US Action News

In the last five years, Iran’s foreign policy has shifted from Africa towards Latin America, with the goal of, as Ahmadinejad expressed to the Venezuelan ambassador in Tehran, David Velázquez, “tying up” the United States. “The notorious shift to the left of many Latin American countries during the first decade of the twenty-first century has allowed Iran to have more success in its attempt to improve relations”.

An Iranian official says Americans “must be dreaming” if they think they can intimidate Tehran into giving up its nuclear program. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea.

“In other words, Netanyahu’s threat of a Middle Eastern conflict that could devastate Israel and escalate to all-out nuclear war carried less weight with Obama than the far less severe consequences threatened by the Saudis.” – American Spectator

President Obama’s grand strategy to reach out to Muslims keeps running into a problem: reality. Islamist leaders who impose brutal shariah law against their own people are also a threat to other countries. Obama need to learn that it takes tough actions, not flattering speeches, to get Islamist leaders to drop their stones and nuclear weapons.

Writing in the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, general manager of Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, said that a nuclear Iran would seek to dominate the Gulf States in the Middle East and said he supported a military attack against Iran before it produces nuclear weapons.

So much for that reset button or that sell out on the START treaty or that sell out on missile defense. Countering the new US embargo on petroleum and oil distillates embargo on Iran, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and Iranian Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi Wednesday, July 14 signed a series of far-reaching energy-related agreements, including a deal to sell Tehran Russian petroleum products and petrochemicals.

UAE Ambassador to the US Youssef al-Otaiba said that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf cannot live with a nuclear Iran, that he supports military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and that if the US fails to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, the Arab states of the Gulf will abandon their alliances with the US in order to appease Iran.

John Bolton continued to unload on the Obama Administration, saying that they should “get rid of the illusion that [Iran and North Korea] would negotiate away their nuclear programs.”

CIA chief Leon Panetta, a former senior Democratic congressman and White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton, admitted of the sanctions passed earlier in the month by Congress: “Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not.” So the sanctions are just a charade. We’re “doing something” that doesn’t really do anything.

America’s global influence is visibly and voluntarily shrinking because of Obama’s foreign policy.