Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

There are mounting concerns that the Biden administration’s pier plan could ultimately boomerang, especially, as Netanyahu himself has warned, if the US aid and the port itself end up in the hands More »

Ubwami bw’Ubupersi na bamedi (Persian’s Kingdom and Med’s Kingdom)

Ubwami bw’Ubupersi na bamedi (Persian’s Kingdom and Med’s Kingdom)

‘Yoseri’ Museveni ari kumwe n’ababyeyi be, Kuki Museveni yanga u Rwanda akomokamo? Umugambi w’Abatutsi bo munzu (y’Abasinga, Abashambo. Abega, Abashingwe) mu karere kibiyaga bigari uhereye mu gihugu cy’Ubuperesi (Uganda) aho bafashe ubutegetsi More »

Hamas’s Industrial Murder: Why Is Senator Chuck Schumer Not Demanding a Change of Leadership in Hamas and Iran?

Hamas’s Industrial Murder: Why Is Senator Chuck Schumer Not Demanding a Change of Leadership in Hamas and Iran?

When the terrorist organization Hamas murders, tortures, rapes and abducts Jews in Israel, do not be surprised that the Jews of today will respond with the righteous might of a nation that More »

Israel’s Strategic Game of Survival

Israel’s Strategic Game of Survival

“They wanted Israel’s counterattack, and then they wanted to hold in the tunnels and use the hostages just to buy time for the international community namely, the United States to stop the More »

“Biden’s actions are a violation of Israel’s sovereignty.”

“Biden’s actions are a violation of Israel’s sovereignty.”

  Israel Betrayed? It seems clear that the Biden administration would like to see the rapid creation of a Palestinian state or at least a “Palestinian unity government” — unfortunately composed of More »

 

Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel? by Shoshana Bryen

  • President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.”

  • Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And Obama’s abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.
  • It is estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014, four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces. This is a far cry from 2011, when Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”
  • He needs to find a “success.” Cue the Middle East “peace process.”

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another “peace plan” designed by the Obama administration. There isn’t much new in it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. might support a UN Security Council resolution calling on “both sides to compromise on key issues,” and it might involve the Middle East Quartet. Israel would be told to stop building in the territories and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians would be told to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give up the “right of return” for the original 1948/49 refugees and their descendants.

Just do it and voila! Problem solved.

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another “peace plan” designed by the Obama administration. (Image source: Israel Prime Minister’s Office)

Why and why now? Because President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office and needs another job. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.” Consider the list of Administration failures right now and the terrible destruction they have entailed:

In his first foreign visit, President Obama opened the door in Egypt to an uprising not only of “Google people” in Tahrir Square, but also to the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood representatives were front and center at the President’s speech in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, to the dismay of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak. After Mubarak’s overthrow, the White House pressed for the inclusion of the Brotherhood in Egyptian elections despite its history of terrorism. Since then, the U.S. and Egypt have been unable to find a way to communicate constructively, despite Egypt’s increasing closeness to Israel and their joint interest in controlling the terrorist Hamas and Iranian-sponsored jihadis in Sinai.

The Muslim Brotherhood was emboldened in Syria by its successes in Egypt.

The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS — both in some measure precipitated by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq – have killed upwards of 350,000 people (more than 55,000 in 2015) and displaced nearly 4 million more. Chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings and aerial bombing are weapons of choice by various sides. Russia is calling the shots (literally) in Syria, while Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund various jihadi groups, and Iran operates freely in both Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, despite taking enormous casualties in Syria, continues to add to its missile arsenal in Lebanon.

This is a far cry from 2011, when President Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” An Iraqi non-governmental organization estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed there in 2014, double the number from the previous year and four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces.

Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have all been destabilized by an influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Lebanon, a fragile country of less than 4.5 million people divided into Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze, now has more than one million Syrian refugees.

Afghanistan was the “good war” in President Obama’s narrative. At West Point at the end of 2009, President Obama announced an additional deployment of 30,000 American soldiers to stabilize Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Six years later — 15 years after we got there — American military leaders told him the Afghan government still couldn’t survive without a continuing American military presence. Since the administration decided to leave a contingent of nearly 10,000 soldiers for an indefinite period of time, the Taliban has refused to continue peace talks with the Afghan government, and we’re looking at another bloody summer. Terrorist bombs in Pakistan are a daily occurrence.

Libya was supposed to be a test of our “responsibility to protect.” It also had, from the President’s point of view, the benefit of “leading from behind” and having “no boots on the ground.” After successfully ousting Moammar Gaddafi — who had turned his WMD program over to US and UK intelligence, kept al-Qaeda from moving from Egypt to Western North Africa, and paid reparations for terrorism — the U.S. acknowledged as many as 30,000 Libyan deaths in two months of war.

The war in Mali was a direct result of the demise of the Gaddafi government and the raiding of government weapons depots by al-Qaeda-supported Tuareg forces. Only the direct involvement of French troops saved the government there. The deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty are attributable to the rise of al-Qaeda there as well. Today, there are as many as 1700 armed gangs across Libya and ISIS controls Sirte, a city of more than 100,000. The Pentagon is drawing up plans for U.S. military action to force ISIS out, we are again bombing Libya and there are American Special Forces on the ground.

Meanwhile, the U.S. bombed an al-Shabaab training base in Somalia this week, killing more than 150 members of the group.

Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And President Obama’s abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.

The widespread wreckage and carnage that accrues to President Obama’s policies and fantasies should disqualify him from further activity on the international stage when his term ends. But since retirement doesn’t appear in the offing, he needs to find a “success.”

Cue the Middle East “peace process.”

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

Will Mahmoud Abbas Pay Salaries to the Arsonists? by Itamar Marcus

While Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas was accepting praise for sending Palestinian firefighters to help put out fires in Israel, the PA Finance Ministry was busy doing the paper work to start paying salaries to the Palestinian arsonists who were arrested for setting many of those same fires. So far Israel has arrested 23 suspected arsonists connected to the hundreds of fires that raged across Israel in the last week of November, burning more than 500 homes and 32,000 acres of forests and national parks. According to Palestinian law documented by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), anyone imprisoned for “resisting the occupation” receives a high monthly salary. Therefore, all of those convicted and imprisoned for arson will receive PA salaries “from the day of arrest until the day of release.”

 


A fire rages in central Haifa, November 24, 2015. (Image source: Haaretz video screenshot)

Of course, it is not only arson-terrorists who receive a PA salary. All Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab terrorists from any country who are imprisoned are rewarded with high salaries from the PA. (See PMW Special Report) According to PA law and practice, “resisting the occupation” includes any Arab imprisoned for attacking Israelis by any means, including throwing a stone at a car, driving a car into people at bus stops, building bombs for suicide bombers to blow up at cafes, or shooting and stabbing civilians to death in their sleep. Since the PA automatically includes anyone who attacked Israelis or their possessions as “fighters” who are “resisting the occupation,” there is no justification under Palestinian law and practice not to include last week’s arsonists among the Palestinian “heroes” who receive monthly salaries.

Significantly, these salaries for terrorists rise the longer terrorists are in jail. Terrorists convicted of murder and serving life sentences will reach a high salary of NIS 12,000 a month – more than four times the average Palestinian salary.

The PA has already paid the five Hamas terrorists who murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children last October in total NIS 91,000 as reward for their murders. And terrorist Abdallah Barghouti has already received NIS 645,000 for building the bombs that murdered 67 Israelis at the Sbarro pizza shop, Sheffield Club, Moment Café, the triple bombing at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Hebrew University and No. 4 bus in Tel Aviv.

Today there are approximately 7,000 Palestinian prisoners on the PA payroll. The PA rewards them every month for terrorism, and this generous arrangement will cost the PA NIS 488 million in 2016 alone, according to the PA’s publicized budget.

If Abbas was ever serious about stopping the PA’s ongoing support for terrorism, he now has the perfect opportunity to make a difference. Instead of merely enjoying complimentary headlines and nice photo ops of Palestinian firemen with Israelis, Abbas should decree that the arsonists will not receive PA salaries.

Even though this is contrary to current Palestinian law and practice.

Should Abbas insist on adding the imprisoned arsonists to the PA payroll, his hypocrisy in sending a few fire engines to Israel will be exposed to the world.

Should Abbas decide to deny salaries to the arsonists this may indicate the beginning of a fundamental change in the PA attitude toward terrorism. However, if Abbas cancels salaries only to the arsonists, it will not be enough. If he says to the world that the PA will not pay salaries those who burned trees, rocks and homes while it continues to pay salaries to murderers of men, women and children, his values and behavior, which cause many to see him as a terrorist leader, will remain unchanged.

If Abbas’ act of sending fire trucks to help Israel was a sincere act indicating that he is no longer a terrorist leader, he now has a great opportunity to prove it.

Right now while he has the world’s attention, having made this small gesture in the direction of peace, let him take a serious step. Abbas should announce that not only will the arsonists not be rewarded with PA salaries, but he is changing Palestinian law and canceling the payments to all imprisoned terrorists altogether.

And what better opportunity than now to announce this, during Fatah’s Seventh General Conference.

If Abbas continues to pay salaries to murderers and arsonists, his gesture of sending fire trucks to Israel must be seen as an act of contemptuous hypocrisy.

Itamar Marcus is director of Palestinian Media Watch.

Will Iran Walk Away from Nuclear Deal? by Lawrence A. Franklin

  • The world powers are now experiencing what it means to negotiate with Persian theocrats. All is negotiable; nothing is ever finally decided. Words never commit one to action.

  • Iran demands right to implement a phased plan of centrifuge expansion to 150,000 over a period of 15 years.

  • Iran demands that no sanctions are to be leveled against it because of alleged support for terrorism or human rights violations.

  • Iran demands that it must be free to explore all future advances in nuclear enrichment technology.


The world powers are now experiencing what it means to negotiate with Persian theocrats. All is negotiable; nothing is ever finally decided. Words never commit one to action. Changing circumstances vitiate the substance of any prior commitment, leaving the door open to additional demands. Although the Islamic Republic insists that it be recognized as a normal member of the international community, it will continue to behave as if it is not bound by global norms.

Despite Iran’s apparent acceptance of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA}, known as the “Iran Deal,” after the document’s submission to the relevant state bureaucracies, these institutions have agreed to it only on a conditional basis. The JCPOA was approved by Iran’s Consultative Assembly (Majlis), the Council of Guardians, the Supreme National Security Council and by the Office of the Leader. These seeming approvals can tempt those who desire the implementation of the nuclear deal to assume falsely that the bellicose rhetoric of Iran’s leaders and the continued opposition to the JCPOA are just face-saving turns of phrase.

This same shallow mode of thinking assumes that last week’s launch of an experimental ballistic missile by Iran was a bone thrown in the direction of hardliners who oppose the nuclear deal. Iran’s leaders seem to have calculated that the missile test would not invite a reassessment by the P5+1 signatories, despite the fact that the launch was a clear violation of the JCPOA. Iran’s leaders were proven correct: both Russia and China refused to condemn the missile test at the United Nations.

The publication of the letter of October 21 by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, leaves little doubt that Iran is now demanding fundamental changes to the JCPOA. The conditions spelled out by the Leader will derail the timetable for the document’s implementation probably beyond President Obama’s term of office. In part, Tehran most likely wants to embarrass the U.S. and President Obama personally by denying him a legacy-related political victory, just as Tehran apparently wants to embarrass them by arresting yet another American hostage two weeks ago, American-Iranian business executive, Siamak Namazi. The hostage count of Americans now imprisoned in Iran is now five: Namazi,Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, Pastor Saeed Abedini, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and Robert Levinson.

Khamenei’s letter indicates that he will not approve implementation of the JCPOA unless the following conditions are met:

  1. The U.S. and European nations must draft a letter promising to end all possibility of “sanctions snapback.”
  2. The West must lift — not “suspend” — all sanctions immediately and permanently.
  3. The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) must issue an irreversible declaration ending any future investigation into alleged military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programs.
  4. Iran will postpone any renovations at its heavy water (plutonium) reactor at Arak until the signatories of the JCPOA produce an alternative usage plan.
  5. Iran will not begin shipping out of country any of its enriched uranium unless the signatories agree to deliver uranium to Iran (albeit at a lower level of enrichment).
  6. Iran demands right to implement a phased plan of centrifuge expansion to 150,000 over a period of 15 years.
  7. No sanctions are to be leveled against Iran because of alleged support for terrorism or human rights violations.
  8. Iran must be free to explore all future advances in nuclear enrichment technology.

Iran’s leadership seems to have decided it will be able to endure a modified version of its “resistance economy,” and that widening fissures among the P5+1 signatories of the JCPOA can be exploited to end its isolation. Rouhani, with Khamenei’s endorsement, evidently calculates that Iran’s economy will improve with or without the nuclear deal. Since taking office, Rouhani’s cabinet has attempted to institute economic reforms designed to make Iran less vulnerable to sanctions. Rouhani, for instance, has dispensed with former President Ahmadinejad’s populist polices of extensive cash grants and subsidies to provinces in rural Iran. Additionally, Rouhani has re-empowered the Budget Control Office, which had been politically sidelined by Ahmadinejad. Rouhani has also reduced somewhat the galloping inflation of the Ahmadinejad era, which had reached about 30% [1] by appointing professionally qualified fiscal officers to monitor adherence to the government’s five-year plan. He also has sought to reduce corruption by discontinuing the practice of appointing unqualified cronies from the Basij militia and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — a practice routine in Ahmadinejad’s administrations.[2] Under his presidency, however, executions have skyrocketed to a degree that Amnesty International called “staggering,” especially in view of trials it calls “blatantly unfair.” In just the first months of 2015, accord to Amnesty International, nearly 700 people have been put to death.

The proponents of this so-called “resistance economy” in Iran seem to believe the country will be aided by increased trade with Russia and China and investment from other countries — including West European ones — that no longer feel bound by the U.S.-orchestrated sanctions regime. One prominent Iranian-born economist estimates that sanctions account for only about one-fifth of the downturn in Iran’s economy during the last few years.[3] A more significant factor in the economy’s downturn may be the continued decline in the price of oil, which accounts for the largest share of Iran’s exports and hard currency earnings. Perhaps the change felt most keenly by the individual Iranian citizen has been the impact of the plummeting decline in the purchasing power of the Rial, which lost about 80% against the dollar in the last years of the Ahmadinejad presidency.[4]

It is probably safe to assume that the Western negotiators of the JCPOA have been introduced to the Middle East bazaar method of negotiation: After an agreement has been concluded, it becomes a basis for further demands.

If Iran succeeds in garnering the benefits of even partial relief of sanctions, and if it attracts additional foreign investment as well as increased international commerce, it will ignore the JCPOA altogether. The only improbable question is: Will Iran walk away before or after picking up its $150 billion?

Western negotiators of the Iran deal, who sat across the table from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right), have been introduced to the Middle East bazaar method of negotiation: After an agreement has been concluded, it becomes a basis for further demands. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (left) evidently calculates that Iran’s economy will improve with or without the nuclear deal.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, where he was a Military Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

Will Europe Refuse to Kneel like the Heroic French Priest? by Giulio Meotti

  • Go around Europe these days: you will find not a single rally to protest the murder of Father Jacques Hamel. The day an 85-year-old priest was killed in a French church, nobody said “We are all Catholics”.Even Pope Francis, in front of the most important anti-Christian event on Europe’s soil since the Second World War, stood silent and said that Islamists look “for money”. The entire Vatican clergy refused to say the word “Islam”.

  • Ritually, after each massacre, Europe’s media and politicians repeat the story of “intelligence failures” — a fig leaf to avoid mentioning Islam and its project of the conquest of Europe. It is the conventional code of conduct after any Islamist attack.
  • Europe looks condemned to a permanent state of siege. But what if, one day, after more bloodshed and attacks in Europe, Europe’s governments begin negotiating, with the mainstream Islamic organizations, the terms of submission of democracies to Islamic sharia law? Cartoons about Mohammed have already disappeared from the European media, and the scapegoating of Israel and the Jews started long time ago. After the attack at the church, the French media decided even to stop publishing photos of the terrorists. This is the brave response to jihad by our mainstream media

Imagine the scene: the morning Catholic mass in the northern French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, an almost empty church, three parishioners, two nuns and a very old priest. Knife-wielding ISIS terrorists interrupt the service and slit the throat of Father Jacques Hamel. This heartbreaking scene illuminates the state of Christianity in Europe.

Father Jacques Hamel was murdered this week, in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, by Islamic jihadists.

It happened before. In 1996 seven French monks were slaughtered in Algeria. In 2006, a priest was beheaded in Iraq. In 2016, this horrible Islamic ritual took place in the heart of European Christianity: the Normandy town where Father Hamel was murdered is the location of the trial of Joan of Arc, the heroine of French Christianity.

France had been repeatedly warned: Europe’s Christians will meet the same fate of their Eastern brethren. But France refused to protect either Europe’s Christians or Eastern ones. When, a year ago, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, suggested transforming empty French churches (like that one in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray) into mosques, only a few French intellectuals, led by Alain Finkielkraut and Pascal Bruckner, signed the appeal entitled, “Do not touch my church” (“Touche pas à mon église“) in defense of France’s Christian heritage. Laurent Joffrin, director of the daily newspaper Libération, led a left-wing campaign against the appeal, describing the signers as “decrepit and fascist“.

For years, French socialist mayors have approved, in fact, the demolition of churches or their conversion into mosques (the same goal as ISIS but by different, “peaceful” means). Except in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris, and in some beautiful areas such as the Avignon Festival, France is experiencing a dramatic crisis of identity.

While the appeal to save France’s churches was being demonized or ignored, the same fate was suffered by endangered Eastern Christian being exterminated by ISIS. “It is no longer possible to ignore this ethnic and cultural cleansing”, reads an appeal signed by the usual combative “Islamophobic” intellectuals, such as Elisabeth Badinter, Jacques Julliard and Michel Onfray. In March, the newspaper Le Figaro accused the government of Manuel Valls of abandoning the Christians threatened with death by ISIS by refusing to grant them visas.

Go around Europe these days: you will find not a single rally to protest the killing of Father Hamel. In January 2015, after the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo, the French took to the streets to say “Je suis Charlie”. After July 26, 2016, the day an 85-year-old priest was murdered in a church, nobody said “We are all Catholics”. Even Pope Francis, in the face of the most important anti-Christian event on Europe’s soil since the Second World War, stood silent and said that Islamists look “for money“. The entire Vatican clergy refused to write or say the word “Islam”.

Truth is coming from very few writers. “Religions overcome other religions; police can help little if one is not afraid of death.” With these words, six months after the massacre at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, the writer Michel Houellebecq spoke with the Revue des Deux Mondes. Our elite should read it after every massacre before filling up pages on “intelligence failures.”

It is not as if one more French gendarmerie vehicle could have stopped the Islamist who slaughtered 84 people in Nice. Perhaps. Maybe. But that is not the point. Ritually, after each massacre, Europe’s media and politicians repeat the story of “intelligence failures”. In the case of the attack in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, the story is about a terrorist who was placed under surveillance.

The “intelligence failure” theory is a fig leaf to avoid mentioning Islam and its project of the conquest of Europe. It is the conventional code of conduct after any Islamist attack. Then they add: “Retaliation” creates a spiral of violence; you have to work for peace and show good intentions. Then, in two or three weeks, comes the fatal “we deserve it”. For what? For having a religion different from them?

We always hear the same voices, as in some great game of dissimulation and collective disorientation in which no one even knows which enemy to beat. But, after all, is it not much more comforting to talk about “intelligence” instead of the Islamists who try, by terror and sharia, to force the submission of us poor Europeans?

Europe looks condemned to a permanent state of siege. But what if, one day, after more bloodshed and attacks in Europe, Europe’s governments begin negotiating, with the mainstream Islamic organizations, the terms of submission of democracies to Islamic sharia law? Cartoons about Mohammed and the “crime” of blasphemy have already disappeared from the European media, and the scapegoating of Israel and the Jews started long time ago.

After the attack at the church, the French media decided even to stop publishing photos of the terrorists. This is the brave response to jihad by our mainstream media, who also showed lethal signs of cowardice during the Charlie Hebdo crisis.

The only hope today comes from an 85-year-old French priest, who was murdered by Islamists after a simple, noble gesture: he refused to kneel in front of them. Will humiliated and indolent Europe do the same?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Will Democracies Combat Terror? by Jagdish N. Singh

  • Many extremist Islamic groups are still shielded by states such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. These countries have so far not severed their links, overt or covert, with these outfits.

  • The United States and other members of the free world need to take corrective measures not only against terrorist groups but also against the states that sponsor them.
  • Washington, in its relationship with Tehran and Islamabad, among others, is on the wrong track. Its approach towards a rogue Iran is not likely to “bring it in from the cold,” but to embolden it even further in its various terror activities the world over.

Sadly, major world powers, including the United Nations, have not appeared serious about fighting terrorism or the Islamic State (ISIS, IS) or similar terrorist groups.

UN Security Council Resolution 2170 (August 15, 2014) called on member-states to take “national measures to prevent fighters from traveling from their soil to join the IS and deny it any arms or financial support. The resolution also “expressed readiness to consider putting on the sanctions list those who facilitated the recruitment and travel of foreign fighters.”

The continued growth of the Islamic State, however, shows that the UN’s member states have done little to fight it. According to an intelligence estimate more than 20,000 fighters have arrived in Syria and Iraq to fight for the IS. Of these, about a quarter hail from North America, Australia and Europe. Clearly, such a movement of IS fighters would not have been possible if the member states had been conscientious about implementing the UN resolution.

Sadly, the conduct of the UN Security Council does not seem any different today. Of late, four of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, France, Russia and Britain — have been bombing IS locations, but the major powers seem to have divergent objectives in their war on ISIS.

Washington’s policy in the Middle East has been among the major reasons for the rise of the Islamic State. But today it is not clear what the United States wants, except for the next president to clean up the mess being made by this one.

Beijing, for its part, continues to back Syrian President Bashar As

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