RSS
How Does Ilhan Omar Really Feel About Iran?
Last week’s launch of more than 300 drones and missiles marked the first time that Iran had attacked Israel from its territory. For years, Iran’s malign behavior has focused on accelerating its nuclear weapons program and strengthening its terror proxies. The country’s decision to directly confront Israel sparked condemnations from across the aisle, with Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) affirming that “as Israel faces this vicious attack from Iran, America must show our full resolve to stand with our critical ally. The world must be assured: Israel is not alone.” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) online post mirrored a similar promise that America will “stand with the people of Israel during this moment of significant challenge.”
Unsurprisingly, members of the Democratic Party’s far-left faction, known as “The Squad,” remained quiet Saturday evening after news broke of Iran’s unprecedented assault against the Jewish nation. After years of maligning Israel in Congress, their refusal to immediately respond to the Islamic Republic’s blatant aggression illustrates a calculated effort aimed at fostering a false moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, the leading global sponsor of terror.
For her part, Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (MN) released a delayed statement on Sunday, nearly 24 hours following Iran’s missile barrage against Israel. Her comments denounced “leaders in Washington” rushing to provide “additional offensive weapons to the Israeli military,” and also linked Iran’s terrorist intentions with Israel’s alleged actions in Syria earlier in April, which resulted in the killing of General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a mastermind of attacks against Israeli civilians. That’s why he was in Syria.
Indeed, Omar’s connecting the incidents reflects her pattern of distortions about Israel’s strategic and political realities in the region.
Omar’s deployment of troubling language and her postponed communication in the aftermath of last Saturday’s attack embodies the politician’s habit of redirecting criticism away from Iran through a dual approach of issuing libelous accusations against Israel, in tandem with ignoring Iranian terror.
For example, this week, the US House of Representatives passed a series of pro-Israel and anti-Iran bills and resolutions. One item considered was a straightforward resolution condemning “Iran’s Unprecedented Drone and Missile Attack on Israel.” The legislative proposal passed the House on Thursday in an overwhelming 404-14 vote. Omar was one of 13 Democrats voting against the non-controversial measure, which denounces Iran’s brazen actions targeting millions of Israelis this past Saturday and reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defense.
Another bill on the floor Monday — the “No US Financing for Iran Act” — split liberal-leaning legislators, with 104 Democrats voting against restricting US financial entities, such as the Treasury Department, from conducting specific transactions with Iran. It bears mentioning that Minority Leader Jeffries joined Omar and over 100 progressive colleagues in voting against the measure. That approximately half of House Democrats blocked a motion that would impose financial penalties on the world’s most potent terrorist arm suggests a disturbing depth of ideological capture within the party’s movement. It’s a phenomenon that was absent decades ago, and yet is now stoked by lawmakers like Omar, whose reach is maximized by an intersectional agenda championed by far-leftists and accommodated by moderates.
Moreover, Omar’s views not only fall outside the American mainstream, but her instincts to placate Iran are at odds with an increasing number of Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, whose commitments to coalescing against extremism were evidenced on Saturday, as both countries played parts in intercepting Iranian missiles bound for Israel.
In an interview with Israeli Public Broadcaster KAN News this week, a source from the Saudi royal family alluded to Iran fomenting terror and its involvement in the October 7 massacre, claiming that Iran’s role in Hamas’ attack stemmed from a desire to thwart an Israel-Saudi normalization agreement.
And since reports first surfaced highlighting Iran’s complicity in plotting the events of October 7, more details are emerging on the sums of cash gifted to Hamas from Iran, with some of the payments totaling millions dollars directly handed to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza.
This month, The Times of London revealed details surrounding the economic windfall Hamas receives from Tehran in an exclusive report. The Times feature outlines a batch of secret letters discovered by Israel’s military, with some showing specific payments being made to the terrorist group between 2014 and 2020, totaling over $150 million. Omar’s refusal to acknowledge evidence implicating Iran in the October 7 attacks demonstrates a concerted policy of protecting a regime whose rogue actions and threatening rhetoric take aim at the Jewish state, and the entire free world.
In fact, mere hours after Palestinian terrorists perpetrated the worst mass attack against the Jews since the Holocaust, Omar was demanding “deescelation and ceasefire.” Over six months later, Omar’s calls for a ceasefire repeatedly consists of lofty language on the need for “peace” and “humanity.” Yet absent from these proclamations are any mention of Iran. Instead, the Minnesota Congresswoman persists in granting Iran a pass for its evil behavior, while sharing continuous streams of propaganda directed at Israel. What’s more, by blocking bills designed to kneecap the Islamic regime’s financial flow, Omar is indicating that the antisemitism defining her Congressional tenure is now manifesting through a carefully crafted platform, rendering America’s foreign enemy free of any disapproval.
Since taking office in 2019, Omar has advanced the Democratic Party’s absorption of an ideology antithetical to American ideals and Western values. Her unwillingness to condemn Iran cements her stain on Congress and piques the curiosity of those questioning which side of the anti-Iran terror equation Ilhan Omar falls on?
Irit Tratt is an independent writer residing in New York. Follow her on X @Irit_Tratt.
The post How Does Ilhan Omar Really Feel About Iran? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login