Behind the Fog of War in Ukraine, Biden & Co. Prepare the Way for Iran to Get The Bomb

 David Weinberg agrees that war in the Ukraine is a very important issue. But he sees the upcoming agreement of the P5+1 powers with Iran, a "deal" allowing the ayatollahs to pursue their nuke bomb program, an ever greater danger to world peace and stability.

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SO, YES, UKRAINE is a big story, and Putin is a menace to Western stability. But I will argue here that allowing Iran to march merrily forward with its nuclear bomb and ballistic missile programs and its hegemonic regional ambitions is an even worse threat to world security, and certainly to Israel’s security.

The about-to-be signed nuclear deal with Iran is “shorter and weaker” than president Barack Obama’s bad 2015 deal with the ayatollahs. The old/new deal maintains soon-coming sunset clauses; does not guarantee IAEA supervision of Iranian nuclear installations “anywhere and anytime”; and does not give global powers the actual ability to activate the “snapback mechanism,” which allowed president Donald Trump to reimpose sanctions.

It will whitewash all of Iran’s nuclear program violations to date (like enriching uranium to the 60% level) and allow Iran to keep its advanced centrifuges. It will pave a certain path for Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb in the coming years.

Reportedly, the just-round-the-corner agreement also lacks any mechanisms that will force Iran to engage in additional negotiations over a “longer and stronger” deal before the old/new deal expires – something the Biden administration had promised to Israel and the American public when it set out its goals.

Chillingly, the deal also will grant Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, allowing Tehran to rehabilitate its economy and continue funding its terrorist proxies and hegemonic aggressions. Instead of reimposing maximum economic pressure and building a credible military threat against Iran, Biden is surrendering to Iran.

See more of this article in the Jerusalem Post of 24 February 2022.

Biden Pressured the Ukraine on Another Matter -- to Vote against Israel

New Material added 10-12-2019
When Biden pressured Ukraine 
to vote against Israel after the 
2016 presidential election [here]

Senator Joe Biden --a Democrat-- is at the center of an energetic effort by his party's members of the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump. The impeachment effort focuses on a phone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the new president of the Ukraine. Without reviewing the Democrats' charges against Trump, we point out that President Trump and his supporters such as Rudy Giuliani, former US Attorney in New York City and former mayor of New York, have accused Biden of pressuring the previous Ukrainian leadership --before Zelensky's election-- to dismiss a prosecutor who was investigating a Ukrainian company, Burisma, an energy company, in which Biden's son, Hunter Biden, sat on the board of directors. Now just how and why it came to be that Biden Junior was appointed to the Board of a Ukrainian energy concern when he had little or no expertise in the energy field [oil and gas, etc] nor did he know the Ukrainian or Russian languages, is a matter of great and relevant curiosity. Maybe somebody at the company, Burisma, thought that having the younger Biden on the Board would give the company or maybe the government of Ukraine, a certain influence in Washington on policy making in the energy field or in regard to Burisma in particular or in favor of the Ukrainian government of that time, approximately 2014-2016. Young Biden was supposed to be paid $50,000 per month by Burisma for his services on the Board.

An interesting question. And did Joe Biden pressure the Ukrainian govt to dismiss a prosecutor investigating Burisma? Biden did boast about successfully pressuring or intimidating or blackmailing the Ukrainian leadership of the time in a public speech which was delivered, as far as I know, before the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential and prestigious US organization. A video on the internet shows Biden boasting of his successful extortion of the Ukrainian govt: I gave them six hours [to dismiss the offending prosecutor or US loan guarantees in the amount of $1.5 billion would be withheld].

Interesting questions but be they as they may, I intend now to show that Biden applying pressure on the Ukraine was his practice in his capacity as President Obama's designated liaison between his administration and the Ukrainian govt. Hence Biden was in a good position to apply pressure on the Ukraine and indeed he was responsible for dealing with the Ukraine under Obama and thus his relations with the country had a certain official status.

In fact, in the last month of Obama's presidency in 2016 late in December, Biden served his boss, Obama, in threatening the Ukraine on another matter, the UN Security Council res. 2334, which was a very anti-Israel resolution, essentially saying that Jews/Israelis had no right to live across the 1949 Green Line, even in Jerusalem in places, neighborhoods, where Jews had lived before 1947. This episode seems to support the Trump-Giuliani version of events.

My post on Biden and Obama's role in pressuring the Ukraine on UN SC res. 2334 is here.

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What a Ukrainian member of parliament & former Ukrainian security chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, said in the WSJ about the Biden-Trump Affair

Serious allegations have been made in the U.S. and Ukraine, including that Ukrainian government officials and organizations assisted Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 and that Burisma, a major Ukrainian gas company, hired Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, for cynical purposes. Regardless of the implications of these charges within American politics, Ukraine has a responsibility to investigate them completely and transparently.

First, as I have insisted for more than two years, we must resolve the allegation that Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If we find that Ukrainian laws were broken, the perpetrators here must be prosecuted swiftly, to the fullest extent of the law.

Second, Ukraine must resolve the allegations regarding Burisma. As the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, our version of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, I know there are many accusations of corruption against this company.

It isn’t clear whether Ukrainian officials meddled in the American election, but Parliament must find out. We also do not know if Hunter Biden was complicit in Burisma’s alleged corruption, or why he was appointed to the board of a Ukrainian company. The allegation that Burisma arranged its relationship to the younger Mr. Biden by donating to a U.S. think tank is merely a small part of the larger question about its activities.

[Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 10, 2019]

Obama's IRS Discriminated against Pro-Jewish, Pro-Israel & Conservative Non-Profit Organizations

Additional info
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The United States is supposed to be the land of a free marketplace of ideas. The freedoms of speech and press are very broad in the United States compared to the major European countries, for instance. And the Internal Revenue Service [IRS] is supposed to give tax exemption to non-profit groups or bodies advocating for any sort of ideological or political or social position.

However, the Obama Administration clearly did not believe in the free marketplace of ideas. It discriminated, surreptitiously to be sure, against a variety of pro-Israel and conservative bodies. One such group was Z Street which found out that its application for tax exemption was being deliberately held up by the IRS under instructions from Washington. We present below an exposition by Z Street founder, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, of the development of her group's case until finally overcoming IRS obstruction:

It took seven years for Z Street to learn the truth about why our tax-exempt status was delayed.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus -- Wall Street Journal,

1 February 2018 [here]

The first IRS viewpoint discrimination case to be filed, Z Street v. IRS, has been settled, with disturbing revelations about how the Internal Revenue Service treated pro-Israel organizations applying for tax-exempt status.

I founded Z Street in 2009 to educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel’s defense against terror. We applied for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code in December 2009—a process that usually takes three to six months.

Instead, the application languished. In late July 2010, an IRS agent truthfully responded to our lawyer’s query about why processing was taking so long: Z Street’s application was getting special scrutiny, the agent said, because it was related to Israel. Some applications for tax-exempt status were being sent to a special office in Washington for review of whether the applicants’ policy positions conflicted with those of the Obama administration.

So in August 2010 we sued the IRS for violating Z Street’s constitutional rights, including the First Amendment right to be free from viewpont discrimination—government treatment that differs depending on one’s political position. [article in WSJ continues here] [also see here on Z Street website]
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Additional info
2-7-2018 See Jonathan Tobin here.