Clearly learning a lesson from Iran, how a “charm offensive” can make your terrorism and anti-social behavior completely palatable to the West, some Hamas officials and ideologues and throwing out ideas on how to clean up their public image and gain global acceptance for their war on Israel.

Though their brutality, Islamic extremism and terrorist behavior are similar if not the same as ISIS and al-Qaida, Sheikh Ahmad Yousef, one of Hamas’s ideologues, doesn’t want Hamas associated with al-Qaida or ISIS anymore, according to a report in the British Independent.

Both terrorist groups, al-Qaida and ISIS, are considered enemies by Iran, which would certainly explain why Hamas, an Iranian client, doesn’t want their image associated with their fellow Islamic terrorists with whom they share so much in common.

To some extent, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to get the West to see the similarity between Hamas and ISIS worked, and that effort didn’t go unnoticed by Hamas.

As part of cleaning up their public image, the British Independent reports that Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy political chief of Hamas said,

“We have negotiated with Israel using weapons; so it is possible to negotiate with words.”

Sheikh Ahmad Yousef wants direct talks not just with Israel, but also the West, just like Iran:

“We have to acknowledge that there is a negative image of us among some in Europe and America. We can carry on and let that continue, or we can talk to these countries, put forward our case, exchange ideas: that seems to us to be the practical way forward.”

According to the Independent, the Sheikh continued,

Hamas needs to rethink its whole strategy, held Sheikh Ahmad, looking at what has been learnt from successive rounds of conflicts and negotiations and also be prepared to make changes to its 27-year-old manifesto, especially the parts in it which can be viewed as anti-Semitic. At the same time everything possible must be done to distance the movement from al-Qaeda and Isis, “making it very clear that the Islam we believe in is very different from theirs”.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, which hasn’t given up its efforts to build a nuclear bomb as it gets sanctions removed from a gullible West, is clearly a good teacher.

Hamas isn’t changing its plan to destroy Israel, but now they’ll put a happy face sticker on it.

The Palestinian Authority ambassador to Iran has said that Israel is a cancer” that “will be destroyed,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Cabinet Sunday morning.

He also said, ‘We have seen increased Iranian efforts for terrorist activities in Judea and Samaria. ”The PA ambassador’s remarks, quoted by the Prime Minister, are a carbon copy of those of Hamas and exposes the Ramallah regime headed by Mahmoud Abbas as a terrorist organization in a shirt and tie.

Netanyahu said:

The ambassador said he is happy with orders from the ruler of Iran, [Ali Hosseini] Khamenei, to send weapons to the West Bank.

He added, and I quote, ‘The Zionist regime is an aggressive cancerous regime that sooner or later will be eliminated.’

Netanyahu emphasized that the ambassador is not a Hamas official but one from the Palestinian Authority headed by “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas.

He asked rhetorically what will be the reaction of the United Nations.

“They give Iran a place of honor instead of dealing with incitement like this, which leads to terrorism such as we have experienced lately,” referring to last week’s firebombing of an 11-year-old and her father by two Palestinian Authority terrorists.

Netanyahu said Israel will not allow the Palestinian Authority “to force a second Hamastan on us and endanger our security” by going to the U.N. Security Council to circumvent negotiations with Israel.

“This is the same United Nations whose Human Rights Council last year brought 20 decisions against Israel, one against Iran and one against Syria,” Netanyahu added.

The Prime Minister said he expects the international community to unite against the Palestinian Authority effort.

We also can expect  the Palestinian Authority  observer to the United Nations tell the international community how much Abbas  wants peace and that Israel refuses to make peace with a regime that publicly states that Israel is a “cancer that, sooner or later, will be eliminated.”

Cyber hackers crippled the computer network of the giant Las Vegas Sands Corp, headed by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, to punish him for saying that Iran should be bombed if it cannot be stopped from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The attack occurred last February but was not publicized until BusinessWeek exposed it in its new edition dated next week.

Las Vegas Sands refused to comment.

The hackers sent Las Vegas Sands engineers scrambling to the casino floor underneath their offices to yank out network cords from computers.

Businessweek’s investigation of the cyber-attack revealed that Las Vegas Sands computer engineers concluded that attackers, who wiped out several hard drives with a malware virus, did not tap into the computer system to steal money but were carrying out an act of revenge for Adelson’s anti-Iran remarks at Yeshiva University in 2013. There are strong suspicions that the cyber attack originated in Iran.

In his remarks at the Yeshiva University panel discussion on “Will Jews Exist?” Adelson, an open supporter of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and right-wing Republicans, said about Irene’s nuclear development:

What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen. You see that desert out there? I want to show you something.’

[After dropping a nuclear bomb on an Iranian desert,] “Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded after  two weeks later and said that the American government “should slap these prating people in the mouth and crush their mouths.”

That was in October 2013.

Two months later, according to BusinessWeek, the hackers took action and attacked the Las Vegas Sands’ IT network, only the second known incident of trying to destroy a corporation. The other attack was last month on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The hackers continued their attacks last January when they attacked a huge slot machine casino and resort in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The malware attack wiped out data on computers and servers and erased hard drives.

The attack worsened in February, and the company was forced to disconnect its servers from the Internet to protect itself from worse damage, but there was no interference with activities of Las Vegas Sands hotel guests and casino players.

The hackers also hit Las Vegas Sands’ websites and posted images of flames on one of Sands’ American casinos and also posted a warning, “Encouraging the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, UNDER ANY CONDITION, is a Crime.”

They also left a personal message  for Adelson: “Damn A, Don’t let your tongue cut your throat.”

The attack on Las Vegas Sands was an act of war. Bringing a country to its knees can be done a lot more efficiently and without deaths by using cyber attacks instead of bombs.

Last month, the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures leaked company secrets and personal information, and security experts suspect the perpetrators are a group that is working for the North Korean regime, whose nuclear capacity could wipe out the West and which is working hand-in-hand with Iran.

North Korea might be upset at Sony for its new project called ”The Interview,” a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader.

North Korea would “mercilessly destroy anyone who dares hurt or attack the supreme leadership of the country, even a bit,” a government spokesman has stated.

A Swiss panel of arbitrators has ruled that Israel should compensate the Iranian regime between $50 and 100 million for oil the remained in a pipeline in the Arava that both countries built in a joint project before the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Marker newspaper reported that the decision, which is preliminary and subject to further hearings, was handed down a year ago but never was published. More claims are expected both from Israel and Iran before a final ruling is declared.

Iran, under the Shah, and Israel had close trade relations before the revolution, when the new regime stopped shipping Iranian oil that had been shipped Eilat and pumped through the Iran Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline. Once in Ashkelon, the oil was loaded on to ships headed for Europe.

Israel took possession of 800,000 tons of oil that remained in the pipeline after Iran cut off relations with Israel following the revolution in 1979.

Iran sued for compensation 20 years ago for half of the value of the oil, whose current value is approximately $400 million, more than three times the value in 1979.

The Swiss panel stepped into the picture as an alternative to the agreement’s provision that Iran and Israel each appoint one judge to arbitrate in Tehran any disputes.

Obviously, the only way Iran would agree to an Israel arriving in Tehran for arbitration would be on condition that he do so on with pre-determined burial arrangements.

Israel has claimed that it does not own Iran a shekel, or in this case a rial. It argues that disputes must be settled by direct negotiations since the terms of arbitration are not clear.

Israel’s paying Iran millions of dollars would be the embarrassment of the century. Tehran would most likely headline that Israel is helping the Islamic Republic fund its nuclear development program.

If and when it obtains nuclear war, it will be said that Israel and Iran still are cooperating.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council hasS created a joint naval and police force in response to their mutual concerns over Iran’s growing nuclear prowess and the rise of Sunni Muslim radical groups.

The force was created at a regional conference held in Qatar, according to a report broadcast on Israel public radio.

Six nations from around the Persian Gulf will each send representatives to the regional force, and supplement it with a common fleet.

The new naval force is to be headquartered in Bahrain. A new regional police force is to be administered from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Both are intended to fight terrorism and organized crime, particularly due to Iran’s growing influence in the region, and the rise of Sunni Muslim extremist groups, according to the report.

Iranian warplanes bombs Islamic State (ISIS) forces in inside the Iraqi border as Tehran openly joins the western-led war against the Sunni terrorist army.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John F. Kirby implicitly confirmed the Iranian aerials strikes, saying that he has “no reason to believe” the reports about them were untrue.

Tehran’s overt offensive further turn the Middle East into a constantly changing maze of upheavals that are light years ahead of the United States’ ability to grasp what happened yesterday, let alone today.

The previous and current American administrations

have invested billions of dollars in Iraq, and the willingness of Iran to stage aerial bombings in Iraqi air space could further de-stabilize Iraq, torn by intra-Muslim wars.

Fighting the ISIS also gives Iran a handy lever to use against the United States while it continues its unsupervised nuclear development program.

Iran won a seven month reprieve Monday after stonewalling major world powers over ending its uranium enrichment program.

Iranian negotiators said it would be “impossible” to reach an agreement by November 24. This, after months of coy evasions about ways the Islamic Republic might comply with international demands to curtail its nuclear development activities.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his nation on Monday negotiators “achieved a significant victory” and that “negotiations will lead to a deal, sooner or later.” In a nationwide broadcast Monday evening, Rouhani said that many gaps that remained between the two sides had “been eliminated.”

He expanded on the talks, saying, “One phase is about the behind-the-curtain issues, where ideas are made closer and talks [really] take place. In this phase there has been good progress.

“The other phase is when those agreements are put on paper and turn into a final, ultimate deal in writing. We still have some distance to go in this second phase,” he admitted.

The new deadline for negotiations to wrap up is actually a two-stage runoff sort of deal. It involves first a decision to be made about what actually “needs to be done” — that’s by March 1 — and then a written agreement on whether Iran will actually do it — with that deadline to follow four months later, according to a report published by the Associated Press.

“If we can do it sooner, we want to do it sooner,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in a follow-up briefing on Monday. “These talks are not going to get easier just because we extended them. They’re tough. They’ve been tough. And they’re going to stay tough.”

Kerry said world powers could not continue to carry on talks with Iran forever, but that it was not yet time to walk away. “In these last days in Vienna we made real and substantial progress and we have seen new ideas surface,” he said.

In the meantime, fortunately, the international community has not agreed to reduce sanctions on Iran as long as no agreement has been reached – a point over which Israel had been deeply worried.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at a briefing Monday in an apparent response to both Israel and Congressional lawmakers that imposing fresh sanctions on Iran could be counterproductive.

“The president has also been clear that no deal is better than a bad deal,” Earnest said, in an echo of words used in a statement made earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. “But we do believe that enough progress has been made to warrant giving the Iranian regime more time to answer the international community’s concerns about their nuclear program — and to put in place a protocol for continuing to assure the international community about their compliance with these agreements.”

Senior Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill don’t necessarily agree, however. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte issued a joint statement on the matter, saying they view Iran’s insistence on uranium enrichment as problematic — and a “bad deal” with Tehran as no less than a prelude to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

“We believe this latest extension of talks should be coupled with increased sanctions and a requirement that any final deal between Iran and the United States be sent to Congress for approval,” they said.

Senator Bob Corker, the top GOP lawmaker on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress should weigh in before any final agreement is inked with Iran. He also warned lawmakers to begin preparing a “Plan B,” just in case the talks fail.