Haha. To live in a fools world must be painful for the inhabitants of such a world. Mullah supporters happen to be one of the largest groups in this world.
Tue Nov 15, 2016 | 11:13pm GMT
U.S. House reauthorises Iran sanctions bill, sets Syria sanctions
By
Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON
U.S. lawmakers passed bills on Tuesday renewing sanctions on Iran for 10 years and imposing new sanctions on Syria, underscoring their determination to play a strong role in Middle East policy no matter who occupies the White House.
The House of Representatives voted 419 to one for a 10-year reauthorisation of the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, a law first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran's energy industry and deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The House also passed by voice vote a bill that would sanction the government of Syria, and supporters including Russia and Iran, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. It must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama in order to become law.
The Obama administration and other world powers reached an agreement last year in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
But lawmakers said they wanted the ISA to stay in effect to send a strong message that the United States will respond to provocations by Iran and give any U.S. president the ability to quickly reinstate sanctions if Tehran violated the nuclear agreement.
"Even after a hard-fought election here at home and power changing hands, American leadership on the global stage won't falter," said Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a bill sponsor.
Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the bill's lead sponsor, called the ISA "a critical tool."
"Its expiration would compound the damage done by the president's dangerous nuclear deal and send a message that the United States will no longer oppose the destructive role of Iran in the Middle East," said Royce.
The vote took place one week after Republican Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Congressional Republicans unanimously opposed the nuclear deal, along with about two dozen Democrats, and Trump has also strongly criticized it.
Lawmakers from both parties said they hoped bipartisan support for a tough line against Iran would continue under the new president.
There was no immediate word from Senate leaders on when the ISA and the Syria measure might be taken up in that chamber.
Many Senate Democrats favour a "clean" renewal of the ISA, like the one that passed in the House. But other lawmakers have pushed to add new sanctions such as some specifically targeting Iran's ballistic missile tests.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Tom Brown)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-nuclear-usa-sanctions-idUKKBN13A2X3
By
John Bolton
November 13, 2016 | 6:25am
Barack Obama’s foreign-policy legacy includes reduced American global influence, dramatically underfunded military and intelligence capabilities, and rising concern among longtime allies about Washington’s understanding of international threats. A world of nuclear-weapons proliferation and growing radical Islamic terrorism are the consequences.
There is a reason the world is more dangerous today than eight years ago.
During his White House tenure, Obama regarded national-security policy as a distraction. He preferred instead to concentrate on what he said candidly in 2008 was his main objective: to “fundamentally transform” America. International crises constantly threatened to divert time and energy away from that ideological quest.
This is not to say that Obama did not have his own distinct — and badly misguided — worldview. In Obama’s opinion, and that of all of his top advisors, most definitely including Hillary Clinton, America’s global presence, its strength and assertiveness and its manifest success in protecting its allies and its interests actually contribute to tension, instability and outright conflict.
Under this worldview, American efforts at self-defense and mutual security are part of the problem, not the solution.
Nowhere is the spreading global chaos more apparent than in the Middle East, and it is here that President-elect Donald Trump will face his most immediate international challenges.
In August 1914, British Foreign Minister Edward Grey observed that “the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” We are not far wrong to ask whether Grey’s insight applies today in the Middle East:
- Radical Islam has spread across the region, shattering governments and leaving anarchy where terrorist groups, warlords and brigands are taking root.
- Post-World War I boundaries are disappearing. ISIS has declared a caliphate in what used to be Syria and Iraq.
- The Kurds are moving inexorably toward de jure declaration of a “Kurdistan” of uncertain reach.
- Turkey is turning away from its secular constitution toward President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s own concept of a caliphate.
- Al Qaeda and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Yemen has disintegrated.
- Worst of all, Iran is now on a path to deliverable nuclear weapons, legitimized by Obama’s wretched deal, which is providing untold economic benefits to Tehran through unfrozen assets and renewed trade and investment, especially from Europe. Iran’s support for terrorism continues unabated, and its provocative international behavior has only worsened since the nuclear deal. Russia’s influence in the region is higher than at any time since the 1970s.
President-elect Trump has been emphatic that destroying ISIS must be an urgent priority, not Obama’s slow-motion approach that has simply allowed ISIS to continue recruiting adherents and training and deploying terrorists throughout the West. In addition, however, a Trump anti-ISIS strategy must also correct Obama’s misguided reliance on the Baghdad government, which has become little more than an Iranian puppet.
In this complex multi-sided war, the defeat of any combatant inevitably advantages all the others. The goal should be to destroy ISIS while benefiting Iran to the least extent possible.
Obama’s approach, by contrast, seems aimed at enhancing the benefits to Iran.
Indeed, the hardest question of all may be: What comes after ISIS is defeated?
Sunni Arabs who previously supported ISIS (or accepted it because they could not resist) will not again be quietly relegated to the tender mercies of an Iran-dominated Iraqi government or Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Either a new state must be created out of the wreckage of Syria and Iraq, or some other durable approach must be found. Moreover, the new Russian airbase in Latakia, Syria, has dramatically changed the strategic environment in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.
Unfortunately, the base cannot be made to disappear simply by reversing Obama’s erroneous policies.
In the midst of this wasteland that has developed over the past eight years, Israel and America’s Arab friends are desperately waiting for a strong American president who understands who his friends are. President-elect Trump can change the regional political dynamic quickly, signaling that US elections do truly have consequences.
One key step would be to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal in his first days in office. There will be considerable diplomacy required to explain this courageous but necessary decision, but the unambiguous signal it would send worldwide cannot be underestimated.
While terrorism and Middle East anarchy could fill any President’s day, it is critical the incoming Trump administration also fashion strategies to deal with longer-term issues like protecting America’s constitutional system from the advocates of global governance and the realities of international competition from the likes of China and Russia.
Failing to engage in strategic thinking at the outset of any new Administration risks exacerbating the problems that will inevitably flow during its four or eight years in office. Doing the hard preparatory work now will pay off when the uncertain future becomes all too real.
Mr. Bolton is former US ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006). He is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad.”
http://nypost.com/2016/11/13/trump-needs-to-reverse-the-iran-deal-and-assert-our-interests/
USA finally got 3rd party president.
