The Lost Spring: U.S. Policy in the Middle East

by Walid Phares • July 3, 2014 at 5:00 am

The decision had already been made a year ago that a deal would be cut with the Iranian regime. If one has a deal, one is not going to enter into a war with the allies of the Ayatollah, such as Syria. That would kill the deal.

These advisors and the pro-Iranian lobby in Washington are not made up only of Iranians. They are made of financial interest groups. For all these years there has been the idea that if we cut a deal with the Iranian regime, they will stabilize Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

When the Iranians moved in to Syria, Hezbollah moved in. When both moved in, Al-Qaeda moved in. That was the end of civil demonstrations.

The current Middle East policy tracks are in the papers of the academics who are advising the administration. All one has to do is go to the libraries and read what the advisors have been writing for so many decades and then deduce the current policy.

We were in Iraq. By looking at a map, one can understand that by being in Iraq, the U.S. served as a wall, disconnecting Iran from going into Syria.

President Obama waves to the crowd attending his June 2009 speech in Cairo. The White House invited Muslim Brotherhood representatives to sit in the front row. (Image source: The White House)

As soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, the West in general, and America in particular were targeted by the jihadist movements. Some consisted of Al‑Qaeda and the Taliban, and others consisted of a different type of jihadism: the Iranian regime.

At the time of the USSR's collapse, the American public knew about Iranian and Hezbollah threats. There had been attacks on American targets since the early 1980s -- such as those in Beirut, Lebanon, and the Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia -- by America's Iranian "allies."

What Americans did not know much about, however, were jihadist Salafi movements – even after two declarations of war by Osama bin Laden: the first in 1996, and again in 1998. If Bin Laden's first declaration of war was not clear, his second statement was -- a 29‑minute‑long speech in Arabic, publicized on Al Jazeera.

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UK: Fundamentalist Fun and Games

by Samuel Westrop • July 3, 2014 at 4:30 am

Sahib Bleher and his Islamic Party of Britain [IPB], like many, seem happy to contradict themselves publicly -- possibly in the hope that where there is contradiction, there is uncertainty; and where there is uncertainty, there is room for fundamentalists to claim victimization at the hands of their supposedly "Islamophobic" critics, while at the same time reassuring their Islamist supporters that their dogma has not been cut back.

Muhammad ibn Adam Al-Kawthari calls for the stoning of adulterers, claims it is permissible for a husband to rape his wife, and tells Muslims to push Christians and Jews out of the way while walking in the street. (Image source: YouTube video screenshot)

Most extremists probably do not, understandably, like to be accused of extremism. They might even find that in the eyes of the public simply denying the allegation is enough to offset all evidence to the contrary.

Denials, even if not necessarily sincere, can be successful, perhaps because so many people have been persuaded to regard religious extremists as victims of prejudice -- a view they rightly do not ascribe to political activists, such as members of neo-Nazi organizations.

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