Tag Archives: foreign policy

Missile Violation?

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Iran has begun launching ballistic missiles as part of their intermediate-range and intercontinental-range ballistic missile development program.  The motorboat skipper who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair insists that these launches, while “inconsistent” with UN requirements, are not actually violations of the recently concluded nuclear weapons deal.

Here’s what that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action actually says (the document can be seen here and here).

The E3/EU+3 and Iran commit to implement this JCPOA in good faith…and to refrain from any action inconsistent with the letter, spirit and intent of this JCPOA that would undermine its successful implementation.

It’s certainly true, though, that the letter of the agreement does not proscribe ballistic missile development efforts, but such a program plainly is “inconsistent” with JCPOA requirements, central as missiles are for delivery of nuclear warheads.  Such developments, then, are clear violations of the “intent” not to “undermine” the agreement.

As backdrop to these missile test launches, the JCPOA also says this:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in this JCPOA.

Iran has refused to allow the IAEA to conduct inspections on the military bases that house parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and it has refused to allow the IAEA to inspect the nuclear reactor at the heart of its program.

And this, buried at the bottom of the first link’s article:

Iranian Revolutionary Guards senior commander was quoted as saying last week that its latest round of missiles were being designed to hit Israel.

Hmm….

Henry Stimson Has Returned

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As Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson shut down the department’s cryptanalytic office saying, “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently in much the same vein, did Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and innumerable others a solid by not maintaining American secrets, choosing instead to use an unsecured privately administered personal email server in her private residence.

Now we get Barack Obama’s CIA Director.  John Brennan now says that the CIA shouldn’t be viewed as an espionage agency; indeed,

I don’t support government spying….  We don’t steal secrets….   We uncover, we discover, we reveal, we obtain, we elicit, we solicit.  All of that.

This is yet another episode in Obama’s American Retreat.

Smart Diplomacy

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Iran has resumed test launching ballistic missiles, in contravention of UN resolutions and of Iran’s nuclear weapons development agreement with the Obama administration and the rest of the P5+1. But here’s the kicker:

Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”

“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.

Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) has the right of it:

The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s “not supposed to be doing that.”

And, yet, that’s all John Kerry (D, SecState) has had to say about it.

There’s some smart diplomacy here. Just not by the Obama coterie.

It’s Their Fault

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Couldn’t possibly be our fault. Couldn’t possibly be a simple failure to succeed in coordinating schedules.

President Barack Obama’s (D) National Security Council Spokesman Ned Price insists

We were surprised to first learn via media reports that the Prime Minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit[.]

The meeting was going to coincide with a meeting of the American-Israel Political Action Committee. Never mind that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office was reluctant for the meeting to occur then because the appearance of our Presidential candidates at the AIPAC meeting could create the impression of Israeli interference in our elections.

It stretches credulity for Obama or his NSC to act as though they don’t understand that. That claim is especially not credible given that the Israeli ambassador already had told the White House—Obama—that it was unlikely that Netanyahu would make the trip.

Clinton’s Handling of Classified Material

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Fox News‘ Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne have a piece centered on the potential for password exchanges among Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a number of her minions as the means of getting access to classified information and to Clinton’s unclassified and unprotected personal email server. In that piece, a number of scenarios were posited for “jumping the gap,” a physical gap between the classified network and the unclassified network—the World Wide Web that is the Internet on which Clinton’s personal server existed—there is no connection other than the air we breathe between those two networks. Those scenarios were

  • Reading intelligence reports or briefings, and then summarizing the findings in emails sent on Clinton’s unsecured personal server.
  • Accessing the classified intelligence computer network, and then lifting sections by typing them verbatim into a device such as an iPad or BlackBerry.
  • Taking pictures of a computer screen to capture the intelligence.
  • Using a thumb drive or disk to physically move the intelligence, but this would require access to a data center. It’s unclear whether Clinton’s former IT specialist Bryan Pagliano, who as first reported by The Washington Post has reached an immunity deal with the Justice Department, or others had sufficient administrator privileges to physically transfer data.

The problem with the last three is that cell phones and tablets aren’t allowed into areas where classified material exists: they have radios. Neither are laptops, or any computing device, including cell phones and tablets, that are not owned by the facility containing the classified material. Cameras and other recording devices—optical or magnetic—also are banned from such facilities, including thumb drives or anything else that might be plugged into an existing computer or storage device. Bringing these sorts of things into those areas, more than once, would have to be a deliberate—and so criminal—act.

Even a single occurrence, absent-mindedly done, is a fireable offense: folks who are granted access to classified material, whether in those secured areas or elsewhere are too well trained and no better.