06-May-21: So will the injustice continue to be ignored?

From the Jerusalem Post paper edition, April 30, 2021

A story by Yonah Bob, a veteran journalist at the Jerusalem Post, published this past week pulls together some of the numerous strands of our efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice.

She's the Jordanian woman who freely admits to planting the bomb that destroyed the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. 

Our daughter Malki was one of the many children whose lives ended there that day.

In a piece entitled "Will Ahlam Tamimi be extradited from Jordan for the murder of Malki Roth?" and published in the paper's online edition (as well as in this past Friday's paper edition), Bob recounts the basic facts of the August 9, 2001 massacre orchestrated by Ahlam Tamimi, as well as the terrorism trial that followed at whose conclusion she was

sentenced to 16 full life terms in jail, but was released in 2011, as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange.

The narrative jumps forward to March 14, 2017 when the US government let it be known, while unsealing long-secret terrorism charges against Tamimi under US law ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"], that it had

issued a request for Tamimi’s extradition. The reason? Roth was not only Israeli, but American as well. Given that Jordan’s King Abdullah is heavily reliant on US military and economic assistance, quick compliance could have expected. Instead, what has followed according to Malki’s father, Arnold Roth, has been “an egregious failure of justice.”

If you follow this blog of ours, you are in a position to know how calling the Tamimi case and the kid-gloves treatment of Jordan a failure of justice is no exaggeration.

The Jerusalem Post story briefly looks at two of the largest roadblocks impeding the progress of efforts to see Tamimi brought in chains from her safe harbor in Jordan to face criminal charges in Washington DC. 

One is expressed this way:

Yes, the US has huge leverage over Jordan – but how hard does it want to push?

That raises complex political and geostrategic issues that, just as in real life, are hinted at in the article but barely discussed.

The second has to do with this peculiar twist:

...Jordan signed a treaty with the US decades ago. But shortly after the 2017 extradition request, a Jordanian court ruled that the parliament had never ratified it. So the court said the treaty was not in effect and the government was barred from extraditing Tamimi.

The Court of Cassation, Amman [Image Source]

The Jordanian position was expressed by its highest judicial forum, the Court of Cassation. In a 2017 decision handed down just six days after the criminal complaint against Tamimi was unsealed and announced in Washington, that court in Amman gave a single reason why, in Bob's words, the treaty was not in effect. It should have been ratified, the judges ruled. 

We wrote about this at the time: "20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"

And since the parliament did not ratify, the treaty - it was said - did not give Jordan a basis for complying with the US request for her to be handed over, allowing Tamimi herself, with the help of Aljazeera, to preposterously adopt the role of perplexed and misunderstood victim ["24-Mar-17: Our daughter's grinning killer is shocked the US is pursuing her and for no obvious reason"]

The ratification alibi is a claim that has never been made in a public way by any senior Jordanian official with the sole exception of its current deputy prime minister [we wrote about that too: "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"]. No one else - no Jordanian ambassador or other senior diplomat, no one speaking in the name of the Hashemite Royal Court - has ever addressed the issue for the record. 

It's almost as if they're too embarrassed. For just one reason, whatever the merits of the argument that Jordan's parliament never ratified the treaty after it was signed all those years ago, what's stopped them from doing it since then? No Jordanian source denies that they could simply ratify it this afternoon. Clearly there's something seriously disingenuous going on.

For its part, the United States has at all relevant times, right up until today, listed its 1995 Extradition Treaty with Jordan in the authoritative US catalogue of treaties it has with other countries. Check it out in the current and most recent online edition of "Treaties in Force" (sub-titled "A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2020"), a 570-page long PDF compiled and kept updated by the Treaty Affairs Staff, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State. 

The treaty with Jordan is listed there on page 245. The notation shows it was signed in Washington on March 28, 1995 and entered into force on July 29, 1995.

We don't know why reporters almost never refer to the Treaties in Force listing and ask the obvious questions. But the reality is they don't. Perhaps acknowledging that the treaty exists would lead to further questions which bring on discomfort and even more questions. 

Inside Jordan's parliament [Image Source]

The treaty exists. What's more, it has served as the basis for a series of extraditions by which Jordan willingly handed over fugitive Jordanian terrorists to the US. They were then put them on trial on US soil and US law and sent to US prisons. Yonah Bob's article names them.

With this in mind, you might expect a full-throated statement by senior US officials laying out a principled position. Something (we're making it up) along the lines of this:

"The United States, a supportive and generous strategic ally, believes Jordan has a clear and unambiguous obligation under our quarter-century old strategic agreement signed with His Majesty King Husssein, the revered late father of His Majesty King Abdullah II, today's king, to hand over to US justice the Jordanian fugitive who says she placed the bomb that killed so many innocents including two US nationals. Respectfully and in the name of our vital bilateral relations as well as justice, we expect Jordan to do this without further delay, thereby expressing honorable compliance with the principles that underpin our mutually beneficial alliance" and so on

but you would be disappointed. 

No US government voice has said anything like it. Not during the Obama presidency when the prosecution efforts got under way. And not during the four years of the Trump presidency when the criminal charge, sealed under conditions of strict secrecy in 2013, was finally unsealed in a blaze of welcome calls for justice to be done ["15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice"].

What can we expect now? The Jerusalem Post offers this guarded view:

If there is hope, it might be if either the Biden administration shows a greater readiness to confront Jordan than either the Obama or Trump administrations, or if a new potential [Israeli] prime minister, like Bennett takes an interest in the issue. The coming months will show whether Biden, Bennett or any other new face has an interest in the issue, or whether the injustice will continue.

Since this is about hope, there's room be optimistic. Stay tuned.

02-Feb-17: What's the US view of Iran's friendly-ties initiative and the nuclear-capable rockets it doesn't plan to use?

Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif [Image Source] There's

probably a simple reason for why he's laughing in so many

published news photos

There's some elaborate dancing going on as the US, Iran and Hamas make efforts to explain their relations with each another.

From a disturbing Reuters report published this afternoon:

Iran has tested a cruise missile called "Sumar" that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons in addition to test-firing a medium-range ballistic missile on Sunday, German newspaper Die Welt reported Thursday, citing unspecified intelligence sources... The newspaper said the Sumar cruise missile was built in Iran and traveled around 600 km in its first known successful test. The missile is believed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons and may have a range of 2,000 to 3,000 km, the paper said, citing intelligence sources... [T]he biggest advantage from Iran's point of view, a security expert told Die Welt, was that cruise missiles are not mentioned in any United Nations resolutions that ban work on ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons... Iran confirmed on Wednesday that it had test-fired a new ballistic missile, but said the test did not breach the Islamic Republic's nuclear agreement with world powers or a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the pact.

A nuclear agreement? As we (and others) keep saying there is no nuclear agreement. That's because the astoundingly ineffective JCPOA was never signed by the Iranians - deliberately. See "09-Sep-15: Figuring out what people have figured out about Iran and its nuclear plans" where we explain ourselves. But that's the undoubted bottom line: despite all the reportorial and editorial claims to the contrary, there is no signed agreement with Iran on its nuclear weapons program. And there almost certainly never will be.

What did happen, as the Reuters piece recounts, is that massive sanctions on the Iranians were lifted in January 2016 under the JCPOA in exchange for their agreeing to curb - such an ambiguous term - the Iranian nuclear program.

But according to the terms of a 2015 U.N. resolution endorsing the JCPOA, Iran

is still called upon to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years. [Reuters]

Aren't they the same as cruise missiles? No.

Cruise missiles are harder to counter than ballistic missiles since they fly at lower altitudes and can evade enemy radar, confounding missile defense missiles and hitting targets deep inside an opponent's territory... [Reuters]

Also yesterday, President Trump’s national security adviser announced in Washington that the US is putting Iran "on notice" for its ballistic missile test and warning of new sanctions:

Calling Iran a “destabilizing influence” in the Middle East, National Security Adviser Mike Flynn declared Wednesday: “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” The pronouncement marked a pivot away from the Obama administration’s policy of diplomatic engagement, which led to a 2015 multinational nuclear deal that has been denounced repeatedly by President Donald Trump and his aides. Iran has warned that new U.S. sanctions could constitute a violation of the nuclear deal, setting up a scenario in which the agreement could unravel—something that hardliners in both countries would welcome. Administration officials, while providing few specifics, said Mr. Trump has begun a process of reviewing current U.S. policy and is “considering a whole range of options,” including tougher sanctions. Asked if military force also was one of the options, the officials didn’t rule it out... “The important thing is here is that we’re communicating that Iranian behavior needs to be rethought by Tehran,” one senior official said. “That is something Tehran needs to think through, because we are considering these things in a different perspective.” Mr. Flynn said the latest missile launch was a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear deal and “called upon” Iran to avoid any activity related to missiles designed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads. ["Trump White House Puts Iran ‘On Notice’ After Missile Launch", Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2017

Iran's propaganda machine didn't see things that way and had already pushed back by Wednesday evening via FARS (often called a "semi-official" news agency of the Iranian regime), asserting that Iran's

missile program is legal as per International Law, has nothing to do with the nuclear deal, and is non-negotiable...  [and that] Washington's latest cat-and-mouse games with Tehran... seeks pretexts to decrease international pressures and condemnations following their thoughtless decision to ban Muslims and Syrian refugees from travelling to the United States... Missile tests are Iran’s inalienable right to defend its security and interests. No country or international body can have any say in this regard... Over the past decade, Iran has made steady and gradual advances in its missile development, pursuing advancement of its strategic missile capabilities with incremental increases in range and payload technology. Iran is developing all these defense capabilities through international cooperation, legal purchases, and indigenous development. As per International Law, nothing is wrong with that. Nothing at all. ["A Risky Proposition: Is Iran Ready to Drop Missile Defense?", FARS News Agency, February 1, 2017] 

So to what extent do the Iranians now see themselves as having to comply with American wishes? The answer suggested by the FARS article is: not so much:

Whatever one thinks of Iran, it has no ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons – unlike the United States, Israel, and their NATO allies. But it is always under constant military threat... [E]very now and then, the bloodthirsty warmongers reveal the real reason for viewing an Iranian missile defense capacity as unacceptable: The war against Iran is a risky proposition. Iranian ballistic missiles and military capabilities would prevent the US from attacking Iran at will. What scares the US is Iranian armed forces that have combat experience and a fighting doctrine of their own, able to take advantage of local and geographic factors, and design their combat style outside the traditional American box. That is what’s intolerable. [FARS]

We might be hearing more in the coming days about how intolerable US policy seems to the Iranians. Iran was

among seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens he barred from the U.S. in an executive order Friday the White House said is aimed at keeping terrorists from entering the country. [National Security Adviser] Flynn said agreements Iran has made with the Obama administration and the U.N. are “weak and ineffective.” “Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened,” he said... The senior U.S. officials briefing reporters on Mr. Flynn’s comments said the president at the moment doesn’t want “to take any action that would foreclose options or unnecessarily contribute to a negative response.” They also sought to separate the nuclear deal from U.S. concerns about Iran’s other actions such as ballistic missile tests. Tehran has maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful power generation and research, and that its missiles are conventional and for defensive purposes. [Wall Street Journal again]

A few hours ago, Bahram Qassemi who speaks for Iran's Foreign Ministry told interested parties that Flynn’s claims are “baseless, repetitive and provocative”. His statements appear in a report on the oddly-named Iranian PressTV website [here]:

Qassemi further expressed regret that instead of expressing gratitude for the Iranian nation’s continued anti-terror struggles, the US administration keeps leveling groundless accusations and adopting unwise policies, which practically promote terrorist groups... [He] further slammed as “inappropriate and discriminatory” Washington’s recent ban on the entry of travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations as well as refugees into the US [and] stressed that the Islamic Republic's regional policies are transparent, expressing Tehran’s keenness to have friendly ties with all regional states based on mutual respect and non-interference in their domestic affairs. ["US claims on Iran missile tests baseless, provocative: Foreign Ministry", PressTV, February 2, 2017]

If you're wondering how "Friendly ties with all regional states" translates into action, the jihadists of Hamas might have an answer.

Sami Abu Zuhri who, in addition to being an advocate for the usefulness of human shields, a groper of women, a sexual molestor of visiting reporters, a fan of slashing praying Jews to death in their synagogues and a one-time smuggling "mule" [all explained here], is one of Hamas' official spokes-thugs. He visited Algeria last weekend and while there was quoted [here] saying Hamas is keen to build "strong relations with all Arab and Islamic states, including Iran". Without giving any details, he said “Efforts and contacts are underway to boost relations with Iran and we hope we will achieve something positive”.

From here in Jerusalem, something positive is not the most likely of the outcomes we're expecting to see.

28-Jun-16: Is Iran now threatening more nuclear plotting?

Boroujerdi [Wikipedia]

Over at the Washington Free Beacon ["Iran Threatens to Restart Nuke Program", Adam Kredo, June 28, 2016] they are dissecting some Iranian moves that may produce an outbreak of red faces in numerous locations:

Iran on Tuesday threatened to restart its contested nuclear program in violation of last summer’s international agreement if the United States and other countries fail to move forward with a massive sanctions relief program aimed at bolstering the Iranian economy, according to comments by a top Iranian leader.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chair of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, warned that the Islamic Republic would “resume large-scale uranium enrichment” if leaders feel the international community is not doing enough for Iran under the nuclear deal.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s response to the other side’s non-compliance with the implementation of the nuclear deal will be uranium enrichment,” Boroujerdi was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-controlled press.
The comments come on the heels of a similar warning issued by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month. Khamenei expressed outrage over comments by Republican leaders criticizing the Islamic Republic’s commitment to the deal. “We do not violate the [nuclear deal], but if the opposite party violates it and tears it apart as the U.S. presidential candidates state and threaten at present, then we will burn it,” Khamanei was quoted as saying. [Washington Free Beacon, today]

Boroujerdi has been chairman of the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security of Iran's Islamic Consultative Assembly, the national parliament of Iran, according to Wikipedia, for the past eleven years. He's no side-show performer.

Almost a year ago, we posted here ["29-Jul-15: Built not on trust but on... verification"] about the odd and strikingly inaccurate ways in which the mainstream media was reporting on the exquisitely named Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, described by President Obama as a deal not built on trust, but on verification [watch]. 

Iran's foreign minister Zarif strikes a classic pose while
taking a break from talks with the Obama
administration in Vienna last July [Image Source]

We, but not the State Department, not the White House, not AFP, not Washington Post, not Times of India, not Deutsche Welle/German Radio, not Los Angeles Times, not The National (UAE), not USA Today, and not a host of other media channels, said (a) it's not an agreement, (b) it's not signed, and (c) Iran sees it as not binding on Iran. 

We, and none of the above, quoted a senior Iranian regime figure who said in blunt language back then what almost everyone in the West was trying hard, via omissions and mis-statements, to obscure:

[Discussing what president Obama has called snapback and "real consequences"] "Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the country will be able to “immediately” reverse its commitments under a final nuclear deal with world powers if it finds out that the other side has breached commitments under the [JCPOA]... Whenever Iran feels the other side has not honored its commitments, the “reversibility” of Tehran’s nuclear program will happen immediately, he said." [Tasnim News Agency, Iran, July 28, 2015]

Has that happened? Washington Free Beacon thinks so. For now, they and the rest of us can do little more right than watch closely and stay abreast of sources (like this one).

And remind ourselves that the Iranians have said from the outset that this was part of their plan.

26-Jun-16: Confirmed: How US actions emboldened and empower the terrorists of Hezbollah

The foreign ministers of the Islamic Republic of Iran
and the United States of America, together at a gathering
in Oslo eleven days ago [Image Source]

In a public speech broadcast on Friday and reported the following day, ["In first, Hezbollah confirms all financial support comes from Iran", Al Arabiya, June 25, 2016], the supreme head of the Lebanon-based terror organization Hezbollah made several revelations that ought to have an impact on how the world views the Iranian menace.

Figuring out who the terrorists are and what to do about them is, as we keep saying here, not such a straightforward thing. 

Hezbollah illustrates the point: it is formally classified as a terrorist organization by the Arab League, all the monarchic Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), United States, France, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Israel. 

On the other hand, the European Union, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have decided they view only its so-called military wing as terrorist; the rest of they are presumably OK with. Russia says Hezbollah is legitimate and China "remains neutral" [source; Wikipedia]. 

It's hard not to be deeply cynical about how diplomats and politicians, aware and informed of what the terrorists are doing with their improbably vast arsenal - currently estimated at  an astounding 150,000 rockets and ramping up - play games with people's lives.

Key points made in Hassan Nasrallah's Friday speech:

• All its funding and all its arms come from the Islamic Republic of Iran...
• And therefore US and other Hezbollah-directed sanctions will have no impact. 
• "We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran..."
• "As long as Iran has money, we have money..." 
• "Just as we receive the rockets that we use to threaten Israel, we are receiving our money. No law will prevent us from receiving it."

This is startling in its bluntness. (As far as we know, no one from the White House or the State Department has responded to it yet.) 

The Al Arabiya report reminds us that Iran was instrumental in creating Hezbollah - oriented, like Iran, to the Shi'ite strand of Islam - 1982. Iran’s financial, military, intelligence, logistical and advisory help to Hezbollah has "well known" in the years since. Iran's Revolutionary Guard along with its Quds "elite" force transformed Hezbollah to become one of Iran’s most important and powerful regional and international proxies. 

So now we have public confirmation from an unimpeachable source that Hezbollah terror is fully funded, fully enabled and fully equipped by the money and the arsenal of Iran. As the principal beneficiary of Iran's tender attentions, there's no room for doubt on the matter. For perfectly understandable Arab/Iran reasons, Al Arabiya makes some effort to clarify how the actions of the current United States administration play into this Iran/Hezbollah reality. 

An American law, the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, went into effect on December 18, 2015. It ambitiously targets banks and financial institutions that facilitate money transactions for Hezbollah. Its existence is probably one of the factors that brought the Hezbollah fuehrer to make his speech.

But the reality is that a very different US foreign policy initiative, the JCPOA is achieving pretty much the exact opposite effect. In the words of the Al Arabiya article

the US is now seemingly playing a critical role in assisting and facilitating the ways through which Hezbollah receives this significant aid from the Iranian government. The Obama administration and Hassan Rouhani ’s government were two key players in getting the nuclear agreement signed. When the nuclear terms started being implemented, the Obama administration began immediately transferring billions of dollars to Iran's Central Bank. One of the payments included 1.7 billion dollars transferred, in January 2015. Two of the major primary beneficiaries of these sanctions reliefs and flow of money are Hezbollah and the IRGC. Iran also immediately increased its military budget by $1.5 billion... Nasrallah’s speech also indicates that the US money transfer to Iran’s bank and the sanctions reliefs appear to have empowered and emboldened both the Iranian government and the Hezbollah leader… Thanks to Washington, the money that Iran is receiving from the US or the market is again going on its way to Hezbollah, the major benefactor.

If you're not deeply concerned about what this means and how it happened, you might not understand what terrorism does to civilized societies. And if you think it's a problem that impacts only Israel, you might not understand the Iranian game-plan. Here's a little suggested homework:

• 21-May-16: Darker sides of the JCPOA, the agreement that never was, emerge
• 25-Aug-15: Hard to ignore how much Iran believes its old goals are the right goals
• 29-Jul-15: Built not on trust but on... verification [a key document]
• 29-May-15: Wary eyes on Hezbollah's Cyprus and Southern Lebanon battlefields
• 01-Apr-15: More under-reported aspects of the Iranian reality
• 8-Oct-13: Neither a state nor a government, Hezbollah has a phenomenally large missile arsenal and means to attack

29-May-16: An ally in the fight against terror and the questions that don't get asked

Allies and partners in defeating the jihadists: Abdullah II
and Obama [Image Source]

The sale of one of the world's major repositories of news photographs recently means that it has suddenly gotten a lot harder (we discovered just today) to locate many archived images of news events from the recent past.

This is relevant to us. (Us meaning Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem. Read on.)

We are passionate about wanting people to be aware of some of the less-well-publicized aspects of terrorism and what it means when it's done to you.

Three news photos were published in October 2011 that recorded an event connected to our lives but basically unknown to almost anyone else.

In October 2011, the notorious chief engineer of our daughter's murder, sentenced a few years earlier to sixteen terms of life imprisonment with a recommendation from the judges that she never be considered for parole, was set free by Israel.

The following day, she arrived in another country where most of her family had lived since before she was born (and still lives). She herself was born there. Joyously received as a returning hero, she was greeted with pomp, ceremony and emotion at a gala reception in the Family Court of that country, located in its capital city.

The on-line photos we mentioned above that record the reception in the court house may be the only evidence that it happened. Now, with the sale to a Chinese firm of the major news photo archive that housed them, that evidence will inevitably become hard to find. That is a great pity because those pictures reveal something worth knowing.

Before going into the background, please notice that we have just posted those pictures at the foot of this article. We have mentioned them numerous times in this blog. It's important they be seen. People need to appreciate the painful and damaging double-talk that is integral to the global conversation about terrorism.

Here's the back-story. Our daughter Malki, a beautiful and accomplished 15 year old, was murdered in a horrifyingly effective terrorist attack done by Hamas on a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001. The attack's chief planner and engineer - and also, in a literal sense, the bomber - was a young woman of 21, a university student and a news-reader on television. She was soon arrested, tired and convicted. A panel of three judges in an Israeli court sentenced her to several lifetimes behind bars.

In front of the judges, she boasted of her central role in the killings, admitting everything, denying nothing. She grinned and gloated at the death toll. She declared that sooner or later she would walk free.

Sadly, these were prophetic words. This confessed multi-murderer lives a charmed life of total freedom today, living in a city a mere 90 minutes drive from us in a country that enjoys good diplomatic relations with the United States and with virtually all of Europe. It has relations as well, not warm but nonetheless proper and ongoing, with Israel.

That country is Jordan. 

Jordan says it is opposed to terrorism and to terrorists. As we noted here three months ago, the State Department of the United States agrees vigorously. In its annual survey of the war against terror, State singles out the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for special praise. The most recent edition of "Country Reports on Terrorism", an annual survey published in Washington, said this in June 2015:

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL... and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts... Jordanian prisons have a religiously based de-radicalization program that seeks to re-engage violent extremist inmates into the non-violent mainstream of their faith.

We don't make foreign policy, and to state it mildly we have different priorities. We don't understand the State Department's enthusiasm for its Jordanian key ally and model partner. In addition, we are appalled [as we noted in "18-Feb-15: Countering Vacuous Euphemisms"] by the vague and cloudy view expressed by key State Department people on terrorism. Plainly, we feel more invested in the issues at a personal level than many US government officials do. That's human nature. We tried to convey a sense of how that works in this post: "14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance".

Gloating, inciting, seriously happy: The homicidal 
engineer of the Sbarro massacre and proud murderer 
of our 15 year old daughter, Malki Roth
[Image Source: Screen shot from this MEMRI video]

How opposed is Jordan to terror? Frankly, it's a very selective kind of opposition.

Sometimes - certainly not always - it acts like a government that holds a tough, uncompromising view of terror and its practitioners. We took a look at how that works, for instance, in another blog post of ours last year: "04-Feb-15: The stunningly different fates of two terrorists in Jordan and what they reveal about how the war against terror is going".

We described there how the Jordanians had hanged a female terrorist that week. and we said:

Regular readers of this blog know about another Jordanian female, an ex-prisoner, also a terrorist, with a different fate: Ahlam al-Tamimi. Unlike Mrs al-Rishawi who was hanged today, Mrs al-Tamimi is a Jordanian, born, bred, educated and (following an 11 year-period spent outside Jordan) now living with her husband/cousin, in Jordan.
Tamimi has never spent time in any Jordanian prison, and never will. Quite the opposite: she was honored with a reception in Jordan's Family Court in October 2011 when she returned home... She has her own weekly television program... recorded in Jordan by her friends and employers in the Hamas terror organization and beamed throughout the world on the Al-Quds TV Network. And she is free to travel throughout the Arab world which it seems she does often, giving lectures and being an honoured guest...
Tamimi has over and again confessed [via this video interview, among numerous other instances] freely, proudly and happily to the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 for the engineering of which she was convicted. She was sentenced to 16 life terms in prison with a judicial recommendation that she live the rest of her life behind bars with no possibility of a commutation of sentence.
That is not how it worked out. She was one of 1,027 terrorists set free in the extortion-driven 2011 Gilad Shalit Israel/Hamas transaction, despite a campaign we personally waged for years. We urged our government to stand firm, to not give in, to keep this particular sociopath behind bars so that justice could be done... Today she is a globally-influential instigator of jihadist terror - an icon of hatred.
What Jordan - a sovereign state at least half of whose population defines itself as Palestinian Arab, and ruled by a dynastic family from Saudi Arabia - ought to do with its terrorists is emphatically not our concern. Jordan's laws that purportedly outlaw terrorism... don't get the critical attention in the West that they richly deserve.

Actually, there's a lot about Jordan that doesn't get scrutinized. And should. 

We wish there was wider public awareness of what a congenial environment Jordan has given the woman who masterminded the murder of our daughter. Since returning to Amman in 2011, the authorities there have allowed her to operate unhindered. The examples are many: she is permitted to speak as an honored guest at its universities, its professional guilds, its law courts and a laundry list of additional venues. She records her own heavily-promoted weekly television program in Jordan's capital city; from there, its toxic message in praise of the power of murder is beamed to millions of Arabic-speaking households throughout the world. 

Thanks to Jordan's indulgence and acquiescence in the process, the convicted and unrepentant murderer of our child has become a world-class pan-Arab celebrity. It could never have happened without their ongoing co-operation.

She was the first female to join the ranks of Hamas terrorists, later graduating to become an eloquent figure advocating energetically - from Jordan to the world - for more violence, more murder and more jihad - all of it, let there be no doubt, directed at Jewish and Israeli targets. Inciting via television and a range of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and well-publicized personal appearances, she is one of the most widely-recognized, very public faces of the savage Islamist bigotry of Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood.

People ought to know more about her.

En route to the Family Court, the woman convicted of engineering
the Sbarro pizzeria massacre

and convicted on 15 counts of murder including the killing of our daughter Malki

and busy today inciting more and more acts of murder (The two images above were
snapped at the Family Court in Jordan too)

The news report of which the three photos above from the Family Court of Jordan in Amman are a part is now accessible at this archive location. That's important because both the report and these photos can no longer be found via a regular Google search. 

People wanting to understand how the war against the jihadists is going should (we suggest) now be asking these Jordan-centric questions: 

1. Which other key ally and model partner of the United States honors its terrorists via fancy receptions in its official courts of law? (And no one should be misled into thinking the US authorities don't know.)
2. What real messages are those partners and allies conveying to their masses - and especially to their children and adolescents and unemployed young men and women - when they do it? 
3. Why can't an autocratic state (Jordan) that is part of the coalition against the jihadists stop the torrent of bigotry, barbarism and calls to murder that their inaction empowers this woman to issue forth? (It's not credible to suggest, as some have, that the Jordanian authorities don't know. She's one of the kingdom's best known, most publicized citizens.)
4. Why are we, the parents of a teenage girl murdered by a fanatical agent of jihad, among a very small group of voices being heard (and mostly ignored) exposing and decrying this appalling state of affairs?

21-May-16: Darker sides of the JCPOA, the agreement that never was, emerge

Aspirational J Street: Changing the world is an
expensive undertaking [Image Source]

In the US world of liberal public radio, there's considerable agitation in reports emerging yesterday (like "Did $100K grant to NPR help sell Iran nukes deal?" from the website of an NPR affiliate) that large swags of cash were instrumental in the process of making that pro-JCPOA echo chamber of which Ben Rhodes recently boasted. 

It turns out NPR got $100,000 of that, which is making some people in NPR's world uncomfortable and for good reason. How do you do an honest job when someone is sending you cash to do it in a specific way?

But compared with some others, NPR got chickenfeed.

Ploughshares Fund, one of the "outsourcing" agencies (that's our word, not his) Rhodes explicitly mentioned in that famous NYT Magazine interview, is described in a Friday report ["Group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media", Associated Press] as being really proud of the role it played:

Ploughshares boasts of helping to secure the deal. While success was "driven by the fearless leadership of the Obama administration and supporters in Congress," board chairwoman Mary Lloyd Estrin wrote in the annual report, "less known is the absolutely critical role that civil society played in tipping the scales towards this extraordinary policy victory." The 33-page document lists the groups that Ploughshares funded last year to advance its nonproliferation agenda.

If the name is not already familiar, there's some background in a Wall Street Journal piece from last year that explains how Ploughshares Fund was part of a behind-the-scenes White House strategy designed to "help overcome opposition to an Iran nuclear agreement". Ploughshares is

a San Francisco group started in the 1980s to resist nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The nonprofit group has invested more than $7 million in the past four years in think tanks, media organizations and activist groups focused on championing diplomacy with Iran. The Ploughshares coalition includes a former Iranian government spokesman, the liberal Jewish organization J Street and a group of former American diplomats who have held private talks with Iranian government officials.,, ["Barack Obama Ramps Up Lobbying on Iran as Deadline Looms", Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2015]

Its website states its goals in admirably succinct terms:

How do we do it? By funding organizations and people who promote the elimination of nuclear weapons, prevent the emergence of new nuclear states, and build regional peace.

Who else got some of those Ploughshares payments? According to AP

• National Iranian American Council: $281,000
• The Arms Control Association: $282,500
• Brookings Institution, $225,000
• Atlantic Council, $182,500 

among others.

But, as far as we can tell from the reports, one group scored more than twice the amount any other did: 

"J-Street, the liberal Jewish political action group, received $576,500 to advocate for the deal." [AP]

If J Street (of whom we asked some JCPOA-related questions a few months back here) has explained this yet, we're not aware of it. It's not one of those achievements that people proud of their work ought to hide, you might think. Especially if regional peace is part of what it achieved. (We're not clear on which region.)

By the way, all the talk - yet again - of a deal or an agreement or a treaty or something signed with the Iranians is seriously misleading, as we explained in "29-Jul-15: Built not on trust but on... verification". Nothing was signed with them, and that's a deliberate part of Iran's strategy.

09-May-16: How we got into this incredible mess with the Iranians and who engineered it

Leaders of the US negotiating team: Secretary of
State John Kerry, Energy Secretary  Ernest Moniz
[Image Source]

Plenty of Israelis and friends of Israel are still furious about the way an agreement-that-is-no-agreement was pushed through the US legislature last summer, delivering a stunning victory to the malevolent Iranian regime. (Click on JCPOA for our earlier commentary.)

Two things have happened in the past couple of days that reinforce the very deep misgivings that the Iran Nuclear Enablement Deal™ has caused us to feel.

The deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, gave an explicit and none-too-polite warning to the U.S. and its allies in the region via an interview aired by Iran's Channel 1 TV last Tuesday, May 3, 2016. The translation from Parsi is from MEMRI whose indispensable coverage of Iran and the Arabic-speaking world fills a hole that no news-reporting organization fills.

Here's what Iran's senior warrior said in Parsi:

If the US or its allies threatened Iran, Iran would prevent their vessels from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will take whatever steps are necessary. "The [Americans] believe that our navy is dangerous. Indeed, that is true. In my view, this is the first time that the Americans have assessed the might of our navy correctly. If the Americans want to level threats against us, we can be very dangerous to them, as we have declared. They are aware of our tremendous might. We have increased and expanded our naval might, in order to overcome the military might of superpowers like America... After all, we have no other enemy in the region except for America. The other countries and governments are not our enemies, and we are not theirs. Of course, they do not even have the potential to be our enemy.

Watching the Iranian deliver the message is a blood-chilling experience.

Iran's foreign minister Zarif, Vienna [Image Source] 

In our estimation, this week's disclosure of how the Obama administration pulled off the astonishing feat of an unsigned understanding with an avowed enemy bent on creating an active nuclear arsenal is at least as chilling, and in some ways more dangerous. It's also based on an interview, this time of a civil servant in the Obama administration with the unlikely job title "Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting".

No, this is not a joke.

His name is in the title of a long essay published today by The Federalist, called "Ben Rhodes Reveals How Obama Duped America Into The Dangerous Iran Deal". The author is David Reaboi, Here's an extract:

Obama—with the help of an equally arrogant 38-year-old national security fabulist, Ben Rhodes (with whom he’s said to “mind-meld”)—succeeded in remaking the Middle East to empower America’s most hated enemy, the only United Nations member state committed to the annihilation of another state: the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran. Rhodes and Obama knew that, for anyone but the hard-left to accept a deal with America’s bitter enemy in Tehran, a new narrative needed to emerge, even if it was relatively transparent nonsense. As Rhodes explained to his bemused interviewer, David Samuels, in a New York Times Magazine profile this weekend, it was first necessary to lie to a corrupted and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things, beginning with the nature and intentions of the enemy Iranian regime. Subsequent lies were caked on, as the White House took advantage of a dangerous mix of journalists’ ignorance, their ideological and partisan commitment to the administration, and, finally, their career aspirations. Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies. 

If the account is right, all of us need to be walking around with the idea in our heads that, when it serves the political interests of powerful people, even the powerful people in the White House, recruiting useful idiot reporters is an actual strategy.

When we all get past the Iran fiasco safe and well, we need to think through what it means for democratic societies that turning reporters at the most influential media outlets into ignorant but motivated agents in the service of manufactured lies was done, has been done and is being done in the Western world's most powerful places.

Then think about this Iranian regime insider called Salami and how much fun he and his colleagues in Tehran must have had as they pulled off last year's deal. And ponder this earlier public statement of his that we quoted in July 2015: "The Americans have always resorted to bullying because they lack diplomatic skills..."

20-Apr-16: Actions, words and honor in the dangerously complicated Middle East

The Getty Images photo from this morning in Riyadh shows the US president
shaking hands with Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdelaziz al-Saud,
Governor of Riyadh, as he arrives at King Khalid International Airport
in the Saudi capital

The president of the United States flew into Saudi Arabia today (Wednesday) for a brief visit. Mostly, it's about a one-on-one meeting with Saudi's absolute ruler, King Salman. But there's something else at work here for those sufficiently astute to notice it.

The background, rather well known in this part of the world, is the matter of stresses, strains and surprising changes in the relations that prevail between the US and the Saudis.

The triggers for the tensions are (a) Obama's stunning redesign on how Washington sees Iran, with massively negative reverberations for Israel and (b) the zig-zagging US policy in relation to the country formerly known as Syria -but today who knows?

Here's the description of today's Salman/Obama encounter as reported by an American network, ABC News:

Under crystal chandeliers, the Saudi monarch greeted Obama in a grand foyer at Erga Palace, where the two walked slowly to a reception room as the small of incense wafted. The two offered polite smiles as they sat down side by side for pictures at the start of their two-hour private meeting. "The American people send their greetings and we are very grateful for your hospitality, not just for this meeting but for hosting the GCC-U.S. summit that's taking place tomorrow," Obama said, referring to the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council summit. King Salman offered similarly gracious words for the president, who is paying his fourth trip here for face-to-face meetings and photos with royal rulers since becoming president. "The feeling is mutual between us and the American people," the king said through a translator.
The president was slated to spend little more than 24 hours in the Saudi capital before heading on to visits to London and Hannover, Germany.

Notice anything unusual there? No, neither did we until we saw a memo from Dr Harold Rhode a few hours ago.

We first quoted Dr Rhode in this blog two years ago ["06-Oct-14: Oh Jerusalem"] when he noticed what most others didn't about the backsides of Muslim worshipers praying outdoors on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. We won't quote his observation here but please click to see what he wrote. His insightful comments may add to your day. They did to ours.

Dr Rhode is an astute and uncommonly well-informed observer of life in the Islamic world, Serving as a professor of Islamic history at the University of Delaware in the early eighties, his career evolved into being an expert on the Islamic world for the US government. Between 1994 and 2010, he advised on Islamic Affairs in the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's think-tank.

Dr Rhode evidently saw reports of the Obama visit to the Saudis earlier today, including these unobtrusive lines:

Dressed in a grey suit, Obama emerged at 1:14 pm (10:14 GMT) and descended the steps of Air Force One onto a red carpet at the Saudi capital’s King Khalid International Airport. Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz, the governor of Riyadh, greeted him. Unusually, Saudi state news channel Al-Ekhbaria did not broadcast Obama’s arrival, as it had done during his last visit – more than a year ago – to pay respects after the death of King Salman’s predecessor King Abdullah... [Agence-France Press, today]

Dr Rhode's observations (unpublished, as far as we know) are:

In the Middle East, actions speak louder than words. Direct verbal confrontation is frowned upon, so we must look to actions to understand what message people wish to convey. It is in this context that we must understand how deeply the Saudis humiliated Obama today by sending a lower-ranking official. Protocol would demand that the King to greet Obama, because Obama is a fellow Head of State. Thus, the Saudis signaled that they are humiliating Obama, both to the Middle East and the Muslim world in general. No words are necessary. Everyone there got the message.

Everyone got the message? Dr Rhode again:

I wonder whether the American officials responsible for Saudi Affairs understood this as a insult.  After all so much seems to go over their heads.

Later today, the Obama/Salman
get-together [Image Source]

AFP's reporting today focuses on the fence-mending character of today's tete-a-tete. They remind readers that the White House is emphasising "the strength of an alliance that has endured more than 70 years... [and] seeking to minimise the frictions."

But there's another side to this as Dr Rhode noted. AFP chooses to explain that via Mustafa Alani, a senior adviser to the Gulf Research Center. whom they quote today saying the Obama presidency has been “100 percent negative” for the region, a legacy of “keeping his distance.”

Obama met with Salman in Saudi Arabia  ["Obama Seeks to Bolster Ties With Saudi Arabia", Voice of America, January 27, 2015] at the state funeral of the previous ruler, the present king's half-brother, 15 months ago. At that distant time, King Salman

led an honor guard of senior Saudi princes and officials to greet the Obamas as they disembarked, including the crown prince and deputy crown prince and the kingdom's veteran oil minister Ali al-Naimi... 

Today's meeting of the two is likely to be the last formal meeting of the two heads of state during the Obama presidency. Given the difficulties the American side seem to be having with reading the map, this might not be so bad.