and select FBI communications. The IG report made this point clear in a footnote, stating it did not review the entirety of the FISA-intercepted communicationsonly those pertinent to the IGs review of FISA abuse.

While we do not know how many campaign emails and communications were swept into the FISA surveillance of Page, we do know the FBI would have had access to all campaign emails that originated from Page or included him as a recipient. And the number of emails accessed appears large, given that the IG report stated that 45 days into the surveillance order, the FBI team had not reviewed all of the emails the first FISA application yielded and believed there were additional emails not yet collected. The IG report also established that the Crossfire Hurricane team recognized the possibility that the FISA collection would include sensitive political campaign related information.

The IG report also did more than confirm the Crossfire Hurricane team accessed some Trump campaign communications: It established that accessing Pages communications with the Trump campaign was the goal of the FISA order.

For instance, a case agent working the Crossfire Hurricane investigation explained to the IGs team that because Page had just returned from his trip to Russia before the Republicans national convention, the FBIs belief was that Page was involved in the platform change [concerning Ukraine] and the team was hoping to find evidence of that in their review of the FISA collections of Pages email accounts.

Beyond the electronic campaign communications the FBI intercepted, agents may also have accessed hardcopies of campaign materials Page kept. As the IG report explained, FISA allows for both electronic surveillance and physical searches if, in addition to establishing that the target is a foreign agent, the application states the facts and circumstances justifying the applicants belief that the premises or property to be searched contains foreign intelligence information and is or is about to be, owned, used, possessed by, or is in transit to or from the target.

Whether the FBI conducted physical searches of Pages various abodes and property is unclear from the IG report. But it appears from the IG report that the FISA orders at least authorized the FBI to conduct physical searches, as seen by an unredacted passage early in the report, which noted the IG was limiting its discussion of FISA to the provisions applicable to the process the FBI used to obtain authorization to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches targeting Carter Page (emphasis added).

So, in addition to the Trump campaign electronic communications intercepted by the FBI, it is possible that the government dug through hard copies or computer files of campaign-related material Page had stored at the various locales where he stayed during this time.

While the results of any physical searches related to Page are unknown, what is known is that federal spying on the Trump campaign through Page went further. Prior to the FISA surveillance orders, the FBI tasked informant Stefan Halper with targeting Page. (Another agency may have as well.) The IG report revealed that in targeting Page, Halper sought specific details from Page related to the Trump campaign, and fed Page unsolicited (and potentially illegal) advice concerning campaign strategy.

Halper quizzed the foreign policy advisor on an October Surprise.

For instance, in an August 2016 conversation with Page that Halper secretly recorded, Halper quizzed the foreign policy advisor on an October Surprise. Halper then asked Page if the Trump campaign could access information that might have been obtained by the Russians from the DNC files. But Halpers next line shows Halper was doing more than seeking evidence of collusionhe was trying to influence the Trump campaign: Halper told Page that in past campaigns we would have used [it] in a heartbeat.

To fully grasp the significance of Halpers comments, one must understand his long history as a campaign advisor. That history dated back nearly four decades, with Halper holding a high-level position in George H.W. Bushs presidential campaign in 1979. Halper then joined the staff of the Reagan-Bush campaign after Ronald Reagan won the nomination and tapped Bush as his choice for vice president. In fact, the IG report noted a Crossfire Hurricane case agent had initially reached out to Halper because he knew Halper had been affiliated with national political campaigns since the early 1970s.

Given Halpers history as a seasoned campaign guru, his we would have used [it] in a heartbeat comment to Page sought, not to elicit information from Page that the Trump team was colluding with Russia, but to entice the Trump campaign to do just that.

Of course, we know from former Special Counsel Robert Muellers report that didnt happen, but here Halper was doing just what the unit chief of the Office of General Counsel told the IG was her main concern about CHSs [confidential human sources] interacting with members of the Trump campaignensuring that CHSs were not influencing steps the campaign was going to take.

What else Halper asked Page about the campaign, or suggested the campaign do, during this August 2016 meeting is unknown, but there was ample time for the two to chat about campaign strategy. In fact, from the IG report it can be gleaned that Halpers conversation with Page was fairly extensive, as the transcript of their recorded meeting spanned some 163 pages.

And that was just Pages August conversation with Halper. A second taped conversation between Halper and Page took place on October 17, 2016, then in December 2016, Page made additional statements to Halper. The IG report did not elaborate on the campaign-related aspects of those conversations, focusing instead on the exculpatory information Page provided Halper that the FBI failed to include in the FISA applications.

Halper also used Page to connect to a senior member of the Trump campaign, Sam Clovis. Unlike Page, Clovis was not a target of Crossfire Hurricane. Clovis also had an impeccable pedigree, serving more than 25 years in the Air Force as a fighter pilot and instructor, and later spending serving in the Pentagon and Middle East, before retiring as a colonel and inspector general of the U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The FBI allowed Halper to ingratiate himself with Clovis by feigning an interest in helping the Trump campaign.

Notwithstanding Clovis unimpeachable background and his high-level position in the Trump campaign, the FBI allowed Halper to ingratiate himself with Clovis by feigning an interest in helping the Trump campaign. Halper then secretly recorded the Trump campaign leader.

The FBI suggested tasking Halper to talk with Clovis was legitimate because Halpers focus centered on how two unknownsPage and Trump advisor George Papadopouloscame to work for the Trump campaign. But when Halper spoke with Clovis on September 1, 2016, in a recorded conversation, Halper posed several questions about sensitive campaign strategies.

For instance, Halper asked Clovis whether the Trump campaign was planning an October Surprise, and he learned the Trump campaign planned to focus on giv[ing] people a reason to vote for him, not just vote against Hillary. Clovis also shared with Halper that Trump did not want to do a traditional campaign, and added additional comments about the internal structure, organization, and functioning of the Trump campaign.

Halpers recorded conversation with Clovis delved even deeper into campaign concerns, with Halper discussing with Clovis an internal campaign debate about Trumps immigration strategy, efforts to reach out to minority groups and the impact of those efforts, and the campaigns strategies for responding to questions about Trumps decision not to release his tax returns.

The IG report did not detail the content of these conversations, but here, an earlier comment Halper made to Page proves significant: Prior to meeting with Clovis, Halper told Page that he was available whenever Clovis wants to chat, then Halper added that he would like to meet with [Clovis], because there are some things that have to be done at this part of the campaign. And if you dont do them youre going to lose.

Maybe the FBI didnt task Halper to spy on the Trump campaign, but Halpers comments to Page, coupled with the topics he discussed with Clovis, reveal Halper ignored that directive.

The FBI also tasked Halper with targeting foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos. The FBI didnt obtain a FISA warrant on Papadopoulos, but Halper recorded conversations with Papadopoulos in September 2016 and October 2016.

While Halpers targeting of Papadopoulos didnt translate into much information about the Trump campaign, the IG report still leaves unanswered whether other members of the intelligence community, either American or Western, had set up Papadopoulos, with Joseph Mifsud feeding him fake intel about Russia having dirt on Hillary Clinton, then arranging for a friendly-foreign government representative, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, to prompt Papadopoulos to disclose this supposed inside track on Russia collusion.

While Papadopoulos remained reticent with Halper, he did share insight on the Trump campaign team, telling Halper that former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn does want to cooperate with the Russians and the Russians are willing to embrace adult issues. Unknown is what else Papadopoulos told Halper, or the other CHS tasked to chat him up, about the Trump campaign.

The FBI didnt limit its spying efforts to outsourced CHSs, however. Rather, in addition to using Halper and several other CHSs, on August 17, 2016, the FBI dispatched a supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane team, known broadly to be FBI Agent Joe Pientka, to a private security briefing for then-candidate Trump and Flynn.

The FBI viewed the briefing of candidate Trump and his advisors as a possible opportunity to collect information for the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations.

The IG report noted the FBI chose Pientka to provide this security briefing to assess Flynn in anticipation of a subject interview, but beyond that, Pientka was there to overhear, whatever it was, and record that. The IG report noted that the FBI viewed the briefing of candidate Trump and his advisors as a possible opportunity to collect information potentially relevant to the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations.

Pientka memorialized the results of the briefing in an official FBI document, summarizing questions posed by Trump and Flynn, as well as comments made by Trump and Flynn. Trump and Flynns statements were added to the Crossfire Hurricane system and uploaded in the FBIs case management system.

It wasnt just Flynn: the FBI monitored what should have been normal briefing sessions. The IG report revealed that prior to briefing President-elect Trump on the salacious details of Steele dossier, former FBI Director James Comey met with senior leaders of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

One of the topics discussed was Trumps potential responses to being told about the salacious information, including that Trump might make statements, or provide information of value, to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. So, while Comey told Trump during their private meeting that the FBI did not know whether the allegations were true or false and that the FBI was not investigating them, Comey tracked Trumps reaction for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Beyond the intentional spying, the IG report revealed quite a bit of accidental espionage occurred. While the IG concluded that the FBI had not placed any CHSs in the Trump campaign (or administration), the report revealed that the FBI had several other CHSs with either a connection to candidate Trump or a role in the Trump campaign.

For instance, the IG report noted that one CHS who had been in contact with Trump during the campaign passed information to the FBI about Page and Manafort in August 2016. While the FBI did not task this CHS during the Trump campaign, according to the IG report, after the November 8, 2016 election, Pientka contacted the CHSs handling agent and asked for a read-out from your CHS regarding possible positions in administration.

Pientka claimed he wasnt attempting to task this CHS with spying on the administration, but thought that the CHS might receive a position somewhere in the administration, which would become a sensitive matter that we would need to handle differently.

The IG appeared to have accepted Pientkas explanation without question, even though in late November the CHSs handling agent met with him and later wrote a document stating one purpose of the meeting was to obtain insight regarding the upcoming Trump Administration following the recent U.S. Presidential elections. But Pientka assured the IG that this was not what he intended the Handling Agent to discuss with the CHS. Sure, Joe.

The IG report next noted that Inspector General Horowitzs team also learned about a different CHS who at one point held a position in the Trump campaign, but the Crossfire Hurricane team said they decided against tasking this CHS in the investigation and instead minimized contact with him. But again, an email uncovered by the IG, but buried in a footnote, told a different story.

After careful consideration, the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team has decided, at this time, it is best to utilize your CHS as a passive listening post regarding any observations [he/she] has of the campaign so far, the email addressing the CHSs role read, continuing: Base[d] on current, on-going operations/developments in the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE investigation, we are not going to directly task or sensitize the CHS at this point in time. We appreciate [your] assistance in this matter and remain interested in any campaign related reporting that you guys may receive from the CHS during normal debriefs.

Again, the IG accepted at face value the FBI agents claim that the email was incorrect and what he was asking for was any information about attempts by Russia to screw around with the campaign or the elections.

The IG report noted yet another CHS connected to the Trump campaign, explaining that Horowitzs team discovered an October 2016 email written by an intelligence analyst on the Crossfire Hurricane team to Pientka. That email copied information out of a CHSs Delta file stating that the CHS is scheduled to attend a private national security forum with Donald Trump in October 2016, after which the CHS will provide an update on the Trump meeting. (Delta is the FBIs database that contains all of the personal and administrative information about the CHS.) But, alas, no one remembered that any FBI CHS had been scheduled to attend a private forum with candidate Trump.

In addition to these CHS connected to the Trump campaign, or candidate Trump, the IG report also revealed multiple CHSs involved in either the transition team or administration. While the specifics of those CHSs positions were redacted, the IG noted that in March 2017, one CHS provided his FBI handling agent five sets of documents on multiple topics, the details of which were blacked out. Even though the FBI didnt task this CHS, agents passed this information on to the Crossfire Hurricane team and maintained it in the FBI file.

While it is impossible to know from the IG report (because of redactions) the level of access this CHS had, it must have been pretty significant because Associate Director of the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap told the IG that he absolutely should have been told that there was an active FBI CHS with the unspecified access. In this situation, Priestap explained, it was common sense that the bosses need to know.

Still another CHS provided additional information to the FBI, months after the presidential campaign was concluded, but what exactly that CHS shared was redacted. However, the IG reports reference to UDP (undisclosed participation), tells us this CHS was a government employee, and possibly in the Trump administration, because, as the IG report explained: Undisclosed Participation (UDP) takes place when anyone acting on behalf of the FBI, including a CHS, becomes a member of, or participates in, the activity of an organization on behalf of the U.S. government without disclosing their FBI affiliation to an appropriate official of the organization. The IG concluded that because this CHS had voluntarily spied on the Trump administration, he did not meet the departmental definition of an UDP.

Beyond Halper, the tasked and volunteer CHSs, Comey, and Pientka, the Crossfire Hurricane team also used a few Undercover Employees, or UCEs. But how those UCEs were used and what information they accessed is unclear because the IG report did not provide any details, leaving open the possibility that even more spying took place.

Substantial spying took place under the guise of investigating Russia collusion.

The IG report also stated that the FBI did not use national security letters or compulsory process prior to obtaining the first FISA orders, implying that after obtaining the FISA warrants, the FBI used these investigative techniques. But again, we dont know what information the FBI gathered, and whether it included details about the Trump campaign.

We also dont know if there were any sub-sources placed in the Trump campaign or with access to the campaign, because the FBI does not track sub-sources in its classified Delta database. Last weeks release by Sen. Chuck Grassley of a letter he penned to the Department of Defenses Office of Net Intelligence concerning Halper suggests it is a real possibility that sub-sources were tasked with spying on the Trump campaign. In that letter, Grassley asked whether Halper used any taxpayer money in his attempt to recruit Trump campaign officials as sources.

While the IG report stated that it found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any CHSs within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign, as is clear from the above detailed analysis of the IG report, substantial spying took place under the guise of investigating Russia collusionand there were many hints that even more spying occurred that has yet to be exposed.

In fact, it might well be the only tactic the FBI refrained from deploying was suspending Obama aloft outside the Trump Tower.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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IG Report Proves Obama Admin Spied On Trump Campaign Big Time - The Federalist

The double standards have become mind-boggling.

It wasn't all that long ago that we were treated to "exposs," mainly in the right-wing media, of the reckless spending by the Obama family for vacations and golfing trips.

Especially outrageous, we were constantly reminded, was the president's insistence on taking his entire family to Hawaii, his home state, for Christmas each of his eight years in office.

"It requires dozens of Secret Service agents, military personnel and other government employees to guarantee (the Obamas') safety and ease of travel around Oahu," complained the "Moonie" paper the Washington Times.

Thank goodness, the paper reported during the 2016 holidays, this is the last time.

"The Obamas are once again renting a multimillion-dollar oceanfront home in Kailua, a town on the northeast side of the island where houses in the neighborhood fetch around $10 million," it added. "It's near golf courses and a Marine Corps base where the president goes for morning workouts at the gym."

The paper wasn't alone. Most media outlets reported that the holiday trips to Hawaii cost more than $4.8 million and that, times eight, they pointed out, meant taxpayers paid in the range of $35 million to $40 million for the Hawaii getaways.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump himself blistered Obama's "free spending," especially for golfing excursions. Rest assured, Americans were promised, a President Trump would spend most of his time right where he should in the White House taking care of business "because there's so much work to be done."

According to estimates from the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan agency that keeps track of federal spending, Obama ran up travel expenses of about $97 million during his eight years in office. Trump has blown right past that number in less than three years, mostly on golf trips and vacation time at his own resorts.

In a one-month period in 2017, the GAO found, Trump spent $13.6 million on just four trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. That's $3.4 million per trip. To Florida for a few days. Not to Hawaii for three weeks.

The New York Times editorialized earlier this month that what's more egregious is the administration's attempts to keep the spending secret at least until after the 2020 election.

Democrats, of course, want a complete accounting of not just how much Trump is spending on travel, but how much taxpayers are shelling out for his family as well. And what they'd really like to know is how much of all that spending is winding up as profit for the family itself.

The issue came to a head in recent weeks when Trump's Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, informed Congress he wants to return the Secret Service to his department where it once was until the formation of the Department of Homeland Security several years ago.

Congressional Democrats informed Mnuchin that as part of the deal, they needed to know how much the Secret Service was spending to protect Trump and his family on their travels. Mnuchin said he wouldn't disclose that until after the 2020 election, apparently to prevent the size of the spending from becoming an issue in the campaign.

The same Republicans, though, who were quick to blister Obama for spending too much on travel, don't blink an eye when it comes to Trump.

Just like the size of the national debt a scandal when Obama was in office is no longer an issue even though we're adding a trillion dollars to it each year.

Oh, yes. The double standards are alive and well.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.dzweifel@madison.com,608-252-6410and on Twitter @DaveZweifel.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

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Plain Talk: Double standards from Obama to Trump are mind-boggling - Madison.com

To deter prospective nuclear adversaries, the U.S. must retain superiority across the range of nuclear strike capabilities. In turn, we should welcome the new deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads on U.S. ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).

As the Federation of American Scientists reported on Wednesday, the U.S. Navy has begun deploying SSBNs with W76-2 warheads. It says that the USS Tennessee, which is roughly halfway through an Atlantic Ocean deterrence patrol (Russia-deterrence) is loaded with the W76-2. The Federation estimates that "one or two of the 20 missiles on the USS Tennessee and subsequent subs will be armed with the W76-2, either singly or carrying multiple warheads. Each W76-2 is estimated to have an explosive yield of about five kilotons. The remaining 18 missiles on each submarine like the Tennessee carries either the 90-kiloton W76-1 or the 455-kiloton W88. Each missile can carry up to eight warheads under current loading configurations." The next Pacific Ocean SSBN deterrent patrol is also likely to carry the W76-2.

I know we're talking about nuclear weapons here, but this is good news.

This isn't some harebrained Trump administration idea to send the world closer to nuclear war. Instead, it represents an overdue step to recover from President Obama's appeasement strategy and matches rising Russian nuclear threats. Authorized by President Trump under the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the W76-2 gives meaning to the review's assertion that "Russia must instead understand that nuclear first-use, however limited, will fail to achieve its objectives, fundamentally alter the nature of a conflict, and trigger incalculable and intolerable costs for Moscow."

As Russia has spent the past few years developing new nuclear strike capabilities such as its Avangard hypersonic system, it has also adopted a more aggressive first-use nuclear doctrine. That includes the consideration of using low-yield nuclear weapons in vein of the W76-2 to attack NATO battlefield forces. Vladimir Putin might assume that limited nuclear strikes would force European NATO allies to call for a cease fire (a topline objective in Russian war planning), but also fall short of giving a U.S. president cause for retaliation with high-yield nuclear weapons such as the W76-1 and W-88.

Contrary to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists delusions, this is Russia's fault. Every single NATO ally has agreed that Russia is the primary driving force behind nuclear proliferation concerns. The W76-2 simply re-balances the equation by providing the U.S. with a proportionate means to counter a limited Russian nuclear strike. And now Russia knows it.

True, none of this is pleasant. But effective nuclear strategy creates two certainties. First, it confers the certainty of moral readiness to do the unthinkable to defend the nation, and second, it gives adversaries certainty that our forces are able to defeat them across the range of conflict. The W76-2 bolsters both of those certainties and should be welcomed for it.

Read more here:
Trump corrects Obama's appeasement and deploys a nuclear message to Russia - Washington Examiner

The Trump administration misled the public about the aftermath of Irans missile attacks on U.S. positions in Iraqat least that was how many media outlets characterized the revelation that 34 U.S. troops had been treated for concussive injuries during Irans response to the strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. The president has said, we suffered no casualties. While most of those troops returned to duty shortly after the attack, some of those injuries were serious enough that they were treated out of theater.

Accuracy is important, and the upward revision of U.S. casualty statistics is newsworthy. And yet the tone that accompanied reports on these revisions exposed a naked political agenda. The credibility gap has been a major problem as the Trump administration has tried to convince the American people its doing the right thing in Iran, declared Vanity Fairs Bess Levin in a typical response. To judge from the polling that was available when Levin wrote those words, though, her assertion was more a veiled hope than objective analysis.

Within the first week of the Soleimani strike, three public opinion surveys demonstrated a consistent pattern of public support for the administrations actions. In each, pluralities favored the strike even if the American public was trepidatious about what might come next. Nearly one month later and with the benefit of hindsight, the American public is even more comfortable. This week, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that a majority53 percentapproved of the Soleimani strike with 41 percent opposed. A general sense of anxiety about what Iran will do next remains pervasiveand yet the publics initial concerns about the prospect of a broader conflict with Iran have abated substantially, as they should. Reducing the likelihood of that kind of conflict is precisely what the Soleimani strike was designed to achieve.

The possibility that Trumps approach to containing and destabilizing Iran is yielding dividends is one the presidents critics seem incapable of entertaining. In the eyes of the Obama administration in exile and their allies in the press, almost every act of Iranian aggression is Trumps fault.

If you want to pin the blame on Iran, youre going to have to do extra due diligence and have some kind of international investigation, warned Obamas former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes in June 2019 following the sabotage of a series of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz (an omission of the fact that the targeted nations had done precisely that). If Iran was responsible for these attacks, Rhodes added, it would be an expected response to Trumps abrogation of the Iran nuclear accords. Rhodess perspective was not shaken when Iran was starving Syrian civilians, killing U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebels, threatening to choke off the Gulf of Aden via proxy forces, orseizing American Navy vessels and holding U.S. sailors hostage while the Iran deal was in force, so its unsurprising that it would persist.

The United States is also completely isolated as we find ourselves now on the brink of a much, much more serious conflict with Iran, Rhodes averred in the wake of the Soleimani strike. If the failure of these dire predictions to materialize is a source of relief, Rhodes has done his best to disguise his enthusiasm. Reminder that Trump said hed get us out of wars in the Middle East but has sent 20,000 more troops there because of his self-created crisis with Iran, he recently remarked. The lack of any appreciable war to speak of was no obstacle to this verdict.

Rhodess myopia isnt unique to him. According to Obamas national security advisor Susan Rice, Trumps last-minute decision to abort a retaliatory strike against Iran for downing a U.S drone in June 2019 was a welcome one. Meeting aggression with aggression would have marked the beginning of a costly war because Iran would not have simply swallowed such an affront to its sovereignty. The only prudent response to Iranian hostility, in her view, was to unilaterally pause the build-up of deterrent forces in the Middle East and hope for the best. And when Trump did finally respond in kind to Iranian attacks, Rice predicted that Trump would inaugurate broader conflict no matter how he responded to Irans inevitable reply. Its hard to envision how this ends short of war, she wrote. Confessing to a lack of vision might be an admission against interest, but its a welcome first step on the path toward introspection.

For months, Tehran demonstrated a willingness to court risk, and a direct conflict with Iran appeared imminent. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confessed last October, it was incumbent on the U.S. to restore deterrence. That was a serious warning. When a revisionist adversary is undeterred, it will test its freedom of action until it encounters an unacceptable level of resistance. Neither Iran nor the U.S wants a war. But by failing to calibrate its attacks, Iran could have easily miscalculated its way into one. It was incumbent on the administration to impose costs on Iran that would deter reckless acts of aggression against vital U.S. interests. Its decision to neutralize a terrorist commander soaked in American blood appears to have had the desired effect.

That is not to say that Irans provocations have abated. Sporadic rocket and mortar attacks from inside Iraq on U.S. positions, including Baghdads Green Zone, continue. But they are of the more sporadic than the assaults U.S. forces regularly endured last November and December. Foreign policy observers are correct to note that Iran is still likely to respond in unpredictable ways to the killing of Soleimani, which could take the form of asymmetric terrorist attacks on civilian targets far beyond the Middle East. Thats a worrisome prospect, but we have to remember that Iran has executed asymmetric attacks on soft targets since the Islamic Republic came into existence. If that is the form Iranian retaliation takes, it is a return to the status quo ante, and an indication that the Trump administration has made the regime more cautious.

Which leads us back to the American political medias response to the news that Iran had, in fact, injured U.S. forces in its calibrated and telegraphed ballistic missile attack. Trump was accused not only of deceiving the public but also of callously downplaying the extent of the injuries U.S troops suffered. But what reaction would the nations tastemakers have preferred to see from the president? Histrionics? An ultimatum demanding satisfaction from Iran? A kinetic response against Iranian military and government targets? What strategic purpose would that have served other than to upend the presidents successful effort to deescalate the conflict?

For so many of the last administrations devotees, the Trump administrations approach to containing Iranian aggression is beyond comprehension. They do not seem to have ever considered that this is less an indictment of the president than a confession of their own insularity and strategic blindness. The worst-case scenarios these and other Trump critics imagined have thus far failed to materialize. Thats a relief to most Americans, but its a double-edged sword for the presidents most committed critics. The unavoidable implication that Trump and the hawks with whom he is surrounded were right about Iran is too much for them to stomach.

Originally posted here:
Trump's Critics Cannot Admit That He's Been Right on Iran - Commentary Magazine