Obama Iran Cartoon

Iran's supreme leader awards medals to troops who 'captured' U.S. sailors

Thank you President Obama!

Iran’s supreme leader has awarded medals to five members of the Iranian Navy whom he said “captured intruding” U.S. Navy sailors during a tense incident this month.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei awarded the Order of Fat’h medal to Admiral Ali Fadavi, the head of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards, and four commanders who seized the two U.S. Navy vessels, according to Reuters. Iran’s state media reported the news on Sunday.
In a tweet sent from his account Sunday, Khamenei misidentified those who were “captured” as being members of the Marines.
On Jan. 12, Iran captured the ten sailors whose boats “misnavigated” into Iranian waters, according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Though the sailors were released the following day, Iran released video of the sailors being captured, detained and apologizing for the incursion.
Though Iran initially accused the sailors of spying, Fadavi later said an investigation had established the sailors were led astray by "a broken navigation system" and the trespassing was "not hostile or for spying purposes".
The sailors were attempting to navigate from Kuwait to Bahrain when they crossed into Iranian waters.
In one of the more enduring images from the video of the capture, the sailors are shown kneeling on the decks of the boats, with their hands on their heads, all while being watched by armed Iranian troops. Though U.S. officials initially sought to downplay the encounter, Carter recently said the images made him “very, very angry.”
The Order of Fat'h has been given to Iranian war heroes, military commanders and politicians, especially those involved in the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted between 1980 and 1988.
Khamenei has said that Iran should remain wary of the U.S., even after the two enemies reached a deal on the future of Iran's nuclear program last summer.

On Iowa Caucus eve, top candidates attack but express cautious optimism about winning

The first major test for the 2016 presidential candidates is now just hours away with the Iowa Caucus on Monday -- its outcome a likely sign of whether front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump can hold their leads or if the unpredictable and often-angry electorate has other plans.
Trump and Clinton made their closing arguments Sunday, barnstorming across Iowa and battling on the political shows, in a final effort to beat back close rivals like Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, both eager for an upset in the first-in-the-nation balloting.
“Thirty six hours from now, the men and women of Iowa are going to caucus,” Cruz, who is trailing Trump in Iowa by roughly 5 percentage points, told “Fox News Sunday.” “And we have a grassroots army. We've got 12,000 volunteers in the state.”
Still, Cruz, who argues that he’s the true conservative in the GOP field, was, like the rest of this year’s White House candidates, steering clear of predicting a win, then having to face the fallout from a loss or even a below-expectations finish.
“Right now, this is all about turnout,” said Cruz, a Texas senator in a close race for second with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “This is all about who shows up tomorrow night at 7. ... If conservatives come out, we will win.”
Sanders, a Vermont independent, told ABC’s “This Week”: “I think we have a shot to win it, if people come out.”
His populist message about the economy being “rigged” against the middle class and “billionaires buying elections” has resonated with the largely disaffected and angry electorate and has posed a clear alternative to the Clinton political dynasty.
Even the supremely confident Trump, who has a double-digit national lead over the GOP field, tamped down Iowa expectations Sunday.
"I don't have to win it," he said on CBS' “Face the Nation.” “I'm doing really well with the evangelicals in Iowa. But I'm also doing tremendously well all over the country with the evangelicals. … I think we have a good chance of winning Iowa."
Still, Trump, who has a wider lead among the more independent-minded voters of New Hampshire, who vote second, on Feb. 9, realizes the importance of a lead-off victory.
“I have a very substantial lead in New Hampshire,” he told CBS. “But I think it would be really good to win Iowa. I'd like to win Iowa.”
And at least 9 percent of potential Iowa caucus-goers remain undecided, according to a Des Moines Register-Bloomberg Politics poll released Saturday.
After New Hampshire, the voting continues in South Carolina and Nevada, with the outcomes of those so-called “early-state votes” expected to winnow the GOP’s 11-candidate field.
After Trump and Cruz, Rubio is the only other GOP candidate with double-digit poll numbers.
They are followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former business executive Carly Fiorina and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
Santorum and Huckabee, popular among social conservatives, won Iowa in 2012 and 2008, respectively.
Though none of the candidates below Rubio is expected to make a strong Iowa finish, Kasich, Christie and even Bush could do well in New Hampshire and challenge the frontrunners -- as the GOP and Democratic races head across the south and into the late spring before this summer’s nominating conventions.
Kasich was the only candidate in New Hampshire on Sunday, telling potential voters at an Elks Lodge in Salem that cutting regulations that kill small businesses would be a priority of his first 100 days, if elected president.
Trump and Cruz each attended Sunday morning church services with family members.
Trump attended services at the First Christian Orchard Campus, a nondenominational church in Council Bluffs.
Cruz went to the Lutheran Church of Hope, outside Des Moines. The sermon called on politicians to treat their opponents with love, not attack ads.
Trump has tapped into the angry electorate with plans to build a wall along the southern U.S. border to keep out “drug dealers” and others from Mexico. And in the wake of two recent terror attacks, he proposed keeping Muslim from entering the United States until the government improves its immigrant-screening process.
Amid some public outcry, Trump’s poll numbers increased by double digits after his called for the ban, in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre in December.
Since Cruz emerged in recent weeks as Trump’s closest primary rival, Trump has called Cruz "a nasty guy" and a "liar," particularly about whether Trump essentially supports ObamaCare.
The only other Democratic candidate is former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has single-digit poll numbers.
The front-running Clinton, who has a superior fundraising and campaign apparatus, continues to hold a roughly 25-point national lead over Sanders.
However, the former first lady has been stuck defending herself in a controversy about her use of a private server/email setup to conduct official business when secretary of state.
On Friday, the State Department said it had identified 22 “top secret” emails that it would not release, as part of a court order to make public Clinton’s email correspondence.
“It’s a continuation of a story that’s been playing out for months,” Clinton told ABC News.
Clinton also said that none of the emails was marked classified at the time, and she again called for their released, in an apparent effort to help end the controversy. She also suggested that Republicans were "grabbing at straws" on the issue.
“I want to see them disclosed,” she told ABC.

Many Iowa voters unsure as candidates try to beat expectations

I watched with fascination here in Iowa as a dozen people explained why they had switched candidates in the past 48 hours—and some still hadn’t made up their minds a day before the caucuses.
Melissa Murphy told me she was a Ted Cruz supporter until the debate, when she saw him try to explain away his conflicting videotaped comments on “amnesty,” as she put it. “When Megyn pushed him on it, he really tried to parse her words. When you’re lying, it becomes about you, not the country.”
The mother of two told me she moved to Marco Rubio after asking him at a rally about the seeing so much terrorism and violence on television—and his reassuring response was very “personal...He has kids, he mentioned his own family.”
What’s striking, as the Frank Luntz focus group talked about struggling to reach a decision, is what breaks through. Three sided with Donald Trump because they didn’t like Fox’s sarcastic response to his skipping the debate. One man said he views Trump as a sexist who disrespects women. Another said his brother is in the military and loves Trump. Other Iowans told me they still like Carly Fiorina. They were smart, informed and up for grabs.
But as the clock ticks down toward tonight’s caucuses, the expectations game is furiously under way.
It’s like the stock market: No matter what earnings a company reports, if it doesn’t match Wall Street’s expectations, the stock will take a beating. And that’s the risk for candidates who underperform what the media are expecting them to do.
Thus we had Cruz telling Neil Cavuto that no, he doesn’t have to win the Iowa caucuses. Except he knows, and the audience knows, that this is his best shot at slowing down the Trump freight train.
Don’t take my word for it. The Texas senator told a group of pastors that if Trump won Iowa he would probably win New Hampshire, where the billionaire has a big lead, and then could be “unstoppable.”
Still, Cruz has to preserve his options in case he loses the caucuses by a couple of points.
Rubio declared over the weekend that Cruz is “the front-runner, going into tomorrow night he has 10,000 volunteers on the ground. We know it’s a tough hill to climb.”
Rubio hasn’t played all that hard here in the Hawkeye State, but his numbers have been improving. If the media pronounce Rubio to have had a “strong” third-place finish, that could help him in New Hampshire, a more crucial state for him. If he is said to have a weak finish, the Florida senator will lose that elusive sense of momentum.
Sounds like gamesmanship, but these things matter in terms of donors, political excitement and media coverage. With the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll giving Trump a 5-point lead over Cruz and a 13-point edge over Rubio.
On the Democratic side, the poll gives Hillary Clinton a mere 3-point margin over Bernie Sanders. The Hillary camp is worried enough about a double knockout in the first two states that the Washington Post was given a preemptive spin, complete with comments from campaign manager Robby Mook:
“Despite her immediate hurdles in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton has been quietly expanding her political networks in states that come later on the presidential calendar, confident that she can deny insurgent Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination by swamping him in a state-by-state delegate slog.”
Such efforts may feel transparent, but every campaign tries to avoid the “worse-than-expected” label.
As for “better than expected,” keep in mind that Bill Clinton declared himself the Comeback Kid after finishing second in New Hampshire in 1992. Gary Hart won just 16 percent of the vote against Walter Mondale in Iowa in 1984, but that was so surprising that the slingshot effect carried him to victory in New Hampshire.
A month ago, Cruz was considered the hot candidate as he shot up from the middle of the pack. Had he continued a slow climb and then finished a couple of percentage points behind Trump in Iowa, all the headlines would have been positive.
But once Cruz briefly overtook Trump in the Iowa polls, most of the media expected him to win a state with a large slice of evangelical voters. Now, however, even a narrow loss will be portrayed as a setback.
But after listening to Iowa voters, I now believe that expectations could still be scrambled.

Democrats, Republicans in tight races as Iowans prepare to caucus

As Iowans prepare to cast the first votes in the presidential nominating process Monday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hoped to defy the polls and pull off upset victories in Monday night's caucuses. 
After months of campaigning and more than $150 million spent on advertising, the race for supremacy in Iowa is close in both parties.
Among Republicans, the latest polls show real estate billionaire Donald Trump holding a slim edge over Cruz. Cruz, who became the first major candidate from either party to enter the presidential race 315 days ago, has pinned his hopes to a sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. Cruz has also modeled his campaign after past Iowa winners, visiting all of the state's 99 counties and courting influential evangelical and conservative leaders.
"If you had told me 10 months ago that the day before the Iowa caucuses we'd be in a statistcal tie for first place I would have been thrilled and exhilarated," Cruz told Fox News late Sunday.
The Republican caucus is also the first test of whether Trump can turn the legion of fans drawn to his plainspoken populism into voters. The scope of the billionaire's organization in Iowa is a mystery, though Trump himself has intensified his campaign schedule during the final sprint, including a pair of rallies Monday.

"I don't have to win it," Trump said on CBS' “Face the Nation" Sunday. "I'm doing really well with the evangelicals in Iowa. But I'm also doing tremendously well all over the country with the evangelicals. … I think we have a good chance of winning Iowa."
By contrast, Cruz told Fox News, "We're not finding Trump's troops on the ground. ‎They don't have an organization that is perceptible."
Cruz has also spent the closing days of the Iowa campaign focused on Marco Rubio, trying to ensure the Florida senator doesn't inch into second place. Rubio is viewed by many Republicans as a more mainstream alternative to Trump and Cruz, though he'll need to stay competitive in Iowa in order to maintain his viability.

On the Democratic side, Sanders has rallied to close a 40-point polling deficit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reviving memories of her disappointing showing in Iowa eight years ago.
"Stick with me," Clinton said as she rallied supporters Sunday in Council Bluffs. "Stick with a plan. Stick with experience."
Sanders, whose crowds have been large and generally younger than Clinton's, urged voters to help him "make history". In a show of financial strength, Sanders' campaign announced Sunday it had raised $20 million in January alone. While Sanders has a large team in Iowa, his operation got off to a later start, particularly compared with Clinton, who has had staff on the ground in the state for nearly a year.
"I think we have a shot to win it, if people come out," Sanders told ABC's "This Week." The self-described democratic socialist's message that the U.S. economy is “rigged” against the middle class has appeared to resonate with an electorate that has grown frustrated with Washington and given rise to insurgent candidates like Sanders and Trump.

The campaigns were anxiously keeping an eye on the weather, but a snowfall forecast to start Monday night appeared more likely to hinder the hopefuls in their rush out of Iowa than any potential voters. Republican John Kasich already had decamped to New Hampshire Sunday, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush scheduled to follow Monday afternoon, hours before the caucuses start.
The trio of governors has had a light footprint in Iowa, banking instead on strong showings in New Hampshire's Feb. 9 primary to jumpstart their White House bids. Yet some Republican leaders worry that if Trump or Cruz pull off a big victory in Iowa, it would be difficult to slow their momentum.

Unlike in primaries, where voters can cast their ballots throughout the day, the caucuses begin across Iowa at 7 p.m. CST.
Democrats will gather at 1,100 locations and Republicans at nearly 900 spots.

Turnout was expected to be high. The Iowa Republican Party expected GOP turnout to top the previous record of 120,000 people in 2012. Democrats also expect a strong turnout, though not nearly as large as the record-setting 240,000 people who caucused in the 2008 contest between Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Iowa has decidedly mixed results in picking the parties' eventual nominees. The past two Republican caucus winners -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- faded as the race stretched on. But Obama's unexpected 2008 victory was instrumental in his path to the nomination, easing the anxieties of those who worried the young black senator would struggle to win white voters.

While both parties caucus on the same night, they do so with different rules.

Republicans vote by private ballot. The state's 30 Republican delegates are awarded proportionally based on the statewide vote.

Democrats take a more interactive approach, with voters forming groups and publicly declaring their support for a candidate. If the number of people in any group is fewer than 15 percent of the total, they can either choose not to participate or can join another viable candidate's group.

Those numbers are awarded proportionately, based on statewide and congressional district voting, as Iowa Democrats determine their 44 delegates to the national convention.