By Jim Bradley, THE MILITANT

The Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, backed by overwhelming support for an independent Kurdistan registered in the Sept. 25 referendum there, is standing firm in face of opposition and threats from the capitalist rulers in Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran, as well as the imperialist rulers in Washington.

“I’ve been fighting for half a century. With my people I have been through mass killings, deportations, gassings. I remember times when we thought we were done for, headed for extermination,” KRG President Masoud Barzani told Bernard-Henri Lévy, the maker of a new documentary film “Peshmerga,” in Erbil Sept. 25, after passage of the referendum. “During those decades of resistance, of hopes dashed and reborn, I never imagined that in my lifetime I would see the day when … my people would finally be able to come together and express to the world their desire to be democratic and free.”
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By Aaron Klein, BREITBART

NEW YORK — H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s embattled national security adviser, hinted to a small group of Democratic senators that he opposes the drive to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, according to two sources familiar with the meeting who spoke to CNN.

The sentiment seems to pit McMaster directly against Trump, who is reportedly leaning toward decertifying the deal next week, according to numerous news media accounts in recent days citing administration officials.

Trump is facing a looming October 15 deadline mandated by a law requiring the U.S. president to certify every 90 days that Iran is keeping its side of the agreement and that the deal continues to be “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
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United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said it is not a matter of “if, but when” the Trump administration will move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a recent interview.

By Adele Nazarian, BREITBART

“The embassy will move,” Friedman told host Erick Stakelbeck in an interview set to broadcast on the TBN network. “It’s not if, but when. And I am convinced that during his term, the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel.”

President Donald Trump made the embassy move part of his campaign promise. In June, the commander-in-chief signed a six-month waiver deal to delay the move. The White House has declared that President Trump “has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when.”
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The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between Obama and Trump, not in the Middle East and not anywhere.

By CarolinE Glick, JPOST

In an interview with Walla news site Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that “the more active the US is [in the Middle East], the better it will be for Israel.”

On paper, Liberman’s sentiments seem reasonable enough. President Donald Trump is far friendlier than his predecessor Barack Obama was. The tone of US-Israel relations has vastly improved since Trump took office.

The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between the two administrations – not in the Middle East and not anywhere.
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By John Hayward, BREITBART

A report published by Axios on Friday cites unspecified sources who say President Donald Trump is considering current CIA Director Mike Pompeo as a replacement for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose relationship with Trump is said to be “broken beyond repair.”

According to the “insiders” who spoke to Axios, the last straw for President Trump was that Tillerson did not do enough to push back against the report on Wednesday that Tillerson called the president a “moron” after a Pentagon meeting in July. It was widely noted that while Tillerson organized a hasty press conference to deny that he had to be talked out of resigning his post, he did not actually deny calling Trump a moron. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert did issue such a blanket denial several hours after Tillerson’s presser.
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By David M Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

As Jews and Christians from around the world flock to downtown Jerusalem and its Old City for this joyous holiday week, the city’s demographic, economic and security problems fester in the background, particularly on the periphery.

Few know that there is a plan making its way up the Israeli decision -making ladder to significantly change the status of several Arab neighborhoods in the east and north of the city – essentially to decouple them from Jerusalem. The plan is to remove them from Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction and to create a separate local authority for them.

The main rationale behind this plan: to improve the demographic balance of the city by reducing the Arab population of Jerusalem from 40 to 30%.
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By Rabbi Aryeh Spero,  AMERICAN THINKER

Many were elated and approved of President Trump’s July speech in Warsaw, Poland acknowledging the central role Western civilization plays in defining who we are and what we believe. Our freedom and survival depend on defending it, he said. Beyond that, he celebrated Western civilization as something extraordinary: “What we’ve inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before.”

A vocal few, popular in left-wing opinion circles, condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks as an affront to multiculturalism, labeling his linkage of us with Western civilization, and our pride in it, as “tribalism, white nationalism, and racism”, claiming that references to Western civilization and ancestors are code words for the above-mentioned vices. For some, even the broad term “Western civilization” is offensive and prejudicial since, as with all definitions, it necessarily conveys something distinctive and thus circumscribed.
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DEBKA

There was deep satisfaction in Cairo and Washington over the warm smiles and cordial handshakes marking the ceremonial handover of the Gazan administration from Hamas to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority on Monday, Oct. 2, after a decade of bitter enmity.

Egypt, father of the reconciliation, and the United States, were favorably impressed by the ecstatic welcome accorded Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and his retinue of dozens of high officials from Ramallah, when they crossed into the Gaza Strip after passing through Israel.

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Howard Laitin. What bothers me most is that people that I admired are so committed to their Never-Trump posture that they are supporting those who recklessly placed the United States in grave danger.

I will stake my 60 year participation [and the many decorations and commendations that I have received] in the national defense community on the following statements:
1. Putin strongly preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
2. There was absolutely no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
3. The Iranian nuclear deal [masterminded by Valerie Jarrett and stage-managed with false information and a media echo chamber by Ben Rhodes] places Iran in the preeminent position to dominate the Middle East and to destabilize much of Central and South America.

By Eric Edelman and Robert Joseph, THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

[ MIL-ED POSTING NOTE1 . This article [Cheney Was Right ]by Eric Edelman [ undersecretary of defense for policy from 2005 to 2009] and Robert Joseph [ undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from 2005 to 2007] is an accurate appraisal of the”global establishment”. who still dominate the never Trump movement. It is especially encouraging that this article appeared in the Weekly Standard, a bastion of the never Trump movement.]

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Danon acknowledged that his hobnobbing with diplomats and statesmen in New York is giving him valuable experience that could serve him well down the line.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped off his plane three weeks ago at JFK Airport in New York following a five-hour flight from Mexico City, standing in line to greet him alongside the red carpet were Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, Consul-General in New York Dani Dayan, and Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

Dermer is Netanyahu’s alter ego; Dayan someone the prime minister has a great deal of respect for; and Danon, well, Danon was appointed by Netanyahu partly because he was a political nuisance he wanted to dispatch an ocean away.
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T. Belman. This is a terrific article. It must be read to understand “decertification”.

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY October 5, 2017

Iran has never, not for a moment, been ‘transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing’ the JCPOA. The question is not whether President Trump should decertify President Obama’s farcical Iran nuclear deal. Of course he should. Indeed, he must: Even if we set common sense to the side, federal law requires it. Instead, there are two questions.

1. Why has President Trump recertified the deal, not once but twice? This is shameful. Remember, Trump insisted throughout the 2016 campaign that the deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was the worst and most dangerous in the history of deals. Just two weeks ago, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, he described it as an “embarrassment” and “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” Yet, under the statute that calls for presidential findings every 90 days, the president, in recertifying, represented to Congress and the American people

(a) that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement” and

(b) that continuing the JCPOA is “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
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Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA  5 October. 2017

Ariel Kahaneh reports in the 4 October edition of Makor Rishon that according to a diplomatic source, the Jews in the Trump team – Ambassador David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt – are pushing Israel hard as they are accused by their White House colleagues as being pro-Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been presenting construction plans to Friedman and Greenblatt that he has already reduced to please Washington and Friedman and Greenblatt have insisted on further cuts.

It is noteworthy that while Israel has slashed construction plans – with most activity limited to moving plans one step out of a long series of steps rather than approval of actual construction –  Mahmoud Abbas has openly and vocally rejected President Trump’s demand that he stop financially rewarding Palestinians for murdering Israelis.
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Comments by Netanyahu on a visit to Ma’ale Adumin this week were interpreted by some as a major move toward annexation. The true picture is a little foggier

By RAPHAEL AHREN and JACOB MAGID, TOI

Is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planning on annexing parts of the West Bank?

After a statement he made Tuesday during a visit to the settlement city of Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, the Palestinians and some Western media outlets are convinced he is. His office, however, was hesitant to discuss the matter.
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Hosting Turkish president, Iranian leader claims Washington, Jerusalem benefit from vote

By TOI STAFF and AGENCIES

Iraqi Kurds fly an Israeli flag and Kurdish flags during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 16, 2017. (AFP/Safin Hamed)

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Wednesday that the United States and Israel were some of the only countries benefiting from the recent referendum in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and that Washington and other Western powers were seeking to “create a new Israel” in the Middle East.

Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was in Iran on a state visit.
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Ankara and Tehran have long sought closer relations, but their new meeting comes as Saudi Arabia’s king is visiting Moscow.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived on Wednesday at the Sa’dabad palace in northern Tehran to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. “Iran and Turkey, two friendly Muslim states are the centerline of regional stability,” Rouhani said at the meeting, according to local reports. The high level meeting is part of a historic and growing relationship between Iran and Turkey. It comes as Saudi Arabia’s King Salman visited Vladimir Putin on Thursday to discuss trade and the Middle East.

In the meeting between Rouhani and Erdogan, the Iranians stressed that instability in the Middle East was the fault of “ethnic and sectarian separatism and plans of outsiders.” Rouhani referenced the fight against terror, mentioning ISIS, Nusra (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Qaida in Syria) and the Kurdish PKK, the latter an indication that Iran wants Turkey to know it shares its views. They also discussed the need to respect the borders of Iraq and Syria and not accept any geographical changes. This was a reference to the recent Kurdistan region’s independence referendum expressing desire to secede from Iraq.
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Agency officials say the average rate of disappointed returnees to France from 1990-2014 was 10 percent but that the number has dropped since.

BY BERNARD EDINGER, JPOST

MICHEL ALIMI says he was shopping at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket just a couple of hours beforean Islamist struck on January 9, 2015, shooting four Jews dead and holding 16 hostage before being killed by French police. Now, he, his wife and one of his daughters are moving to Israel.

The 62-year-old general practitioner says the attack, coming after other bloody instances of anti-Jewish violence by French Muslims, has sparked a wave of departures to Israel, including about 50 families from his own neighborhood of Saint-Mandé, on the edge of Paris.
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By Michael Rubin, AEI

Oct. 15 will be decision day for President Donald Trump. That is the next deadline, under terms of the Corker-Cardin Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, for Trump to certify both that Iran is compliant with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and that the Iran deal remains vital to the national security interests of the U.S.

Trump has pilloried the Iran nuclear deal he inherited as “the worst deal ever,” but Defense Secretary James Mattis testified in Congress Tuesday that the JCPOA is working, and press reports suggest that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wants to amend the Corker-Cardin legislation to relieve the pressure upon the president and to avoid battles about recertification every three months.
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By:  Aaron Mehta, DEFENSE NEWS

WASHINGTON – U.S. forces are no longer bound by requirements to be in contact with enemy forces in Afghanistan before opening fire, thanks to a change in rules of engagement orchestrated by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

Mattis, appearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford told a pair of congressional hearings that the White House gave him a free hand to reconsider the rules of engagement and alter them to speed the battle against the Taliban if need be.

Over the last several years, many top officials in Washington have advocated for a loosening of the rules of engagement that dictate how troops conduct combat operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
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Administration exploring avenues to keep nuke pact intact without Trump saying Tehran compliant, including avoiding recertification debate altogether

By Bradley Klapper and Matt Lee, TOI

US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford wait for the beginning of a hearing before Senate Armed Services Committee October 3, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The future of the Iran nuclear deal may hinge on a face-saving fix for President Donald Trump so he doesn’t have to recertify the Islamic Republic’s compliance every 90 days, according to US officials.

Several officials familiar with internal discussions say the periodic reviews mandated by Congress have become such a source of embarrassment for Trump that his national security aides are seeking ways for him to stop signing off on the seven-nation accord without scuttling it entirely.

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