The Trump administration is determining whether to designate Iran’s elite arms unit, the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as a foreign terrorist organization. Officials from both the US State and Defense departments had warned the President to hold off on the order. The State and Defense departments’ hesitation is largely due to the fear of losing Iraq, as Baghdad heavily relies on both the IRGC and the US for military aid. The fact remains that Iraq has already been lost to Shia dominance since former Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has favored his own majority, rather than serving beyond ethnic and sectarian lines. …
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Resources
Be the ‘Strong Horse,’ President Trump
“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally want to side with the strong horse. When people of the world look upon the confusion and atheism of the West, they see that Islam is the strong horse.” — Osama Bin Laden
Osama Bin Laden thought the United States was weak, and this weakness provoked his attack on 9/11 that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. …
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VIDEO: EMET’s 2016 DC Conference “Emerging Threats Out of the Middle East: The Impact on a New Administration”
Sarah Stern
Founder & President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET)
Senator Mark Kirk
R- IL
Recipient of the Winston Churchill Award for Moral Integrity
Representative Eliot Engel
D – NY
Recipient of the Winston Churchill Award for Moral Integrity
Geostrategic Analysis of the Middle East: Panel Discussion
Speakers:
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, U.S. Army (ret.) & Chairman of Stand Up America
Dr. Daniel Pipes, President of the Middle East Forum
Eitan Arusy, Intelligence Specialist & CEO of Global Impact Services LLC
Frank Gaffney, Founder & President of the Center for Security Policy
Q&A Session for Geostrategic Analysis of the Middle East Panel
The Security Threat from Iran & Hezbollah
Speakers:
Congressman Jeff Duncan, Chairman of Foreign Affairs’ Western Hemisphere Subcommittee
Dr. Harold Rhode, Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute
Joseph Humire, Executive Director at the Center for a Secure Free Society
Q & A Session for Security Threat from Iran & Hezbollah Panel
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Vilifying Walid Phares
History has a strange way of judging people. American history honors warriors of the past such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who struggled and fought for America’s freedom and independence. However, the closer one gets to our current age of moral relativism, the more critical we are of those who are thrust into a state of conflict — those who have had to realize that their people’s survival sometimes depends on defeating an enemy.
Walid Phares was born in 1957 to a Maronite Christian family in Beirut. By the time Phares was in his 20s, Lebanon, which has always been more of a mosaic of various religions and communities than a unified nation, had plunged into a bloody civil war. Naturally, Phares supported his own Lebanese Maronite Christian community’s efforts to defend itself in this brutal, existential struggle against Syrian occupation on the one hand and Palestinian and Lebanese Sunni and Shiite terror on the other. …
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Lebanon & Hezbollah Fact Sheet
Lebanon Hezbollah Fact Sheet
Lebanon is a largely non-functioning Republic, where three prominent offices are divided amongst the different religious groups. The President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the National Assembly is a Shia Muslim. There is a unicameral National Assembly, with 128 seats and members directly elected in multi-seat constituencies by majority vote. Assembly members serve 4-year terms and seats are apportioned among the Christian and Muslim denominations. In February of 2014, the current Prime Minister, Tammam Salam, a Sunni Muslim, was chosen; he is also acting President, since the Assembly has been unable to select a President.
The Hezbollah – or “Hizbullah”, meaning “The Party of God,” and sometimes using the cover name of “Islamic Jihad” – militia “has effectively taken over the Lebanese government.” Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamist political party, militant group and designated terrorist organization, which was founded in the 1980’s by Iran. It was originally created to oppose Israel and the West. Hezbollah is funded by Iran, with an estimated $100- 200 million annually.
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