NATO Sends Clear Message to Putin

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Thousands of American troops have been taking part in a large-scale military exercise on NATO’s front-line state of Poland, which borders Vladimir Putin’s Russia, its close ally Belarus, and war-torn Ukraine. The message is unmistakable—letting Moscow know that the U.S. and its allies take its treaty obligation to defend Eastern Europe seriously.

The 10-day Polish led exercise, called Anakonda, ended June 16. It consisted of over 31,000 troops from 24 countries, including 14,000 American troops.

This drill began in 2006 as a lone Polish effort, and has grown to be one of the largest military exercises to occur in Poland in 25 years.

According to the U.S. Army, “This exercise further supports assurance and deterrence measures by demonstrating allied defense capabilities to deploy, mass and sustain combat power.”

That is code for assuring America’s allies that the U.S. will defend them should the Russians decide to invade.

The Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine has left many of the eastern NATO countries nervous and anxious for guarantees of NATO protection. History buttresses their anxiety.

Russia still views Eastern Europe as its backyard—as it did during Imperial times. It is estimated that, at its height, it was expanding at the rate of almost 90 square miles a day. By 1896 Tsar Nicholas the 2nd was crowned as “[Emperor] of All the Russians, Czar of Moscow”, as well as ruler of Poland, Kiev, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, Bulgaria, and many more.

To this day Russia does not view these as sovereign countries, but as former vestiges of Russian Imperialism that belong under the influence of Moscow.

Many of these nations are members of NATO, now firmly part of the West. That is why these nations, now our treaty allies, fear the threat of invasion. Much of their history is blemished by Russian subjugation.

The Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) are small, geographically isolated from the rest of NATO, and have a significant ethnic Russian minority population. They are also facing a non-traditional threat to their security—active measures, or what is now commonly called “hybrid warfare.”

Active measures are a type of information warfare. It combines disinformation, propaganda, and manipulation of public opinion in order to influence the actions of a foreign country or people. These were used extensively by the Soviets in an effort to create instability in areas of interest.

The Baltic countries find themselves fighting Russian active measures on multiple fronts: their language and politics are being subverted. Russian media outlets are buying more space in order to push out native speaking media with a pro-Russian message. In the Baltics there is no need to translate or tailor their propaganda, because of the Russian speaking population. Because of this ethnic Russians and other Russian speakers are motivated to force their countries closer to Moscow.

There is also corruption problem. According to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, Latvia scores a 55 in the category freedom from corruption. The world average is 42.6, and Latvia has shown increases in this measure since 2013. However, there is still an element of the Russian elite and professional criminals bringing money into Latvia. This brings in both unwanted attention and influence pulling Latvia ever closer to Moscow. Lastly, there is the tangible threat of Russian hard power. The Russian military has been moving to assert power over the Baltic Sea and airspace over Estonia increasingly in the past few years.

Understanding this threat, is NATO prepared to defend its front-line Eastern Allies?

Putin revived a Soviet era strategy called active measures, or “hybrid warfare”, and has successfully integrated this strategy to fit his imperialist agenda. His implementation is leading to a slow, steady corrupting influence into the Baltics. With Ukraine and Crimea, it has gone further and outright violence ensued. An expansionist policy may be the norm for Vladimir Putin, but NATO has an obligation to curb such appetites against its members.

That is why Anakonda 2016 matters. This exercise has already drawn criticism from the Russian government about escalating tensions between Moscow and NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called this exercise unjustified, as well as commenting that there is no Russian threat to any NATO member. But he did make sure to add that, “Russia’s sovereign right to ensure its security will come into force, [making use] of methods adequate to [respond to] today’s challenges.”

In light of this, it is important for our allies to feel that they are not being forgotten. The most important facet of NATO deterrence is the credible threat that aggression will be met with a resounding military response. Without showing our allies that they can believe in the U.S. commitment to their security, we might as well be paving the way for a Russian invasion. (For more from the author of “NATO Sends Clear Message to Putin” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Support of Radical Islam and the Rise of ISIS

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The foreign policy for dealing with radical Islam pursued by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can best be described as the intersection of ideology and incompetence.

Obama’s “amore” for radical Islam began in 2009, soon after his inauguration, when he ordered his administration not to support the Iranian Green Revolution after thousands of brave Iranian democracy protesters rose up against the brutal Khamenei regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “Obama administration officials at the time were working behind the scenes with the Sultan of Oman to open a channel to Tehran. The potential for talks with Iran-and with Mr. Khamenei as the ultimate arbiter of any nuclear agreement,” one that would prove to be a national security disaster for the US. As it turned out, Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement only strengthen the hard-liners; since completion of the agreement, Tehran has stepped up arrests of political opponents.

In 2010, Obama ordered his advisors to produce a secret report, later known as Presidential Study Directive-11 (PSD-11), which concluded that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting stable but authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa to one backing, what Obama Administration officials considered groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish AK Party, now led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as a so-called “moderate” alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a Sunni Islamist religious, political and social movement, whose fundamental goal remains Islam’s global domination and the implementation of Sharia. Although the Muslim Brotherhood uses political instruments more than violence, its radical goals are no different from al-Qaeda and ISIS.

It has long been suspected that Obama, not only supports the Muslim Brotherhood, but that his administration is infiltrated by the Brotherhood, including Hillary Clinton’s long-serving assistant, Huma Abedin, who has enjoyed an intensely close relationship with the Islamist organization for decades.

Therein rests the motivation for the policies formulated and actions taken by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Egypt, Libya and Syria, all of which led to the growth of radical Islam in North Africa and the Middle East.

The Tunisian revolution in December 2010 and the rise of the Islamist Ennahda Movement in that country was quickly followed by the Cairo protests that began on January 25, 2011 under the direction of Egypt’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. The protests and associated violence led to the resignation on February 11, 2011 of long-time US ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. There are now a number of reports indicating the US cooperated with and attempted to sustain the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, including an alleged Brotherhood agent inside the US Embassy in Cairo.

Violent regime change in support of radical Islam began in earnest on February 15, 2011, when a rebellion broke out in Benghazi, Libya against the authoritarian regime of Muammar Qaddafi. Toppling Qaddafi had long been a goal of Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the local Libyan al-Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a key player in the anti-Qaddafi rebellion.

Within a few weeks of the outbreak of fighting in eastern Libya, Obama has signed a secret order authorizing a covert CIA operation to support Islamist rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Both inside and outside the Obama administration, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among the most vocal early proponents of using U.S. military force to unseat Qaddafi. Seven months and thousands of more unnecessary deaths later, in October 2011, after an extended military campaign with sustained Western support, Islamist rebel forces conquered the country and shot Qaddafi dead. Many will recall Hillary Clinton, on October 20, 2011, cackling to a TV news reporter over the death of Qaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Since then, Libya has been in a constant state of chaos, with factional infighting, no uniting leader and has provided a haven for ISIS and other Islamic terrorists; culminating in the September 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi and the death of four Americans.

In released, but redacted emails, Hillary Clinton expressed interest in arming Libyan opposition groups using private security contractors. In an April 8, 2011 email to her then-deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, Clinton wrote: “FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered.” It now appears probable that, in 2011, at Clinton’s urging, Obama secretly approved the arming of rebels in Libya and, later Syria by the same method, via a third party, likely Qatar, who had brokered the sale of more than $100 million in crude oil from rebel-held areas.

The rise of ISIS can be directly linked to the power vacuum left after the premature withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in December 2011 and fueled by American abdication of a foreign policy in Syria, where we sub-contracted our interests to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Not surprisingly, those countries pursued their own interests; the Saudis supporting radical Islamic Salafists, while the Turks and Qataris backed the Muslim Brotherhood.

By the summer of 2012, Turkey, together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, had constructed a fully operational secret command and control center to facilitate communications and the movement of weapons to the Syrian rebel groups. The center in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 100 km (60 miles) from the Syrian border, was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it. Adana is home to Incirlik, a large Turkish/U.S. air force base which Washington has used in the past for reconnaissance and military logistics operations. Adana is in close proximity to the Turkish port of Iskenderun, a major transit point for arms destined for the Syrian rebels.

It is important to note that Obama’s friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a Sunni Islamist, a vehement opponent of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and a fervent supporter of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

Assad has placed emphasis on controlling northwest Syria, which safeguards his Shia-Alawite home region and his base of support, as well as securing the strategically critical coastal area containing the Latakia airbase used by Russian forces and the important port of Tartus – a situation that has largely left eastern Syria along the Iraq border open for Islamist exploitation.

A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report sent to Hillary Clinton and other administration officials in August 2012 and declassified in May 2015, stated that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (Al- Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and being supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.”

The report goes into detail about how the West was actively helping those opposition groups control the eastern border of Syria near the Iraqi province of Anbar and the strategic city of Mosul, both of which eventually came under control of ISIS.

The stupidity of Obama’s ideological and Muslim Brotherhood-centric policy in dealing with radical Islam is only exceeded by the galactic incompetence in which it was carried out, and has left us living in a more dangerous world. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Support of Radical Islam and the Rise of ISIS” please click HERE)

Listen to a recent interview with the author below:

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THANKS, HILLARY: ISIS Deploys Waves of Suicide Bombers as Libya Enters Its Apocalypse Phase

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Islamic State unleashed two waves of suicide bombers on pro-government Libyan forces in a last ditch defense of the group’s stronghold in the country.

More than 16 pro-government Libyan militia fighters were killed in the assault while continuing to rid ISIS from its coastal stronghold in the city of Sirte. ISIS has killed around 180 Libyan militia fighters since the siege began in May, though the terrorist group has lost significant ground in the last few weeks.

Libyan forces have retaken the city’s air base, port and several barracks. They also secured a symbolic victory by knocking down a stage in the middle of the city that was once used by ISIS to conduct executions and beheadings.

SIS forces remaining in Sirte have more or less been cornered, but that does not mean they are not dangerous. As has been the case in Iraq, when ISIS loses territory, it can still strike with deadly force through suicide bombings behind enemy lines.

Despite recent losses, ISIS has shown it has the capability to strike anywhere in Libya. Abdel-Aziz Essa, a spokesman for the Misrata hospital located 170 miles from Sirte, told The Associated Press Thursday 10 militia fighters were killed and seven injured in a suicide bombing on the Abu Grain village police station 80 miles west of Sirte.

The militia fighters who died in the attack were allied to the Western-backed Government of National Accord, which has been steadily trying to assert its authority over war-torn Libya.

Ahmed Hadia, the man in charge of the media for the operation against ISIS in Sirte, told the AP ISIS terrorists outside of Sirte “could be a more serious threat than the fighters we are currently surrounding.”

Exact figures as to how many fighters ISIS has in Libya are spotty, but U.S. intelligence estimated in that the group had anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 men operating in the country. That figure has likely lowered since operations against Sirte began. (For more from the author of “THANKS, HILLARY: ISIS Deploys Waves of Suicide Bombers as Libya Enters Its Apocalypse Phase” please click HERE)

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CIA Chief Says Islamic State Plans to Intensify Attacks

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Islamic State will intensify its global terrorism campaign by directing as well as inspiring attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere, despite its mounting territorial and financial losses in Syria and Iraq, CIA Director John Brennan said.

The organization “will probably rely more on guerrilla tactics,” such as the attacks in Paris and Brussels in the past year that were directed by its leadership, Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing on Thursday. It will also seek to inspire more attacks similar to those in San Bernardino, California, in December and in Orlando, Florida, this week, he said.

So far, there’s is no indication that Omar Mateen, who carried out the Orlando shooting, the worst massacre in modern U.S. history, had a direct link to Islamic State or any other foreign terrorist organization, Brennan said.

The Central Intelligence Agency chief’s stark assessment of the group’s intentions and capabilities contrasts with the Obama administration’s portrait of the group as being in decline because of increasing success in the the U.S.-led military campaign to retake territory that the group has claimed, and to cut off its oil income and other revenue . . .

“Despite our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach,” Brennan said, using an acronym for the group. “As the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.” (Read more from “CIA Chief Says Islamic State Plans to Intensify Attacks” HERE)

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Egypt Says It Has Found Plane Wreckage

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Egypt said that it spotted and obtained images from the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board, according to a statement by the country’s investigation committee.

The committee said that the vessel John Lethbridge, which was contracted by the Egyptian government to join the search for the plane debris and flight data recorders, “had identified several main locations of the wreckage.” It added that it obtained images of the wreckage located between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast . . .

The EgyptAir Airbus A320 en route to Cairo from Paris had been cruising normally in clear skies on an overnight flight on May 19. The radar showed that the doomed aircraft turned 90 degrees left, then a full 360 degrees to the right, plummeting from 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) before disappearing at about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). (Read more from “Egypt Says It Has Found Plane Wreckage” HERE)

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Putin Ups His Persecution of Social Media Users

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The Kremlin has started cracking down with increasing severity on users of social media who dare to criticize the state of affairs in Russia or who parody Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

For the crime of posting a picture of a tube of toothpaste with the caption “Squeeze Russia out of yourself,” Andrei Bubeyev was sentenced to three years in prison.

The law under which this draconian verdict was handed down was passed in 2002. Vaguely worded, it has been targeted at extremism, hate speech and anti-government speech alike. Extremism is defined as activities that aim to undermine the nation’s security or constitutional order, or glorify terrorism or racism. The law allows the judge to interpret who poses a danger to the state, and last year as many as 54 social media users were caught in its net.

Bubeyev seems an unlikely candidate for such draconian punishment. He is a construction worker with a passion for politics, but only 12 followers on his VKontakte page—Russia’s most popular social media network that has a total of 270 million accounts.

The Russian authorities may have decided to make an example of him to deter online dissenters.

The Russian government’s war on dissent recently extended to pressuring Twitter to take down a popular account spoofing Putin, @DarthPutinKGB. This feeble decision on Twitter’s part was immediately protested by @DarthPutinKGB’s 50,000 followers, who include Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Ilves tweeted:

Essentially, the Russian government has declared war on the very concept of objective news reporting itself. In the warped word of Russian propaganda, reality is whatever the Russian leadership decides it is.

Ironically, at a recent media forum titled, “The New Era of Journalism: A Farewell to the Mainstream,” Russian propaganda chief Dmitry Kieselev argued that in the world of social media, there really is no need for traditional news anymore. With the Russian government’s war on social media, Russians are in effect denied both.

Russians are living behind a wall of unreality, in a state of “information isolation,” as described by the Levada Center, an independent Russian polling organization. Only 1 percent of Russians receive news from foreign sources on a daily basis. Tragically, 87 percent never do.

That isolation helps keep Putin in power, and it makes Russians paranoid about the West, especially the United States. (For more from the author of “Putin Ups His Persecution of Social Media Users” please click HERE)

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Flying the Unfriendly Skies: China’s Dangerous Behavior

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For the second time in a month, a Chinese fighter jet has made an unsafe approach to an American military aircraft.

This time, a Chinese air force J-10 fighter intercepted a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the East China Sea. The Chinese fighter approached at high speed at the same altitude, and reportedly closed to within a hundred feet of the converted airliner.

Not only did the Chinese intercept occur in the wake of last September’s much-ballyhooed “Rules of Behavior for Safety of Air-to-Air Encounters” between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China, but it also occurred even as Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew were in Beijing as part of the Strategic & Economic Dialogue talks.

The Chinese are likely stepping up their activities in expectation of a ruling in the coming months from the Permanent Court of Arbitration on Chinese claims over the South China Sea.

The Philippines has filed with the Permanent Court of Arbitration regarding Chinese claims over almost the entire South China Sea; Beijing has rejected the legitimacy of the court to rule, and made clear it will ignore any findings by the court. In an interesting redefinition of “unilateral,” Beijing has condemned Manila’s filing with the international court as a “unilateral act,” exacerbating tensions in the region.

Beijing holds the U.S. responsible for the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea. Gen. Fang Fenghui, head of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department, stated in a 2013 joint press conference at the Pentagon with then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey, “the rebalancing strategy of the U.S. has stirred up some of the problems which make the South China Sea and the East China Sea not so calm as before.”

Madame Fu Ying, spokeswoman of the Chinese National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, made similar accusations this past March. “The U.S. is strengthening military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region together with its allies since its pivot to Asia,” Fu said.

“Is it not militarization?” She asked. In the Chinese view, the Southeast Asian states would not dare challenge China over its sovereignty claims, if the United States were not manipulating and encouraging them.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Chinese Adm. Sun Jianguo made the case even more explicitly. Stating that some countries are:

On one hand setting the example of implementing what is known as freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, openly flaunting its military force, and on the other hand pulling in help from cliques, supporting their allies in antagonising China, forcing China to accept and implement the result of the arbitration.

Challenging American reconnaissance operations off its shores (even if they are in international waters and airspace) also highlights Chinese complaints about the obstacles to better U.S.-China relations.

The Chinese regularly recite complaints about arms sales to Taiwan, reconnaissance activities off their shores, and the annual Department of Defense report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities as limiting U.S.-Chinese relations. Ironically, the 2016 Department of Defense report on China, which was released last month, highlighted the build-up of China’s air and naval forces.

China, in both word and deed, is sending a clear, consistent message to the U.S. and the rest of the region: The air and waters off China’s shores, including that of its exclusive economic zone, are its sovereign air and sea space, subject to Chinese control.

Foreign military forces enter only at Beijing’s sufferance—and will be challenged if they fail to comply with Chinese wishes. That these claims are far in excess of those granted under international law is irrelevant; indeed, Beijing is prepared to use various legal arguments to support its claims.

By contrast, the American response has been incoherent. At the 15th annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has once again claimed that American ships and aircraft will sail where they want, when they want.

But somehow, that has never meant conducting a freedom of navigation operation actually challenging the status of China’s artificial islands. Instead, the U.S. has engaged in the far milder “innocent passage” around Chinese artificial islands (and arguing that anything more might antagonize other claimants).

There doesn’t appear much interest in clearly challenging Chinese activities around places like Mischief Reef—where a freedom of navigation operation could clearly signal it as international waters.

Efforts by the Department of Defense and Pacific Command to undertake such activities have been firmly squashed by President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, apparently intent upon muzzling any challenges to Beijing.

This sustains a pattern that can be traced back to 2010. At that time, the administration vacillated on whether to deploy the USS George Washington carrier group to the Yellow Sea to support South Korea after its frigate, the Cheonan, was sunk by a North Korean submarine.

Washington eventually ordered the carrier group to the Sea of Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula and away from China. (Only after North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeong Pyong-do, killing two civilians, did the administration authorize exercises in the Yellow Sea.)

Now, even as Chinese aircraft are behaving in a dangerous manner around American aircraft, American sailors and airmen will be hosting them for another Rim of the Pacific exercise.

Indeed, Carter trumpeted in his speech at Shangri-La:

And China will also be back at RIMPAC this year. In fact, the United States and China plan to sail together from Guam to Hawaii for RIMPAC, conducting several exercise events along the way, including an event to practice search-and-rescue.

One can only hope that, in the event of an accident involving a U.S. aircraft in future close encounters, the Chinese will put the search-and-rescue experience they’ve gained with us to good use. (For more from the author of “Flying the Unfriendly Skies: China’s Dangerous Behavior” please click HERE)

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Dutch Reporter Conducting Interview When ‘Refugees’ Make a Scene

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Two apparently Muslim migrants conducted a drive-by spit-on at a young female reporter during an on-air broadcast in Rotterdam, Netherlands earlier this week.

The incident begins with one migrant who goes by on a bicycle shouting, “F*** you” multiple times. Seconds later, two migrants on a motorcycle nearly run the reporter and interviewee over, while spitting at the reporter’s face.

A man identified as Livable Rotterdam Councillor Bart Joost van Rij then attempts to hit the men with his bag as they speed past him.

Through the entire scene, the reporter remains calm and finishes her segment. The story was on the city’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim dual citizen of the Netherlands and Morocco. He supports migrants and calls himself a “jihadist,” claiming that the word is misunderstood.

“Jihadist is the completely wrong word. I am a jihadist. I’m doing the right thing for the city the entire day. I’m a jihadist,” he said. “There are 68 definitions of jihad, if you remove a spike from the street or a piece of glass … to prevent a bicycle being harmed by the spike, you are a jihadist.”

However, Mayor Aboutaleb does not seem to condone violence; after the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, he said, in essence, if you don’t like the West, “pack your bags.”

“As a mayor, I like people that have radical ideas,” he said. “Thanks to having radical ideas about the way to lead our civilisations and our societies we left the Stone Age. But that’s not what we are talking about. We’re talking about a group of people who are threatening others, not only because they have radical ideas, but they believe they have their own truth justifying their own goals … by using violence.”

It is unclear why the migrants decided to mistreat the reporter. (For more from the author of “Dutch Reporter Conducting Interview When ‘Refugees’ Make a Scene” please click HERE)

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Socialism and Sinking Oil Prices Leave Venezuelans Picking Through Trash for Food

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Venezuela’s poverty had eased during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez. But a study by three leading Caracas universities found that 76 percent of Venezuelans are now under the poverty line, compared with 52 percent in 2014.

Staples such as corn flour and cooking oil are subsidized, costing pennies at the strongest of two official exchange rates. But fruit and vegetables have become an unaffordable luxury for many Venezuelan families.

“We’re seeing terrible sacrifices across many sections of society,” said Carlos Aponte, a sociology professor at the Central University of Venezuela. “A few years ago, Venezuela didn’t have the kind of extreme poverty that would drive people to eat garbage.” (Read more from “Socialism and Sinking Oil Prices Leave Venezuelans Picking Through Trash for Food” HERE)

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Nearly a Year Since Nuclear Deal, Tom Cotton Alarmed by ‘Empowerment of Iran’

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Nearly one year after a group of six nations led by the United States reached a nuclear deal with Iran, one of the loudest critics of the agreement is warning about the “consequences” of an accord that he believes has emboldened Tehran to provoke terror across the world.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a freshman Republican from Arkansas, injected himself into the Iran nuclear debate back when the Obama administration was negotiating the agreement by writing a letter to Iranian leaders declaring that the deal could be thrown away by the next president.

Now that the deal has been implemented, and Iran has constrained its nuclear capability in exchange for billions in sanctions relief, Cotton says he has seen enough to confirm his long-standing fears.

“What we’ve seen in the past year is the more immediate, non-nuclear consequences of the deal, which is the empowerment of Iran throughout the region and the consequences that has for U.S. interests and our allies,” Cotton said Wednesday during a briefing for reporters at The Heritage Foundation.

Referencing specific aggressive behavior from Iran, Cotton mentioned Tehran’s involvement in the wars in Syria and Yemen, its continued support for U.S.-declared terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and its recent ballistic missile tests.

“Over the last year we’ve seen nothing but the continued aggression of Iran, and the consequences of the nuclear deal with Iran are growing worse and spreading farther out, and they have an impact not just inside the Middle East but all around the world,” Cotton added.

But even as critics like Cotton sound off against the deal in public, Republicans in Congress haven’t passed an Iran-related bill since the agreement formally went into effect in January.

Cotton hinted that Congress may act soon, and he defended his own attempts at action.

Last month, the Senate voted down Cotton’s amendment to an energy spending bill that would have prohibited the U.S. from buying heavy water—a key component in nuclear weapons development—from Iran.

On Wednesday, Cotton also expressed support to reauthorize the Iran Sanctions Act, a core element of U.S. sanctions on Tehran that punishes foreign entities supporting Iran’s energy sector and purchase of advanced conventional weapons.

While some have speculated that Iran would view the renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act—which expires at the end of 2016—as a violation of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration has expressed openness to extending the legislation.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is preparing broader sanctions legislation, along with pushing for the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act.

Micah Johnson, Corker’s communications director, told The Daily Signal the proposed legislation would expand sanctions against Iran on issues unrelated to the nuclear agreement, like its support for terrorism and ballistic missile tests.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is working on similar legislation. Yet these actions could have little practical impact—and be resisted by the Obama administration—because they may give Iran less incentive to comply with the nuclear deal.

“I think Obama has the votes to veto and block any legislation that he sees as undermining the nuclear agreement,” Gary Samore, Obama’s former chief adviser on nuclear policy, said.

“Obama won’t allow that to happen because it would give Iran an excuse to renege on the deal,” Samore told The Daily Signal in an interview. “So whatever Congress does at this point seems pretty irrelevant, until there is a new president.”

Iran is already declaring itself unsatisfied about what it has gained under the nuclear deal, as it has struggled to reintegrate with world markets—even after the removal of U.S. and European sanctions.

“The Iranians are unhappy with the degree of sanctions relief they are getting,” Samore said. “The European banks remain very cautious about investment and handling big financial transactions with businesses connected to Iran because there’s still very restrictive non-nuclear sanctions that remain in place on Iran, and that creates legal liability for the banks.”

While Samore doesn’t think Iran is angry enough to renege on the nuclear deal, Cotton argues that Tehran’s frustrations put into question the durability of the agreement. Most of the limits on Iran’s nuclear program expire after 10 to 15 years.

“We’ve seen over the last six months in particular that the leadership of Iran does not view the deal as settled,” Cotton said. “They view it as something subject to continual negotiation and more demands.”

For now, Samore says, Iran is fulfilling its commitments under the nuclear deal, eliminating centrifuges and most of its uranium stockpile, redesigning a research reactor designed to produce plutonium, and allowing international inspectors access to its facilities.

“The agreement has rolled back Iran’s nuclear capacity, so from that standpoint the agreement is a success,” Samore said. “It has achieved what it was intended to achieve, removing the imminent threat of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But for those thinking the agreement would be transformative, and have some positive effect on Iran’s domestic policy and foreign policy, that simply hasn’t happened.”

Though proponents of the deal with Iran say it was only intended to address the nuclear issue, Cotton is worried about Tehran’s aggressive behavior in other arenas, and he believes Congress needs to draw a line where he says the Obama administration won’t.

“There has been certainly near-term no sign of moderation from Iran,” Cotton said. “And we are seeing time and time again the imbalance on the two sides of the deal. At least the U.S. government, and maybe the entire Western negotiating partners, want the deal much more than Iran does.” (For more from the author of “Nearly a Year Since Nuclear Deal, Tom Cotton Alarmed by ‘Empowerment of Iran'” please click HERE)

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