The Sixth Seal by Nostradamus (Revelation 6:12)

The Sixth Seal by Nostradamus

To Andrew the Prophet
Completed February 5, 2008

Nostradamus and the New City

Les Propheties
(Century 1 Quatrain 27)

Michel de Nostredame Earth-shaking fire from the center of the earth.Will cause the towers around the New City to shake,Two great rocks for a long time will make war, And then Arethusa will color a new river red.(And then areth USA will color a new river red.) Earth-shaking fire from the center of the earth.Will cause the towers around the New City to shake,Two great rocks for a long time will make war

There is recent scientific evidence from drill core sampling in Manhattan, that the southern peninsula is overlapped by several tectonic plates. Drill core sampling has been taken from regions south of Canal Street including the Trade Towers’ site. Of particular concern is that similar core samples have been found across the East River in Brooklyn. There are also multiple fault lines along Manhattan correlating with north-northwest and northwest trending neo-tectonic activity. And as recently as January and October of 2001, New York City has sustained earthquakes along these plates. For there are “two great rocks” or tectonic plates that shear across Manhattan in a northwestern pattern. And these plates “for a longtime will make war”, for they have been shearing against one other for millions of years. And on January 3 of 2010, when they makewar with each other one last time, the sixth seal shall be opened, and all will know that the end is near.

And then Arethusa will color a new river red.

Arethusa is a Greek mythological figure, a beautiful huntress and afollower of the goddess Artemis. And like Artemis, Arethusa would have nothing to do with me; rather she loved to run and hunt in the forest. But one day after an exhausting hunt, she came to a clear crystal stream and went in it to take a swim. She felt something from beneath her, and frightened she scampered out of the water. A voice came from the water, “Why are you leaving fair maiden?” She ran into the forest to escape, for the voice was from Alpheus, the god of the river. For he had fallen in love with her and became a human to give chase after her. Arethusa in exhaustion called out to Artemis for help, and the goddess hid her by changing her into a spring.But not into an ordinary spring, but an underground channel that traveled under the ocean from Greece to Sicily. But Alpheus being the god of the river, converted back into water and plunged downthe same channel after Arethusa. And thus Arethusa was captured by Artemis, and their waters would mingle together forever. And of great concern is that core samples found in train tunnels beneath the Hudson River are identical to those taken from southern Manhattan. Furthermore, several fault lines from the 2001 earthquakes were discovered in the Queen’s Tunnel Complex, NYC Water Tunnel #3. And a few years ago, a map of Manhattan drawn up in 1874 was discovered, showing a maze of underground waterways and lakes. For Manhattan was once a marshland and labyrinth of underground streams. Thus when the sixth seal is broken, the subways of the New City shall be flooded be Arethusa:the waters from the underground streams and the waters from the sea. And Arethusa shall be broken into two. And then Arethusa will color a new river red.

And then areth USA will color a new river red.

For Arethusa broken into two is areth USA. For areth (αρετη) is the Greek word for values. But the values of the USA are not based on morality, but on materialism and on wealth. Thus when the sixth seal is opened, Wall Street and our economy shall crash and “arethUSA”, the values of our economy shall fall “into the red.” “Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (Revelation 6:15-17)

India and Pakistan coming close to nuclear war: Revelation 8

India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war: Pompeo

By Soutik Biswas

India correspondent

India and Pakistan came “close” to a “nuclear conflagration” in February 2019, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said in his new memoir.

This happened after Delhi launched strikes against militants in Pakistani territory following an attack on Indian troops in Kashmir.

Pakistan had then said it had shot down two Indian military jets and captured a fighter pilot.

India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir, but control only parts of it.

India has long accused Pakistan of backing separatist militants in the Kashmir valley – a charge Islamabad denies. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain and partition in 1947. All but one were over Kashmir.

In Never Give An Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, Mr Pompeo says he does “not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019”.

“The truth is, I don’t know precisely the answer either; I just know it was too close,” he writes.

Mr Pompeo says he will “never forget the night” he was in Hanoi at a summit “negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons” when “India and Pakistan started threatening each other in connection with the decades-long dispute over the northern border region of Kashmir”.

After the attack on Indian troops that killed more than 40 soldiers – “an Islamist terrorist attack… probably enabled in part by Pakistan’s lax counter-terror policies”, according to Mr Pompeo – India had responded with air strikes inside Pakistan. “The Pakistanis shot down a plane in a subsequent dogfight and kept the Indian pilot prisoner.”

Image caption,A Pakistani government image purporting to show wreckage from one of the downed jets

Mr Pompeo said he was awakened in Hanoi to speak with an Indian “counterpart”, who is unnamed.

“He believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was contemplating its own escalation,” Mr Pompeo writes.

“I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out.”

Mr Pompeo writes he began to work with the then National Security Adviser John Bolton who was with him in the “tiny secure communications facility in our hotel”.

He says he reached out to Pakistan’s then army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, with “whom I had engaged many times”, and told him what the “Indians had told me”.

“He said it wasn’t true. As one might expect, he believed the Indians were preparing their nuclear weapons for deployment. It took us a few hours – and remarkably good work by our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad – to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war.

“No other nation would have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome,” Mr Pompeo writes.

Neither India nor Pakistan have commented so far on Mr Pompeo’s claims.

The 2019 attack on Indian soldiers was claimed by a group based in Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and India had vowed to retaliate.

India’s aerial attacks across the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Indian and Pakistani territory were the first since a war in 1971. India said it had killed a large number of militants but Pakistan called the claim “reckless”.

Critics call out Biden administration for not walking away from Obama-Iran nuclear deal

Critics call out Biden administration for not walking away from Iran nuclear deal despite recent rhetoric

The Biden administration said the nuclear deal is ‘not on the agenda,’ but critics like Sen. Ted Cruz and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are not buying it

By Benjamin Weinthal | Fox News

The Biden’s administration’s Iran policy, beset by criticism that it is too dovish on Tehran’s bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters and the clerical’s regime ambition to build a nuclear weapons device, is facing new blowback from U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, former American ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, and European politicians.

Critics say the Biden administration’s statements over this month show its fealty to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal, that, according to one U.S. think tank study, would funnel $275 billion in benefits to Tehran in its first year and $1 trillion by 2030. 

A spokesman for Senator Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital that “Sen. Cruz believes that the Biden administration is ideologically obsessed with reentering a nuclear deal with Iran, and that they are doing everything possible to keep that possibility open. He believes that they prioritize the deal above other critical interests they claim they have, including supporting the women-led protests against the Iranian regime and helping our Ukrainian allies take out the Russian and Iranian forces using drones to devastate Ukrainian military and civilian targets.”

The spokesman added that the senator “fully expects the administration to deepen their obsession, including continuing to enable nuclear cooperation between Iran and Russia despite Congressional sanctions if they think it’s politically possible.”

Iranians protests the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Oct. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Middle East Images, File)

US-EUROPEANS SUBMIT DRAFT RESOLUTION CRITICIZING IRAN TO IAEA BOARD 

The London-based Iran International news organization reported that Biden’s Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley recently conducted meetings with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Saeed Iravani, “at least three times in the last two months.” 

When asked about the meetings State Department spokesperson Ned Price told Fox News Digital that “We have made clear that we have the means to deliver specific and firm messages to Iran when it is in America’s interest to do so. We have consistently conveyed three messages to Iran: stop killing peaceful protesters, stop selling weapons to Russia to kill Ukrainians, and release the Americans you have wrongfully detained. We also use every available opportunity to make clear that we will take necessary steps to protect American citizens.” 

Price added, “I am not going to get into details about how we deliver these messages, but we do so in close coordination with allies and partners and make no apologies for delivering them firmly and consistently.” 

Haley told Fox News Digital, “The IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is a terrorist organization, plain and simple. Europe should have blacklisted them years ago. Every day the farce of reviving the Iran deal continues is another day the world is less safe.”

The Trump administration classified the IRGC a terrorist entity in 2019.

In response to criticism by Cruz and Haley, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “The JCP­OA has not been on the agenda for months. It is not our focus. Since September, our focus has been on standing up for the fundamental freedoms of the Iranian people and countering Iran’s deepening military partnership with Russia and its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

The spokesperson added, “President Biden is absolutely committed to never allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. We believe diplomacy is the best way to achieve that goal on a sustainable and verifiable basis, and that the alternatives are worse.”

IRAN GOVERNMENT’S PROTEST CRACKDOWN KILLS DOZENS OF CHILDREN, PROMPTS CALLS FOR REMOVAL FROM UNITED NATIONS  

Members of the Iranian revolutionary guard march during a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war. (Reuters)

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council echoed the State Department. 

“The JCPOA is not our focus right now. It’s not on the agenda. Iran is killing its young people and selling UAVs to Russia to kill Ukrainians. Our focus is on practical ways to confront them in these areas. Regardless of the nuclear talks, we will continue to confront Iran’s behavior in the region, protect our troops, including with military forces when necessary, and support the brave Iranian people demanding their basic rights and dignity – which this regime has long denied them. We will continue taking action to impose costs on those who commit violence against peaceful protesters or otherwise seek to suppress their rights,” said the N.S.C. spokesperson.

The European Union (EU) on Monday declined to sanction the massive 125,000-strong military without a court decision from an EU nation that declares the IRGC is engaged in terrorist activities.

“It is something that cannot be decided without a court… decision first. You cannot say I consider you a terrorist because I don’t like you,” Josep Borrell, the top EU diplomat, said. 

EU diplomats told Reuters last week the bloc was set to add 37 names to a blacklist of Iranian people and entities banned from traveling to Europe and subject to an asset freeze.

The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution last week, urging that IRGC be included on the bloc’s terror list. The commander of the IRGC and Iran’s parliamentary speaker threatened the EU with consequences should it proscribe the IRGC a terrorist organization. 

File photo shows the flags of the member states of the European Union blow in the wind at dusk in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution last week urging the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be added to the bloc’s terrorism list. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

The Antichrist stages unexpected political comeback through Iraq’s Gulf Cup victory

Sadr stages unexpected political comeback through Iraq’s Gulf Cup victory

Observers say that Sadr believes he is playing a winning card against Iran and its proxies in Iraq, by seeking a comeback to the political arena through sports.

Monday 23/01/2023

Iraq’s goalkeeper Jalal Hassan (R) passes Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr with the Arabian Gulf Cup trophy during a meeting in the central holy city of Najaf, January 21, 2023. (AFP)

BAGHDAD-

The leader of Iraq’s Sadrist movement, Moqtada al-Sadr, has used his country’s recent victory in the Gulf soccer cup to stage an unexpected comeback on the Iraqi political scene.

Pro-Iranian formations, including the Coordination Framework coalition, did not seem to have anticipated Sadr’s new move after his had declared withdrawal from politics.

Widely-circulated pictures on social media showed Sadr posing with members of the Iraqi national soccer team carrying their trophy after winning the Gulf Cup 25.

The Sadrist leader took advantage of his encounter with the soccer team and its technical and administrative staff in Najaf to repeat the phrase “Arabian Gulf” three times. The phrase had sparked official Iranian protests and the Iranian foreign ministry even summoned the Iraqi ambassador in Tehran to object to the appellation and demand that Iraq uses the name of “Persian Gulf” to refer to the region instead.

While reference by Sadr to the “Arabian Gulf” appeared to be a direct challenge to Iran, it was also a thinly-veiled challenge to the pro-Iranian parties and militias. The latter have avoided using the Iranian “Persian Gulf” designation, lest they are disavowed by Iraqis, whose sense of national pride and preference for the “Arab Gulf” name peaked after the soccer victory.

Observers say that Sadr realises that he is playing a winning card against Iran and its proxies in Iraq, by seeking a comeback to the political arena through sports.

Sadr had earlier announced his exit from politics and called on the representatives of his movement in parliament to resign, which allowed his rivals in the Coordination Framework to assume power and nominate Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani for the post of prime minister. .

However, Sadr’s emphasis on the “Arabian Gulf” phrase confirmed his intent not to relinquish his old stance that Iraq should stay clear of Iranian and American influence.

Sadr also advised the Iraqi national team players to learn English, in another sign that he wanted Iraqis to stay away from Iranian influence, especially since many pro-Iranian clerics and politicians have begun to speak Arabic with an Iranian accent,  as they try to ingratiate themselves to Tehran, even though they are Arabs.

Analysts see Sadr paving the way with this move for a return to the political scene, especially since many members of the Sadrist movement want their movement to participate in the local elections scheduled for next October, although no agreement has yet been reached between rival factions regarding the local elections law.

Iraq experts expect Sadr to eventually resume settling scores with both the Coordination Framework and Iran.  He is said to believe that pressures exerted by Tehran’s through proxy groups in Iraq had squeezed him out of politics.

Sadr also wants to take advantage of the emerging cracks within the Coordination Framework, as a result  of the conflict between the Rule of Law Coalition led by Nuri al-Maliki and Asa’ieb Al Haq (the League of the Righteous) group led by Qais Khazali, over the distribution of ministries and security positions, especially posts in the intelligence and national security services.  Sadrists hope the dispute would help boost their election results, although there is no certainty yet whether the ballot will take place as scheduled.

Sudani also received the national team players and decided to honour them with plots of residential land in Baghdad and granted them diplomatic passports, during a luncheon he hosted in the presence of the President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani and members of the Iraqi cabinet.

The Iraqi national football team won the final match of the Gulf cup against the Omani national team, which took place earlier this month in the southern city of Basra amidst huge crowds inside and outside the stadium.

Who is the Antichrist? The Iraqi warlord who claims to fight corruption

Who is Moqtada Al Sadr? The Iraqi warlord who claims to fight corruption

The cleric rose to prominence organising resistance to US and British forces but has since become a powerful political force

Robert Tollast

Radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr is once again upending Iraqi politics by asking his legion of supporters to occupy the national Parliament for the second time since 2016, this time blocking rival MPs, many aligned to Iran-backed political parties in a coalition called the Co-Ordination Framework, from convening to form government.

On Monday, the sit-in spurred a counter-protest, largely led by Asaib Ahl Al Haq, a splinter group from the Sadrist movement backed by Iran with a political party aligned to former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki — Mr Al Sadr’s arch rival.

Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr during a sit-in at a parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq. Reuters 

The group is widely accused of kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians during Iraq’s civil war and later killing hundreds of protesters in 2019.

They fought street battles with the Mr Al Sadr’s militia in Baghdad between 2012 and 2014.

Since then, rivalry has involved assassinations of members from both groups.

The recent standoff has led to fears of a new civil war — this time Shiite against Shiite.

Who is Moqtada Al Sadr?

The cleric has long claimed to fight corruption and oppression, whether that of the Saddam Hussein regime or after 2003, the US.

Through numerous protests between 2016 and 2020, he aligned his movement with Iraqi Communists and youth protest groups, calling for “a revolution of the oppressed” that could put an end to Iraq’s system of sectarian apportionment in government and usher in public service based on quality rather than identity.

His father-in-law, revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al Sadr, was murdered along with his wife by Iraq’s Baathists and his father, Muhammad Sadiq Al Sadr was shot dead by Baathist agents in 1999, sparking a second Shiite uprising against Saddam.

This heritage of suffering and religious piety gave him folk hero status among Iraq’s Shiite poor and he inherited a southern network of Sadrists stretching into the slums of Baghdad’s crowded, suburban Saddam City (now Sadr City).

But is the cleric really an outsider fighting corruption?

“In the background, Sadrist loyalists have embedded themselves in the bureaucracy. There has been some good reporting on this, on the ‘deep state’ and Sadrist penetration thereof,” says Nicholas Krohley, author of The Death of the Mehdi Army: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Iraq’s Most Powerful Militia.

Mr Krohley refers to revelations over the years that Mr Al Sadr controls sections of Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity, abusing contracts to raise funds, and controls much of the Ministry of Health, a legacy of when his militia, the Jaish Al Mahdi, took control of it between 2005 and 2007.

The group was widely accused of committing sectarian murders in hospital wards, selling medicine on the black market and driving away many of Iraq’s talented health workers.

But Mr Al Sadr has tried to distance himself from this period, disbanding the Jaish Al Mahdi, withdrawing ministers and MPs from government on many occasions as an act of protest against what he deems mainstream political groups — mainly his rivals in Mr Al Maliki’s Dawa party and their Iran-backed allies in the Badr Organisation.

With the latter group, Mr Al Sadr’s supporters fought a series of bloody gun battles in Karbala in 2007 that left 50 dead.

But analysts say his outsider image is a mirage.

In reality, the cleric has always maintained a strong network of supporters in senior government positions.

When Baghdad’s Ibn Al Khatib hospital caught fire — killing nearly 90 people in a tragedy widely blamed on negligence — Mr Al Sadr’s nominated health minister Hassan Al Tamimi was removed from his post. A health official told The National that the hospital, along with most health facilities in Rusafa, where Sadr City is located, was run by the movement.

When a similar blaze occurred in July last year, killing 92 people in Nasiriyah, tribal leaders blamed local Sadrists in the health authority, giving them three days to leave the province.

The cleric has also tried to distance himself from militia crimes during Iraq’s sectarian strife between 2003 and 2008.

Sensitive to the fact that he reformed his old militia, renamed Saraya Al Salam during the war on ISIS, Mr Al Sadr said he would disband the group in 2017, but they remain active. Their commander Abu Mustafa Al Hamidawi ordered members to be “prepared for any emergency” in Baghdad on July 24.

Some analysts say Mr Al Sadr only has loose control over this armed group and at least three splinter factions have emerged.

Hakim Al Zamili, former deputy parliament speaker and deputy minister of health — arrested by the US for running sectarian death squads when working in the Health Ministry, last year said the kidnap and murder strategy his militia used had helped to “defeat terrorism”. Mr Al Zamili recently joined protesters in Iraq’s Parliament.

Al Sadr again sorry Iran

To some, the unpredictable Shiite cleric is a useful bulwark against increasingly powerful Iranian-backed political parties.

Their power soared after 2014 when Mr Al Maliki formalised Iran-backed militias as part of the security services, wrapping them into an umbrella organisation, the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

But it meant that two rival sets of militias — US-listed terrorist organisations such as Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl Al Haq, as well as a host of smaller groups — were now in the same formation as Saraya Al Salam.

Bitter disputes over salaries between the groups ensued, at one point leading to the assassination of a government-appointed PMF auditor.

Now the prize, after 10 months of stalled government formation, is control over Iraqi state resources — Shiite parties lead the competition for everything from PMF salaries and pensions to controlling entire state-owned companies.

Will there be a new civil war?

“None of what’s happening is usual, this has been uncharted territory since Sadr pulled his followers [MPs] out of Parliament,” says Omar Al Nidawi, programme director at US NGO Enabling Peace in Iraq Center.

“Both Sadr and the Co-ordination Framework are taking shots in the dark to see what works. The difference is the Framework seems to be finding it more difficult to agree on a united course of action. This may explain the brief protest on Monday and decision to pull back after ‘delivering the message’.”

But Mr Al Nidawi is sceptical of the prospect of full-scale war.

“We’re unlikely to see Co-ordination Framework factions decide they want to take on the Sadrists in an armed conflict.” he says.

Joel Wing, an analyst who has tracked violence in Iraq since 2008, agrees that Iraq’s intra-Shiite competition now extends beyond Iran’s reach.

“The driving force in all this escalation is Maliki not Iran. Everyone knows Maliki is an autocrat full of conspiracies who will turn on anyone and use the power of the state,” he says, referring to Mr Al Maliki’s considerable influence behind the scenes in Iraq’s politics.

But Mr Wing says there will be no winners.

“Sadr could be just as big a threat to everyone as Maliki was, if he’s in the driver’s seat,” he warns.

In the long run, “time is on Moqtada’s side”, Mr Krohley says. He notes Iraq’s rapidly growing population which swells the ranks of unemployed with each year of government failure.

This will always boost the appeal of Mr Al Sadr’s populist brand, he says.

“It’s demographics. The Sadrist base keeps growing in Iraq, in absolute and relative terms. No other political faction has had any luck in peeling away meaningful numbers of Sadrist followers. The ‘resistance’ IRGC-linked PMF types have utterly failed. So, Moqtada still sits at the head of what is, and seems very likely to remain, the dominant political force in Iraq.”

Updated: August 02, 2022, 10:18 AM

US must reverse the damage the Obama nuclear deal has done: Daniel 8

‘US must reverse the damage the Iran nuclear deal has done’

This requires the Biden administration to fire Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley and re-impose “maximum pressure,” Michael Rubin tells JNS.

BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

World powers and Iran in Vienna for talks discussing the Iran nuclear deal, November 2021. Source: E.U. delegation in Vienna/Twitter.

(January 22, 2023 / JNS) Senior U.S. diplomats’ continuing overtures to Iran, seeking to seal an agreement for Tehran’s re-entry to the 2015 nuclear deal, raise new questions about President Joe Biden’s policy in the Middle East.

Israel and its Sunni state allies vehemently oppose the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the Iran deal, largely because it would provide Tehran with more than $100 billion in economic sanctions relief in exchange for a promise of temporary restrictions on the clerical regime’s capability to develop nuclear weapons.

Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told JNS, “The point is that, while the JCPOA has no value, simply leaving it is not enough. It’s necessary to reverse the damage the deal has done. This means firing Rob Malley [Biden’s special envoy for Iran] and re-imposing ‘maximum pressure.’

“That Biden refuses to do this and Malley is still sucking up taxpayer dollars to jet-set around Europe and secretly meet with Iranian diplomats in New York shows Biden is no longer calibrating policy to reality. That his administration prefers to do this in the dark is telling, given how often their partisans declare ‘Democracy dies in darkness,’” Rubin said.

Malley recently held meetings with Tehran’s UN ambassador, the London-based Iran International news organization reported on Wednesday.

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The U.S. State Department did not deny that Malley met with Ambassador Saeed Iravani in New York “at least three times in the last two months,” according to the report.

The State Department told Iran International, “As we have said, we have the means to deliver messages to Iran when it is in our interest to do so.”

Iranian dissidents, who seek the end of the theocratic regime in Tehran, were outraged when Biden appointed Malley to negotiate with Iran in January 2021.

Wedded to the JCPOA

Malley has long advocated normalizing relations with a number of state sponsors of terrorism. In a 2006 Time magazine piece he wrote, “Today the US does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah….The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.” He is deeply wedded to reviving the JCPOA.

Rubin said, “The problem is that the JCPOA wasn’t just a bad deal, but its negotiators knew it was a bad deal. This is why they didn’t design it to be a Senate-ratified treaty and why [then-U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry front-loaded the economic windfall Iran received. The logic there was ‘Iran already got paid, so we might as well stay” with the nuclear accord.

“It’s no secret the JCPOA was always a bad deal no matter what the spin of its supporters. It reversed decades of non-proliferation precedent. Inheritors of legacy Soviet nuclear programs like the Ukrainians and Kazakhs had to forfeit their weapons. Libya’s program was completely dismantled. When South Africa gave up theirs, even with Nelson Mandela in control and fully compliant, it took the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] 19 years to give an all-clear,” Rubin continued.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that “the JCPOA has not been on the agenda as a practical matter for many months now. It’s not our focus. We’re focused on what’s happening in Iran. We’re focused on what Iran is doing in terms of the provision of weapons to Russia to use against innocent people and the entire energy grid in Ukraine. And of course, we’re focused on its other destabilizing activities throughout the region.”

He added, however, the caveat that ”we continue to believe that the most effective way to do that is through diplomacy, and we saw the results and success of diplomacy when it comes to the original JCPOA.”

“The one thing that’s clear is that engaging in diplomacy, including with those who are engaged in outrageous actions, is sometimes necessary to try to advance our interests, and it never takes the word ‘no’ from our vocabulary,” Blinken said.

For many Iranian Americans, however, Biden’s policy is misguided and continues to advance the interests of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Freedom and justice

Manda Zand Ervin, whom President George W. Bush appointed as the U.S. delegate to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Woman in 2008, told JNS, “As an Iranian-American woman who took refuge in the land of freedom and justice, I ask President Joe Biden: How many negotiations do you want to have with Khamenei who has lied and betrayed America time and again, and has joined the enemies of the United States?

“While the administration has been supporting Ukraine, Khamenei is giving drones to his friend [Russian President] Putin, yet President Biden is still talking about negotiations, with Putin as the middleman with Khamenei,” she said.

Zand Ervin, the author of “The Ladies’ Secret Society: History of the Courageous Women of Iran, does not believe Biden is finished with the Iran nuclear deal. Biden “is giving Khamenei time to stop the revolution [the current anti-regime protests] and go back to negotiations,” she said.

She continued that “Democratic Party presidents who are ardent believers in women’s rights and equity have been on the side of a gender apartheid tyranny since [the Islamic Revolution of] 1979. The billions that the US is giving to Khamenei go to our enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah and his terrorist IRGC and others.”

The Obama administrations pumped billions of dollars into the coffers of Iran’s regime as part of the 2015 JCPOA deal. The Trump administration pulled the plug on the JCPOA in 2018, saying it would not stop Iran from building nuclear weapons and allowed Tehran to fund terrorism.

Zand Ervin said, “A free and democratic Iran can be not only a friend of the United States but a reliable business partner through the one million-strong successful Iranian-American community.

“Obama said he made a mistake listening to his advisers and not supporting the uprising of Iranians in 2009. So, why is Biden not taking his advice instead of listening to the same advice from the same people who advised Obama?” she asked.

South Korea Will Go Nuclear: Daniel 7

Will South Korea Go Nuclear?

As Pyongyang grows its nuclear arsenal, Seoul considers its atomic options.

Charlotte LawsonJanuary 22, 2023

Jan 21, 2023

President Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. (Photo by Kim Min-Hee – Pool/Getty Images)

South Korea has begun to publicly discuss what was once unthinkable: pursuing its own nuclear weapons program. Such a move is unlikely to deter North Korea—but it could alienate Seoul’s most important ally. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has spent President Joe Biden’s time in office pledging to “beef up” his nuclear arsenal while testing a record number of missiles. Between Biden’s abandonment of America’s Afghan allies, and Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, South Koreans increasingly question the United States’ commitment to their defense. 

“It’s possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own,” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said this month. “If that’s the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities.”

Yoon’s comments reflect a growing consensus in South Korea that the country needs more of a stake in its own national defense. More than 70 percent of South Koreans were in favor of acquiring nuclear weapons, a 2022 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found. That’s as clear a sign as any of the country’s waning faith in its alliance with the United States.