Iran's Foreign Minister Serves a Hot Potato To USA

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                      Abbas Araghchi (b: Dec 5, 1962, age 63)

With good intentions, the combo of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff seems to me to have been wasting their time in Oman on Friday trying to debate with hardened Foreign Minister of Iran, Abbas Araghchi. Jared and Steve also have the Ukraine-Russia War to deal with. Now on the sea the air carrier issue with the Abraham Lincoln; 

Is this subject a hot potato?   A "hot potato" subject is a highly controversial, sensitive, or risky issue that people avoid discussing or dealing with because it causes strong disagreement and discomfort. Originating in the mid-1800s from "dropping something like a hot potato," it signifies a topic "too hot to handle," such as intense political debates, layoffs, or divisive social issues.

 Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s hours-long talks with Iran in Oman ended Friday with Tehran refusing to budge on nuclear enrichment.

The US responded by immediately ratcheting up sanctions to deliver economic pain to Iran and flexing its military might by flying fighter jets in the Arabian Sea above the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. 

President Trump has been threatening a military bombardment of Iran for weeks after the brutal murder of thousands of anti-regime protesters. The talks on Friday were a chance for diplomacy, but Iran didn’t want to address its ballistic missile stockpile and the regime’s brutality on protesters.

That's my hot potato.  Why isn't Trump addressing the Revolution going on in Iran of the young people who find themselves with no water, so unable to grow their own food, have no jobs, nothing to live for under the Ayatollah regime, now holding the last chance they have of rebelling in this Revolution.  The Iranian government cut out their internet as well, so it's hard for our ABC, NBC, CBS, but Newsnation seemed to get info about what's happening now. There sat ships giving hope to the people of being supported that did nothing but sit there while 40,000 or more were slaughtered, and Trump proudly bragging how he saved 800 from the hangman.Maybe true, but he could do a heck of a lot more;  especially on Friday.  What Iran does is shoot to kill people of the Revolution.  Israel has been said to be there helping the Revolutionaries.  

Iran's top diplomat said on Friday that nuclear talks with the US mediated by Oman were off to a “good start” and set to continue, in remarks that could help allay concern that failure to reach a deal might nudge the Middle East closer to war.

A regional diplomat briefed by Tehran on the talks told Reuters that Iran insisted on its "right to enrich uranium" during the negotiations with the US, but showed openness to discussing the “level and purity” of enrichment or alternative arrangements, including a potential regional consortium.

 Abbas has served as the foreign minister of Iran since August 2024. He previously served as the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as the Iranian ambassador to Finland and to Japan.  His father died when he was 17. As a teenager, he took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after which he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where he served for almost ten years and fought in the Iran–Iraq War.

Araghchi acted as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in talks with the P5+1, under president Hassan Rouhani leading up to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the United States. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, was an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The agreement was finalized in Vienna on 14 July 2015, between Iran and the P5+1 together with the European Union.

 Araghchi holds a Ph.D. in political thought from the University of Kent with a thesis entitled The Evolution of the Concept of Political Participation in Twentieth-Century Islamic Political Thought (1996). Supervised by David McLellan, a scholar of Marxism, the thesis argues that modern Islamic political thought has attempted to reconcile the doctrine of divine sovereignty with the concept of popular sovereignty by incorporating aspects of Western democratic theory into Islamic principles, thereby developing democratic institutions within the framework of Islamic law.

He is fluent in Arabic and English. 

We need another PhD educated in political thought  with knowledge of nuclear Iran.  They need the same level of education from either Princeton, U of California-Berkley, Yale, U of Chicago, U of Notre Dame or Stanford to be good debators or holding their own in such discussions. 

Jared Kushner (b: January 10, 1981, age 45, son in law of Donald Trump;   Kushner graduated from the Frisch School, a Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school, in 1999 and enrolled at Harvard University in the same year.  At Harvard, Kushner was elected into the Fly Club, supported the campus Chabad house led by Hirschy Zarchi,and bought and sold real estate in Somerville, Massachusetts, as a vice president of Somerville Building Associates (a division of Kushner Companies), Kushner graduated from Harvard with honors in 2003, with a B.A. degree in government.

Kushner then enrolled in the JD/MBA dual degree program at the New York University School of Law and New York University Stern School of Business, and graduated with both degrees in 2007.  With his yeshiva work, he should be able to hold his own with debating Abbas.  

Steve Witkoff, b: March 15, 1957, 68 years old, Education from Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (1983), Hofstra University (1980)which is a private university located in Hempstead, New York (on Long Island), approximately 25 miles from New York City. It is a suburban, 240-acre campus known for hosting presidential debates and offering a wide range of academic programs. Hofstra is listed as #570 in Best Colleges in America.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Kushner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbas_Araghchi

https://www.niche.com/colleges/hofstra-university/

https://www.google.com/search?q=Steve+Witkoff&sca_esv=75ec5d1badd44e05&sxsrf=ANbL-n7d0VoM4zYf0aAwKZ9qGPhjFHMpsQ%3A1770578163380&source=hp&ei=8-CIaYn9FPnA0PEP_IiSmQ8&iflsig=AFdpzrgAAAAAaYjvA6cwfu9OnLU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action

HISTORIC DAY!: Abraham Accords, A Peace Treaty-United Arab Emirates and Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                               

United Arab Emirates are bordered by Saudi Arabia and Oman on the Persian Gulf

                                                                                                                                 

August 13, 2020 will go down in history as the Abraham Accords were just announced to the public.  This is an agreement between the United Arab Emirates,  home to skyscraper-studded Dubai and the rolling, oil-rich sand dunes of Abu Dhabi, the capital, and Israel to have full diplomatic ties as part of a deal to halt the imminent annexation of Area C in Judea and Samaria which is land overseen by Israel anyway since the Oslo Accords in which the Palestinians see as land they want for their future state.  Israel had just postponed doing so because of the complications involved with the COVID 19 virus pandemic.  

The United Arab Emirates are the first Gulf Arab state to to do this and the 3rd Arab nation to have active diplomatic ties to Israel. They share borders with Saudi Arabia and another tiny nation; Oman. The map above shows it in yellow.  Both are very close to Iran. The UAE's rising international profile has led to it being recognised as a regional and a middle power. It is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, OPEC, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Gulf Cooperation Council". It isn't the largest Arab state but one of the smallest, which has a lot of political power.  

The UAE is a U.S.-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. Formed in 1971, the country like other Arab nations at the time did not recognize Israel over its occupation of land home to the Palestinians.

"Among Arab nations, only Egypt and Jordan have active diplomatic ties with Israel. Egypt made a peace deal with Israel in 1979, followed by Jordan in 1994. Mauritania recognized Israel in 1999, but later ended relations in 2009 over the Israel’s war in Gaza at the time.  It is the 38th largest in population with a little over 3 million people and 99.99% Muslim.  

The United Arab Emirates are 31st in population-size out of the 48 Muslim majority countries in the world with a population in 2011 of 5,432,746 with 76% being Muslim of the Sunni persuasion.  Islam is their state religion. Jordan, Israel's neighbor, is 30th.   Saudi Arabia is 14th and Egypt is 5th.  

 They are already visualizing all the benefits both parties will enjoy with this decision,  as the plans have been worked on for the past few months through Trump's peace initiative, which has gone through a metamorphosis to be agreeable for those involved.  A jet will be flying from the Emirate to Tel Aviv and the mosques on the Temple Mount will be visited a lot in the near future.

Saudi Arabia was already changing their attitude by being friendly with President Trump.  Who can't remember Trump dancing with the Saudi men in a circle dance on TV?  They also share Israel's being on the receiving end of Iran's irate fixation on wiping out who they don't agree with,  would rather make Iran's enemy their friend.  (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.)  Saudi Arabia is 100% Muslim populated with 27,601,038.  Jews have never been allowed to step on their soil.   

Netanyahu said that the  annexation of towns and cities in Area C is to still be on the table, but peace comes first.  Trump voiced his hope that this will be followed by more Muslim Arab countries to sign up.  
                                                           

What the Palestinians feel is still belligerence, with Hanan Ashrawi feeling that the crown prince sold her people out.  Those involved in the peace process felt that they couldn't wait any longer for the Palestinians to feel peaceful, and that everyone wants to step forward these days and improve their life.  This is in their best interests, though they can't see it.  Palestinians are disappointed as they wanted the other Arabs to NOT make peace until they had their own terms and created their own Palestine state.  The Emirates are not waiting around for another 70 years.  "The militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called the deal by the Emiratis “a stabbing in the back of our people.”
                                                      

"Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan b: March 11, 1961
the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. In 2019, the New York Times named him as the most powerful Arab ruler. In 2020, the New York Times called him "one of the most powerful men on Earth." He was also named as one of the '100 Most Influential People' of 2019 by Time magazineHe is seen as the driving force behind the UAE's interventionist foreign policy and is a leader of a campaign against pro-democracy movements in the Arab World.  He may come to Washington DC for the signing ceremony or may send another prince. " 

In addition to Trump, the main U.S. mediators for agreement were the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, special Mideast envoy Avi Berkowitz and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

 "The joint statement from the U.S., the UAE and Israel said delegations would meet in the coming weeks to sign deals on direct flights, security, telecommunications, energy, tourism and health care. The two countries also will partner on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.  “Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East’s most dynamic societies and advanced economics will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation and forging closer people-to-people relations,” said the statement by Trump, Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the day-to-day ruler of the UAE. It said the leaders had a three-way call discussing the deal."
                                                               

Judea in south, Samaria in north,
eastern side is area C-Israel's domain in white.
Palestinians have been found to be building in Israeli territory.

At first I was mortified that Israel, ready to cede their rightful area C into the arms of Israel proper, was talked into something with a distant Arab state, one that has not been an active enemy like the Palestinians or Syrians.  Now I feel, like Netanyahu, that a chance for peace always comes first.  This may even be the way to change the Palestinians set thinking process and make friends after 70 years of trying and hoping.  Seeing is believing, however, and the next weeks should be exciting for us.  This is a tremendous step and the Crown Prince is a brave soul to be looking so forward in his thinking, an outstanding man among his peers.  Good job; all.  Keep up the good work!!  



Resource:  https://www.live5news.com/2020/08/13/trump-says-israel-uae-open-diplomatic-ties-halting-annexation/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/trump-israel-united-arab-emirates-uae.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200813&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline&regi_id=73318667&segment_id=36021&user_id=fada5e1550bc1728bc12478e19fc2aa8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Emirates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Zayed_Al_Nahyan

Dennis Prager Agrees With My Position About Trump

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Dennis Prager b: August 2, 1948 in New York
parents: Max and Hilda Prager

Dennis Prager is an Orthodox Jew who spent time worrying about the Soviet Jews.  "In 1969, while he was studying in England, he was recruited by a Jewish group to travel to the Soviet Union to interview Jews about their life there. When he returned the next year, he was in demand as a speaker on repression of Soviet Jews; he earned enough from lectures to travel, and visited around sixty countries. He became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry."  

 He teaches with his own videos, the PragerU videos.  One such is titled, 
"The Charlottesville Lie"   that proves that Trump never said the Nazis were fine 
people.  

I am so happy to report that I have found someone else, this  well-known man who is in agreement with me to be defending our present president, Donald Trump.  I come from a family quite similar to a few others of this historic period; father was Jewish and mother was Protestant.  My mother converted to Judaism and I was raised Jewish in Oregon, but that means that I had relatives of both persuasions and loved them all dearly.  They were all Democrats, so they had that in common.  Most Jews then were because of WWII and Franklin Delano Roosevelt being a Democrat.  They acknowledged Roosevelt as their savior in letting us be admitted into the USA at a perilous time.
                                                 

1981 in my Safed ground-floor apartment
with bars on the windows to keep out terrorists
Being poor immigrants, this is a government housing
apartment and we paid $8 per month.  We lived
more sparsely than I had imagined we would.
My couch was a government supplied bed. 

 Fast forward to 1948 when Israel was finally reestablished after praying for the day after 2,000 years, and I was 13 years old then.  I spent my high school years feeling a little bit of prejudice for being Jewish.  Time marches on and here I am, fully aware and even more so by making aliyah to Israel in 1980  with my Brooklyn-born Floridian Jewish husband and finally really leaving our Conservative-Jewish life and stepping into the Orthodox in Safed, Israel.  We stayed over 5 years, and I learned much there. 

Needless to say, I had become very sensitive to remarks about Israel that were inflammatory.  I had come to the point of even starting my "Israel" blog, the first of 3, and  tried to make my family aware of what was happening there.  This led to my 2nd one, jewishfactsfromportland and finally my 3rd, jewishbubba.  At my more elderly age, I had lots to say and after a life of teaching, wanted to teach people about what was going on.  The facts were involving the stand Republicans and Democrats had been taking, and with Obama a president who had strings attached to the Muslim persuasion of family,  friends, and decisions.   I was really paying attention all the time.  I was in the position to do this, like many were not; too busy with other things.  I was devoted to it and still am.
                                                      

I would not be surprised if the Jewish population of the USA, which is about 2%, is at least 85% Democrats.  So my position is that of someone in the 2% category being outside of the political agreement of them and have joined the 15% of 2% of the people.   We have followed what the country has been using to attack Trump, who won the election like all other previous presidents have done.  The difference of late was that he was not an insider politician.  He came from the business force of New York as a builder of hotels with an angst against Obama, feeling that he may not even had been a proper citizen of the USA being his mother had been outside the country.  Her husband was not an American citizen.
                                                  

Donald's parents decided to send him to
an academy, hoping for behavior to improve.
Sounds like he was hard to handle even then.  

He hadn't really looked into it to find that an American citizen living outside the USA and gave birth to a child still has produced another American citizen.  Her citizenship does this for the baby.  Being a well known gadabout in nightclubs and such being one of the very wealthy Americans, he gained a lot of publicity about his stand, even paying someone to find his birth certificate.  So he had established a poor reputation when he stepped into the political arena.  But being in business, he had sharpened skills that most politicians hadn't, though he didn't have those political skills now and was in an arena where he needed them. One of those skills was in keeping his mouth and his fingers still.  We all know what Donald is thinking about things moment by moment  with his twittering.  He's the most open of all our presidents, too open for those who are politicians, as they haven't been.  They have tried to create a facade for themselves that is electable.  
                                                     
Democrats have been taken by such surprise, that they suffered a depression that manifested itself into such hatred that is quite shocking as they have tried to bump Trump out of office. and continue to try, even after several years of being in office.   In the meantime, ever since the very moment Trump was deemed president, he has been a slave to the job and has produced outstanding work.  Since the audio-visual world has stuck by the Democrats, he was only receiving negative reports, so he has had to toot his own horn about his work, and that too, has been damned by the press who are suffering in a climate of TV news and being faced with losing readers.  
                                                         

Along comes one of the radio hosts who is on Trump's side, and to my surprise, comes from an Orthodox Jewish home.  Dennis Prager, born August 2, 1948 on my brother's birthday, is also a writer, a far better one than I,  6'4" tall, is in total agreement with me or I with him, and that is most pleasing.  He's one that has been paying attention, not only to Israel but to events in politics.  He's on the radio and TV.  

His background is superior, educated in a New York Yeshiva in Flatbush, Brooklyn and continuing in England.  He even majored in history of the Middle East.  Like me, he originally was a solid Democrat.  We both supported Jimmy Carter in 1976, and I have lived to regret it after reading what he has written since then about Israel, which in a way has turned me against a certain lack of Democratic values.  To me, he was a real disappointment.

What caught my eye today was Dennis Prager's article published in The Jewish Press Friday, August 9, 2019, entitled, AMERICA IS DROWNING IN LIES ABOUT TRUMP and I agree with it all.

Dennis has chutzpa where I am lacking.  He can tell it like it is.  For instance, his first line starts with,
"The president of the United States, Donald Trump, never said there were "fine" Nazis or Klu Klux Klansmen."  That is a preposterous assumption!   What happens is that in the press's frantic search for ammunition, they can mis-quote and mis-understand on purpose to lead readers into a position of feelings against this man, and they do it very skillfully.  I have argued with people about this very thing.  In watching a newscast on TV, I see and hear one thing, then read later where it was all misconstrued, thinking, how can they do this?   Dennis felt that this one report was one of the two worst against him.
                                                                              

The Jared Kushner familyJared is currently senior advisor to his father-in-law, Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

The other was that he was a racist.  Both of us feel this is ridiculous.  The man's daughter, whom he loves most dearly, has married a modern Orthodox man and has converted.  Their children are Jewish.  Trump loves them all.  He's not about to put them along with other Jews in jeopardy because of their religion.  He now has a connection to Jewish values.  I just hope that the Jews of the USA haven't forgotten them!  Too many are in the news for terrible reasons lately, a time of growing anti-Semitism again in the USA.  It's happening all over the world again, not just the USA.  It's been happening big time in England, for one example.  

USA Embassy in Jerusalem

                                                         

The newest Kushner grandson
with his Grandpa Trump

Trump will go down in history being the president who not only said he would move the American embassy to Jerusalem, actually did it against all the static.  Remember that Truman also went against the popular static of not recognizing Israel in 1948!  Obama had promised and didn't follow through.  So did the George W. Bush.  So did Bill Clinton.  This goes back to promises made and broken since 1993 by Bush.  Trump kept his promise in a climate even worse than the previous presidents were in.  


Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Prager
https://www.dennisprager.com/america-is-drowning-in-the-lefts-lies-about-trump/
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/12/06/reminder-us-presidents-have-promised-to-move-the-us-embassy-to-jerusalem-for-decades-n2418654
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-07/what-have-past-presidents-said-about-israel-and-jerusalem/9234736