On November 4, analyst Avi Jorisch revealed in the Wall Street Journal that Iran appears to be using a United Nations office headquartered in Tehran to skirt U.S. sanctions.  Jorisch writes that Iran appears to be using the Asian Clearing Union “to route over $13 billion overseas in 2008 and over $5.6 billion so far in 2009 to pay for many of its goods and services.”  Presumably, the White House, the U.S. Treasury, and international anti-money laundering agencies have since chased down this lead.

A week later, on November 12, the federal government seized assets belonging to the Alavi Foundation and the Assa Corporation, including a Manhattan skyscraper and four mosques, citing alleged links to the Iranian government. An amended civil complaint alleges that the Alavi Foundation provided services to the Iranian government and transferred money to Bank Melli, Iran’s largest state-owned financial entity.

The next day, on November 13, 2009, Eli Lake of the Washington Times revealed that the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) may be operating as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lobbying disclosure laws.

Now, the New York Post appears to have delivered another blow to the aforementioned Alavi Foundation.  Apparently, it has gifted “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to the Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs at Columbia and Rutgers universities, in an attempt to influence their programs.  For example, the Alavi Foundation reportedly donated $100,000 to Columbia after the university agreed to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007.

Iran may have lost a few battles this month, but the mullahs are still winning the war.  Tehran continues to march toward its goal of attaining a nuclear weapon.  Indeed, the Iranians recently rejected a deal brokered by the United Nations whereby Tehran would have shipped about 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia and France to be processed for a research reactor.   The deal might have delayed Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb by about a year.

In the end, the recent blows to Iranian infrastructure in the United States are no substitute for imposing crippling sanctions, such as the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act.  Congress and some of America’s allies are ready to impose these measures.  The White House, however, continues to delay.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that the move could be “very embarrassing diplomatically for Israel.”  Specifically, the Palestinians claim that the move could generate additional international pressure to stop the expansion of Israeli settlements.

The move, however, could also backfire horribly for the Palestinians.

For one, a unilateral declaration would effectively nullify the existing international agreements between the Palestinians and Israelis.  These agreements are the only reason Israel currently allows the Palestinians to administer the Gaza Strip and significant portions of the West Bank.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted yesterday, “unilateral [Palestinian] steps will lead to unilateral Israeli moves.”  In other words, a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood could easily draw the more powerful Israel into a conflict that unilaterally places hostile Palestinian territories back under Israeli control.

A unilateral declaration could also hurt the Palestinians in other ways. It would put an end to the Palestinians’ unrealistic claims on Jerusalem, or their insistence that Israel needs to accommodate thousands of Palestinians claiming refugee status.

Specifically, if the Palestinians declare a state outside of the scope of negotiations, the Israelis will officially reject these demands, and the Palestinians will get nothing.  When the Palestinian leadership fails to deliver on these issues ­– which they have insisted are sacrosanct for decades – their legitimacy will be drastically diminished.

And on the topic of leadership, who do the Palestinians believe can run their state?  Currently, the Gaza Strip is under control of the jihadist Hamas organization.  This has been the case since the terror group launched a brutal military coup in June 2007.  Meanwhile, the West Bank is under the control of the rival Fatah faction, which effectively controls the Palestinian Authority. The two groups have repeatedly failed to reconcile at summits sponsored by Arab states over the past two years.  It is doubtful that the declaration of Palestinian statehood would help the two sides come together.

It is also important to note that there are Israeli-built barriers around the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that these two territories are separated by an expanse of the Israeli Negev Desert.  If the Palestinians declare a state, the Israelis will not remove these barriers.  Indeed, these security measures have stopped all but one suicide bombing in Israeli territory in recent years, and have actually helped minimize conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.  Thus, if the Palestinians declare a state without Israeli buy-in, their state would remain divided in two, with virtually no chance of getting the Israelis to connect them.

At this point, it should become clear that the Palestinians would hurt their national aspirations by failing to work with the Israelis.  This, of course, raises the question: Why would they even consider a unilateral declaration?

For this, we can thank the misguided policies of U.S. President Barack Obama.   Early on, the President called for an end to Israeli settlements as a unilateral concession, outside the scope of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.  The President, in recent months, realized that this position was untenable, and has since toned down these calls.

The damage, however, has been done.  The Palestinians now believe that they have a strong ally in the U.S. President.  More importantly, they believe they can demand unilateral concessions, or even make unilateral decisions.

The Palestinians would learn a very difficult lesson if they declared statehood.  Obama, too, would learn a tough lesson.  His early statements have already exacerbated the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, in the process, undermined Middle East security.

The AP article indicates that Israeli settlement activity is the determining factor for Clinton’s failures. It quotes Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh as saying, “There can be no excuse for the continuation of settlements, which is really the main obstacle in the way of any credible peace process.”

The AP failed to note, however, that many of the Arab leaders that Clinton met with are themselves responsible for the “atmosphere” of “failure” that reportedly lingers in Marrakech. Indeed, many of these leaders – including the Moroccans – recently sent delegations to the Annual Conference for Boycotting Israel, held on October 20 in Damascus, Syria. Only Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman held out. This is hardly a breeding ground for diplomacy.

The popularity of this year’s boycott conference, coupled with the current diplomatic impasse, yields several important observations.

Most obviously, the good offices of Morocco are not at all good.  The Kingdom cannot in good faith foster diplomacy between the Palestinians and Israelis while simultaneously pursuing a boycott that would blacklist Israel and Israeli products in the Arab world.

Second, the wide participation of Arab states in this conference demonstrates the failure, to date, of President Barack Obama’s Middle East strategy.  The President appealed to these countries in his June speech in Cairo, asking them to play a leading role in rekindling peace by making gestures to Israel.  They have clearly rejected his request.  This is critical because the Palestinians will not even consider diplomacy until most of the Arab world urges them to do so.

Finally, the Palestinians are ostensibly rejecting diplomacy over an issue that should be determined during diplomacy – settlements.  Their obstinance can be traced directly to a grave error committed by Obama, who began his presidency seeking unilateral concessions from Israel on this issue – without a negotiated agreement.  While the President has since reconsidered this untenable position, the Palestinians have dug in their heels, hoping that the President will again change course.  In other words, this is a stalemate the White House could have easily avoided.

Hillary Clinton’s failures in Morocco are not hers.   They are the result of earlier missteps by the President, and an Arab world that is sending mixed messages about its role in Middle East peace.

While renewed conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is perennially possible, there may be another conflict brewing.  Indeed, a new “intra-fada” between the Palestinian factions may be on the horizon.

Tensions between the two largest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, are running high. In 2007, Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip, killing and maiming dozens of Fatah members in the process.  Since then, the two Palestinian territories have split into two quasi-states led by two quasi-governments: the Iranian-backed Hamastan (or Gazastan) and the Western-backed Fatahland (or West-Bankistan).  Hamas and Fatah occasionally clash, and reconciliation talks have repeatedly failed.

Now, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reports that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to run for reelection on the Fatah ticket.  He scheduled elections for January 24, 2010. Hamas, however, rejects the legitimacy of the elections, and will likely not participate.  Renewed conflict between these two factions is a real possibility.

The Obama administration, however, has elected not to make this a high-priority issue.  This is a mistake.  If the Palestinians again descend into war, or even if they simply remain at odds, they are still divided.  Indeed, there is no Palestinian interlocutor – the most basic ingredient needed for peace talks.  Until the administration addresses this, its Middle East peace initiative simply cannot succeed.

As the BBC reports, the Obama administration “has all but dismantled the Iran Democracy Fund” – federal funding to a classified list of groups that work to foster democracy and undermine the mullahs’ tight grip on Iran.  The timing of this could not be worse, as democracy advocates continue to come under attack for protesting the fraudulent June elections that handed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. Just last week, Iran announced plans to execute three activists.

As Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) observed, “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when… needed most.’”

In Egypt, democracy advocates also feel abandoned.  Egyptians believe that President Hosni Mubarak, who has held a tight grip on power since 1981, will appoint his son Gamal as his successor.  The Obama administration has been silent on this issue, which has many Egyptians seething.  The administration has also withheld comment on the regime’s campaign of mass arrests against opposition leaders, bloggers, and other political activists.

“We are very disgruntled with President Obama,” said Kamal al-Fayoumi, an activist jailed by the government last year. “He has given the regime the green light to do what it wants with the Egyptian people.”

In Turkey, the illiberal Justice and Development Party (AKP) recently launched a campaign to bring down the Dogan Group, a private, pro-West company that owns about half of the country’s media (including CNN Turk).  If the AKP succeeds, it could ultimately bring 90% of the media under its control – reminiscent of the state-controlled Russian media.  This would be a devastating blow to the region’s only democracy.  Liberal Turks are now beginning to ask why the administration has failed to weigh in.

Democracy advocates also are painfully aware of the President’s ambivalence about the U.S. commitment in both Iraq and Afghanistan – two countries where the shoots of democracy are sprouting, but can easily whither.

The beginning of the end of the democracy agenda can be traced back to the President’s Cairo speech in June. He referenced a “controversy about the promotion of democracy… connected to the war in Iraq.”  In an attempt to create “a new beginning” with the Muslim world, he stated, “let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”

Most Americans would likely agree that imposing any political system on others is the wrong approach.  However, Obama’s policy of “anti-Bushism” is equally wrong.  The democracy deficit in the Middle East has not contracted.  And given recent developments in Turkey, the deficit may widen further.   This could lead to further radicalization of the region. Failing to recognize this may ultimately harm American interests.

When the Goldstone Report was first released in September, the White House reportedly signaled to Israel that it would die quietly in Geneva. Jerusalem, in turn, signaled it would continue to cooperate with Obama’s peace team, led by George Mitchell.

Obama then went to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and requested that the Palestinian Authority drop pursuit of the report.  Abbas reluctantly acquiesced.

“After studying the situation and in order to ensure the largest possible support, we agreed to delay the vote till the next session of the council (in March 2010),” Abbas said in a speech on Palestinian television.

Abbas, however, faced an intense backlash on the Palestinian street.  Throngs of angry Palestinians relished the possibility that the report could reach the International Criminal Court (ICC).  In short order, Abbas flipped positions and snubbed Obama’s request.

As a result, the U.N. Human Rights Council approved the report today in Geneva by a vote of 25-6.  Douglas M. Griffiths, the U.S. representative to the council, merely registered “disappointment at the outcome of this resolution.”

Apart from his inability to hold Abbas to his word, Obama failed to appeal to the sensibilities of U.S. allies on the council such as Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, who voted in favor of the report.   This confirms that the Arab world is still more interested in vilifying Israel than negotiating with it – despite Obama’s attempts to engender good will in the Arab world by exacting concessions from Israel.

More importantly, Obama has conveyed to the Israelis that he lacks sway with the Palestinians.  This bodes poorly for future negotiations.

The Goldstone is not just a black eye for the United Nations. Obama has demonstrated that his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East have thus far failed.

Clinton’s most urgent action item was obtaining support for international sanctions on Iran, as a means to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.  President Dmitri Medvedev said last month that, “sometimes sanctions are inevitable,” which was seen by some observers as support for a tougher stance on Iran. But, during Mrs. Clinton’s trip, she found no further support of this position from either Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.  In fact, Lavrov now says that sanctions during the current standoff would be “counterproductive.”

Clinton undoubtedly received renewed pledges of support from the Russians for secure supply lines through the Kremlim’s sphere of influence to U.S. troops in Afghanistan – a critical need as the U.S. military prepares for another cold winter there. But this was already in the bag.

The State Department will likely try to squeeze some positive spin out of the reported progress on strategic arms reductions.  However, President Barack Obama and Medvedev agreed back in July to a preliminary deal to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).  With START set to expire in December, and with an agreement in both countries’ interests, progress should not be seen as the fruits of Mrs. Clinton’s deft diplomacy.

That Mrs. Clinton is returning stateside without exacting any significant concessions from the Russians – particularly on Iran sanctions – should come as no surprise.  When Obama announced in September that he would unilaterally scrap plans for a long-planned missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, he coughed up Washington’s only bargaining chip.

In short, the Kremlin got what it wanted. There’s nothing left to negotiate.

The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), if enacted, would put the squeeze on foreign oil companies that currently help the Mullahs refine petroleum, as well as the insurance companies that underwrite this trade.   If the sanctions work, they could stem the flow of 30 to 40 percent of Iranian oil, since the Mullahs don’t actually have sufficient refining capacity to meet their domestic needs.  In short, IRPSA could deal a fiscal body blow to Iran and destabilize the regime, as a means to derail its nuclear ambitions.

So, why are Democrats like Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Chris Dodd (CT) unhappy?  The same reason why Republicans are.

Congress rolled out the initiative back in April that mirrored candidate Obama’s call for gasoline sanctions during the 2008 presidential campaign.   Fast forward six months, and it’s still stuck on the Hill, despite the fact that it has an astounding 327 co-sponsors in the House (HR 2475) and 75 co-sponsors in the Senate (S 908).  That’s more than three-quarters of Congress.

While that should easily be enough to get IRPSA into law, the administration has signaled to lawmakers that it needs more time. At a recent hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey testified that he was still working on a “comprehensive” plan that “takes into account Iran’s potential vulnerabilities and those activities that have the greatest influence on Iran’s decision makers.”

Levey has worked tirelessly on Iran since assuming his post in 2004.  He knows exactly what the sanctions package would look like. The problem, according to congressional staffers and think tankers who have been following the legislation, is that Obama appears ambivalent – caught somewhere between his call for dialogue and insisting that an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable.”

The reason for the president’s ambivalence is clear. Gasoline sanctions only have the potential to cause a spike in Iran’s gasoline imports, and possibly weaken the regime. Even if IRPSA hits Iran in the pocketbook, as former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton notes, the Mullahs are not likely to change course.  If he’s right, the enforcement and subsequent failure of sanctions would only reinforce the notion that military intervention may be the only viable option left.

Obama seems eager to postpone reaching this excruciating conclusion.

Leadership, however, is about making those tough choices.  The President must give sanctions enough time to work – or fail.  Neglecting to do so will only limit U.S. options as Tehran draws ever closer to its dangerous aims.

This was hardly a flattering endorsement for Obama.  Qaddafi has been tied to countless acts of terrorism including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and the bombing of a German nightclub packed with U.S. servicemen in 1986.

The endorsement from the “mad clown of Tripoli,” as President Ronald Reagan called him, is not an isolated incident.  Scores of other dangerous despots, terrorists, and anti-American mouthpieces have come out in support of Obama’s foreign policies, which include ambivalence about the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, wavering support for Israel, and a diminished sense of American exceptionalism.

It began when candidate Obama ran on a foreign policy platform of what scholar Robert Satloff later described as “anti-Bushism.” Whereas George W. Bush sought to confront rogue regimes and radical ideologies, Obama sought to find understanding with them.

Cuba, which earned sanctions and isolation for decades of support for terrorism, was heartened by Obama’s campaign promises to ease restrictions on Cuban Americans traveling to Cuba that were imposed by the Bush administration.  Accordingly, Raul Castro struck a conciliatory tone in January, saying that Obama “seems like a good man,” and wished him luck.

Similarly, Syria smiled when Daniel Kurtzer stated that peace with Syria, which has a long and incontrovertible record of aiding the Iraq insurgency and supporting anti-Israeli terrorist groups, would be a high priority. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad complimented Obama after his election, calling his victory, “a positive sign” that U.S. foreign policy was changing.  Over the summer, Assad even had the audacity to invite the president to meet him in Syria.

Less than a week after Obama’s inauguration, the Taliban terrorist group that had once given safe haven to Osama bin Laden, lauded the new president for his stated goal of closing the prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “Obama’s move to close Guantanamo detention center is a positive step for peace and stability in the region and the world,” read a Taliban communiqué, which also asked Obama to “ void all those evil projects established in the light of Bush’s satanic perspective of instability in the world.”

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez also found reason to celebrate the new U.S. president’s non-confrontational foreign policies.  In April, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, after noting a more conciliatory U.S. policy towards his regime, he gave Obama a copy of the anti-American screed, The Open Veins of Latin America.  Because Obama tolerated these antics, Chavez later said he would give Obama another book:  What is to be Done? by Vladimir Lenin.

Two months later, Obama delivered a speech to the Muslim world in which he appeared to distance himself from Israel, exhorting the Jewish state to eschew policies that undermine “efforts to achieve peace.”  This earned the president praise from the enemies of Israel in the Middle East. Ahmed Yousef, a spokesman for the Hamas terrorist organization, told al-Jazeera television in Gaza that the President’s speech was reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr. in its vision. “What he said about Islam was great. What he said about Palestinian suffering and a Palestinian state is great.”

Most recently, Russia cheered when Obama declared his intention to cut missile defense by $1.2 billion in 2010, and to altogether scrap European missile defense.  Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, who attributed Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia to the “arrogant course of the American administration,” lauded Obama’s decision to scrap missile defense a “responsible move.”

Judging by the overwhelming approval of these nations which often challenge the United States, Obama’s foreign policies are failing to serve American interests.  A Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll released on September 24 confirmed this, noting that Obama now “faces significant doubts from the American public” about his “handling of foreign policy.”

When Americans begin to signal their support and terrorist groups and authoritarians begin to howl with disapproval, we can be assured that U.S. foreign policy is serving U.S. interests. For now, however, the President is dangerously off-track.

Obama, meanwhile, has ordered the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan in an effort to stamp out the threat of the Taliban.

Curiously, however, as the war in Afghanistan stretches into its seventh year, the U.S. State Department has not designated the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

From what is known, the problem may have initially stemmed from the fact that, by law, the State Department could not designate a government. This is no longer a hang-up; the Taliban government that sheltered al-Qaeda and Usama bin Laden from its rise to power in 1996 until its demise in 2001 is now dead and gone. The new organization that has sprouted up in its stead can perhaps be best described as an al-Qaeda “affiliate group.” It remains committed to carrying out a violent jihad against both U.S. servicemen and civilians in Afghanistan, and likely maintains contact with the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces that challenged the U.S. military during Operation Enduring Freedom. However, it no longer enjoys the government infrastructure that housed the Taliban for five years until 2001.

The bigger question at Foggy Bottom is now whether the Taliban should be viewed as a terrorist organization or an insurgency organization. Indeed, language from the 2007 State Department country report on Afghanistan seemed to imply that the Taliban was both.

In fact, the consensus at State is that the Taliban is made up of two factions – one moderate, and another one radical. Or, to put it another way, there may be a Taliban with a capital ‘T’ and a taliban with a lower case ‘t’.

President Obama underscored this notion in a March 8 interview with the New York Times, when he expressed an interest in reaching out to moderate forces among the militants, similar to those that helped bring stability to Iraq. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said.

The Taliban quickly dismissed Obama’s musings as “illogical.” Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a spokesman for the Taliban, insists that the Taliban are “united, have one leader, one aim, one policy.” The group claims that their campaign of violence will not end until the U.S. led forces in Afghanistan are defeated.

Meanwhile, the State Department continues to add less relevant terrorist groups to its FTO list. Peru’s Shining Path or the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (two recent additions) have little to do with the broader war on Islamist terror, yet their listings give the sense that they might pose more of a national security threat than the unlisted Taliban.

Designating the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is long overdue.

For one, it would demonstrate that the United States views the Taliban as part of a dangerous jihadi network that is undoubtedly terrorist in nature. It is a mistake to allow the world to believe that even parts of the Taliban should be viewed as a legitimate “resistance” organization. A number of American allies, including Great Britain, the European Union, and Australia have followed America’s lead. They have also left the Taliban off their terrorism lists. Most recently, Russia indicated that it would hold talks with “moderate elements” of the Taliban after Obama indicated that he was considering a similar move.   A designation would help reverse this dangerous trend.

More importantly, a Taliban designation would also recognize the great work that our military has done in Afghanistan. It would be tantamount to officially relegating the former Taliban government to an affiliate group – the first and only instance in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

In other words, a designation would relay our belief that the Taliban cannot, under the current circumstances, mount enough strength to retake Afghanistan.

If moderate elements wish to negotiate with the U.S. military or even our diplomatic corps, they should not be allowed to approach the negotiating table as members of the Taliban. If they recognize the defeat of their banned terrorist group, they should be welcomed with open arms.