Photo Credit: YouTubeOne of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders wants to know why President Obama has remained silent as Iran tortures an American pastor held captive in one of the Islamic republic’s most notorious prisons.
Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, told Fox News the imprisonment and torture of Pastor Saeed Abedini is a blatant example of “religious intolerance.”
“Many in the international community are expressing outrage over this blatant example of religious intolerance,” Graham said. “I ask that our government do the same and demand that Pastor Saeed Abedini be released and allowed to return home to his wife and family in the United States.”
Graham said Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, is terrified to hear reports of her husband’s physical condition.
“Naghmeh worries that she and her two young children may never see Saeed again,” he told Fox News.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-26 01:49:322016-04-11 11:18:22Graham: Why is Obama Silent While Iran Tortures American Pastor? (+video)
Photo Credit: donkeyhotey Just days after saying the same thing in an interview at the Capital last Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham R-SC) again said in front of a friendly audience at a conference put on by the Christians United for Israel that he [will] introduce a resolution to authorize war with Iran.
“If nothing changes in Iran, come September, October, I will present a resolution that will authorize the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb,” Graham told the conference audience.
“The only way to convince Iran to halt their nuclear program is to make it clear that we will take it out,” he continues.
The National Iranian American Council came out today condemning Graham’s call to war.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-25 00:13:302016-04-11 11:18:26Lindsey Graham Says He Plans To Introduce An Authorization For The Use Of Military Force In Iran By Summers End
Photo Credit: YouTubeThe U.S. made a serious mistake by not responding more assertively to an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a bomb attack on a popular Washington restaurant, just-retired CENTCOM commander James Mattis said Saturday.
At an October 2011 press conference Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Iran’s government had attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel to arrange the killing of the Saudi official, Adel Al-Jubeir, while dining at Cafe Milano in Georgetown. An Iranian-American living in Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, and Iranian al-Quds force offifical Gholam Shakuri were charged with conspiring to carry out the bombing—which the U.S. officials said was headed off with the help of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency informant.
“When we finally caught them in the act of trying to kill Adel, we had a beleaguered attorney general, a fine man but beleaguered politically, stand up and give a legal argument that frankly I couldn’t understand,” Mattis said at the Aspen Security Forum. “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free.”
Without being specific, Mattis suggested Iran should have suffered some more serious consequence for being behind the alleged plot.
“Frankly, I‘m not sure why, again, they haven’t been held to account,” he said. “They have been basically not held to account….I don’t know why the attempt on Adel wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-22 03:35:292016-04-11 11:18:39Newly-Retired CENTCOM General Asks Why Iran was Allowed to Get Away With Assassination Attempt on US Soil (+video)
Photo Credit: APIran’s foreign ministry on Friday criticized the acquittal of George Zimmerman and chastised the United States for widespread “racial discrimination.”
“The acquittal of the murderer of the teenage African American once again clearly demonstrated the unwritten, but systematic racial discrimination against racial, religious, and ethnic minorities in the US society,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state run Fars News Agency.
“The court ruling has also seriously put under question the fairness of the judicial process in the United States,” Fars reported Araqchi as saying.
Iranian officials said that Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin should have been conducted in a more “accurate and fair” manner.
“Several months on since a probe was launched [into the murder], the public opinion in the U.S. and across the world expect transparency, an accurate and fair judicial investigation into the case, with due regard to human rights principles for American citizens and a ban on discrimination against minorities in the country,” Araqchi said.
Photo Credit: Yonatan SindelPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly to launch a new, last-ditch effort in the next few days to persuade the United States to credibly revive the military option against Iran.
If this proves unsuccessful, Channel 2 reported, Netanyahu will have to decide whether to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities by this winter at latest, because after that, the report indicated, the assessment is that Israel’s window for military intervention will close.
Israel desperately wants to see the Obama Administration harden its position on Iran immediately — to convey to Iran that if it does not halt its nuclear program, its regime will not survive. Instead, however, Jerusalem sees what it considers an overly tolerant and patient attitude by Washington DC to Tehran, the Channel 2 report said.
Next week, the P5+1 powers — the five UN Security Council members, plus Germany — are set to meet to coordinate positions ahead of possible talks with incoming Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s leadership. The fear in Jerusalem, the TV report said, is that Iran will prove capable of buying more time in such talks, while its centrifuges spin, its other nuclear facilities move forward, and it becomes too late for effective military intervention.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-14 01:55:552016-04-11 11:19:18Netanyahu to Obama: Attack Iran or We Will
A high Iranian politician believes the Syrian revolution could be the catalyst for sparking a worldwide conflagration that will usher in an era of Muslim domination of the world.
“One can smell from the crisis in Syria the coming … of the end of times and the coming of the last Islamic messiah,” said Ruhollah Hosseinian, a member of the Islamic regime’s parliament. Previously he was deputy of the Intelligence Ministry and a member of board of trustees of Islamic Revolution Document Center.
Shiites, whose clerics rule Iran with an iron fist, believe that at the end of times, the 12th Imam, Mahdi, a 9th century prophet, will reappear with Jesus Christ at his side, kill all the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world. Many analysts believe Iran is seeking nuclear capability to bring on that Armageddon.
Based on hadiths by Muhammad and his descendants, the Syrian revolution is a start to the coming of Mahdi, Hosseinian said in a speech quoted Thursday by Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards.
“Imam Sadegh (the Shiites’ 4th Imam) has stated, when the masters of the yellow flag (Lebanese Hezbollah) engage in a conflict with anti-Shiite elements in Damascus and Iranian forces join them, this is a sign and a prelude to the coming of his highness (Mahdi),” Hosseinian said. “We see that (now) the masters of the yellow flag are engaged with anti-Shiite groups in Damascus. Perhaps this is the event that promises the coming and that we must prepare ourselves.”
Iran will press ahead with its uranium enrichment program, its nuclear energy chief said on Friday, signaling no change of course despite the victory of a relative moderate in the June 14 presidential election.
Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization, said production of nuclear fuel would “continue in line with our declared goals. The enrichment linked to fuel production will also not change.”
Speaking through an interpreter to reporters at a nuclear energy conference in St Petersburg, Russia, he said work at Iran’s underground Fordow plant – which the West wants Iran to close – would also continue. Iran refines uranium at Fordow that is a relatively close technical step away from weapons-grade.
Iran says it is enriching uranium to fuel a planned network of nuclear energy power plants, and also for medical purposes.
But enriched uranium can also provide the fissile material for nuclear bombs if processed further, which the West fears may be Tehran’s ultimate goal.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-28 05:00:122013-06-28 05:00:12Iranian Official Signals No Scaling Back in Nuclear Activity
‘We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation,” President Obama declared on Wednesday, “but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” He’s right about the last point, because even as the President offers new dreams of U.S. nuclear disarmament, the world is entering a new proliferation age.
Mr. Obama returned this week to Berlin to give his long-promised speech laying out his plans to rid the world of nuclear weapons. His idea is to remove those weapons initially and primarily from American hands. North Korea and Iran each got a single line in his speech, which is at least more than he gave to China, which is investing heavily in the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Nukes in the hands of terrorists? Mr. Obama said he’ll hold a summit on that one in 2016.
Give Mr. Obama points for consistency. Since his college days at Columbia in the 1980s, he has argued for American disarmament and arms-control treaties. When he last issued a call for a nuclear-free world on European soil four years ago in Prague, the Norwegian Nobel Committee rewarded him with a peace prize.
This week he announced that the U.S. could “maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent” with a third fewer strategic nuclear weapons, or about 1,000 in all. He also called for “bold” cuts in tactical nukes in Europe without offering specifics, which suggests that was mostly for show.
He said he’ll work on reducing U.S. stockpiles through “negotiated cuts” with Russia. Whenever this Administration negotiates with Russia, beware. But there’s another danger. President Obama left the door open to unilateral U.S. reductions, possibly without Congressional approval.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-23 04:31:012013-06-23 04:31:01The Obama Age of Proliferation: While the President Dreams, Nuclear Weapons Spread
By Robert Fisk. Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.
For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.
The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.
In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.
America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’. Read more from this story HERE.
Lawmakers press Obama to implement no-fly zone over Syria
By Fox News. Capitol Hill lawmakers pressed President Obama on Sunday to go beyond supplying Syrian rebels with small arms and to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said supplying rebels with automatic weapons and ammunition is not enough to stop the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“We need to create a no-fly zone,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We cannot take air power out of the equation.”
However, such a decision is not without peril.
Obama has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone in Syria. Read more from this story HERE.
By Aaron Klein. Thousands of Syrians are currently training in Iran to serve as a force ready to storm Israel’s northern Golan Heights, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.
The officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian men were being trained in the event Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to open a front against the Golan Heights, which borders Syria.
The training is being overseen by the Al Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responsible for the country’s extraterritorial operations, the sources said.
The Syrian forces are slated to return to their country next month, the sources added.
This is not the first report of Iran aiding Syria in preparations for ground attacks against Israel. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-17 03:42:452013-06-17 03:42:45Syrian Powder Keg Getting Ready to Blow: Iran Sends Thousands of Troops, Assad Preps to Hit Israel, and Lawmakers Call for Greater US Involvement (+video)
Iran is working round the clock to enlarge its nuclear infrastructure with the eventual aim of developing an industry capable of building up to 30 bombs a year, an Israeli minister charged on Monday.
Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said Tehran was “very close” to crossing the red line laid out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year.
But he said it was biding its time and building uranium-enrichment facilities before making the final push for weapons-grade material.
“The Iranians are getting very close now to the red line… They have close to 200 kilos — 190 kilos (418 pounds) — of 20 percent enriched uranium,” Steinitz said.
“Once they have 250 kilos, this is enough to make the final rush to 90 percent,” the level of enrichment required for a nuclear warhead, he said in a presentation to the Foreign Press Association.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-11 04:22:242013-06-11 04:22:24Iran Eyes 30 Nuclear Bombs a Year: Israel Minister
