She is a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the secretive Islamist group through which Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi rose to power. Morsi was removed by a military coup just a year after taking power in 2013 and his group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was banned on Dec. 25, 2014, and labeled a terrorist organization by the military-led government.

“I am not really interested in marches anymore,” Sarah said. “We are depending on the other work more,” referring to torching police cars and threatening police forces.

After months of seeing many family and friends killed, beaten and imprisoned by the security forces, Sarah had decided peaceful protest was not sufficient.

Sarah was a believer in peaceful means of protesting and calling for change, even though oppression is not new to her family. Her father is a prominent Muslim Brotherhood member, as is her mother. Her father was detained a number of times under former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. But she never had those radical thoughts back then.

What she was exposed to throughout the past few years since the uprising has taken her to a different level. She went from so much hope for change and a better life to this – embracing violence as a means of change because she believes it’s the only viable option.

Sarah is not alone. There are thousands of young men and women in Egypt who have similar stories.

As the government intensifies the crackdown on dissent, radicalism among youths in Egypt spreads. This comes at time when militants are carrying out more sophisticated attacks in Egypt.

Egypt is creating a new generation of terrorists, a bomb that’s going to explode in the face of not only Egypt, but also the whole region.

I talked to Sarah a few months ago and wasn’t surprised by what I heard. In a phone interview, she said that many of her close friends are longing to join ISIS, they are just waiting for the right moment. They are desperate, and they have no hope, faith or trust in the system, she said.

Thousands of the Muslim Brotherhood members and their supporters staged two huge sit-ins (Rabaa and El Nahda) in Cairo and Giza to protest the removal of Morsi. http://bit.ly/1HTzbzO

Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi push to get a free meal in the tent city near the mosque in Rabaa, in Cairo, Egypt. During the holy month of Ramadan Muslims refrain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. (Amina Ismail/MCT)

Sarah’s husband is a journalist who was arrested while covering the Rabaa massacre, one of the sit-ins the Egyptian military stormed in August 2013, killing hundreds.

He was beaten and put in solitary confinement for months during a year of imprisonment, with no formal charges brought against him. Sarah’s sister, who is a Brotherhood member, was arrested, beaten by security forces and forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded and filthy prison cells for participating in a protest.

Sarah also was among the protestors in Rabaa. As much as she disagreed with Morsi’s performance during his one year in power, she believed that the only way he should be removed from power is through elections.

I bumped into her at the makeshift morgue in Rabaa, when I was covering the dispersal of Rabaa on August 14, 2013 for McClatchy News Service.

She was sobbing in front of a room that was packed bodies of protesters, killed by security forces.

Bodies lie in a makeshift morgue in the basement of Rabaa field Hospital, near the sire of one of the two sit-ins on behalf of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Wed, August 14, 2013. This is where I bumped into Sarah. (Amina Ismail/MCT) http://gtty.im/1UTdoBy

Some of her friends were among those who were covered in blood and lying on the ground in this room.

Former Defense Minister Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took power in June 2014 after a presidential election in which he won more than 96 percent of the vote. Human rights have been suffering since his election. Sisi “has overseen a reversal of the human rights gains that followed the 2011 uprising,” according to Human Rights Watch 2014 report.

“Egypt’s human rights crisis, the most serious in the country’s modern history, continued unabated throughout 2014.”

A soldier stands guard Monday, Nov. 18, 2013 near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt at a memorial to those killed two years ago in clashes with security forces. Then protesters were demanding an Egypt no longer governed by the military. (Amina Ismail/MCT) MCT http://bit.ly/1IOyk4j

Nearly 2,600 people have been killed in violence in the 18 months since the military ousted Morsi in 2013, according to the National Council of Human Rights.

Hundreds of them were killed in one day — Aug 13, 2013.The carnage of that day was called “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” as described by Human Rights Watch.

Bodies of protesters killed during clashes lie on the floor of a field hospital in the Rabaa district of Cairo. Dozens also were wounded, many with gunshots to the head or chest. (Amina Ismail/MCT)

Scene in front of the morgue the next day (Amina Ismail) http://bit.ly/1E0eNlB

Bodies of protesters killed by Egyptian security forces lie on the floor in front of Zeynhoum Mourge is Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Aug 15, 2013. (By Amina Ismail)

Thousands of mass arrests, abuses and torture continue to happen, though the government has never issued official numbers of arrests. According to estimates by Amnesty International, citing local human rights groups, 22,000 people have been arrested since Morsi’s ouster. Local human rights activists believe that the numbers are as high as 41,000 of people arrested, sentenced or incited.

Egypt’s jails are packed with unlawfully detained prisoners; many of them university students who were arbitrary arrested during protests or for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of the prisoners have been tortured, stripped naked, beaten and then dumped in inhumane overcrowded prison conditions, with no formal charges brought against them.

Detainees, including a journalist, are held in a Cairo courtoom. (Amina Ismail)

Along with mass arrests come mass trials and mass sentencing. In March 2014, 529 people were sentenced to death, in a trial that lacked basic due process protection. There was just one court session before the judge ruled on this case.

With mass trials and mass death sentences, hope for justice fades. For decades, the judiciary has been the arm of the regime.

Sisi promised to restore order and stability in Egypt.

However, since Sisi took power, terrorist attacks and violence of armed groups have dramatically escalated.

Just in the past couple of months there has been a mounting series of attacks in Egypt.

This week, the self-proclaimed Islamic State group’s branch in Sinai released a video threatening to behead a Croatian hostage if Egyptian authorities did not release all the “Muslim women” in prisons. The Croatian, who identifies himself as Tomislav Salopek, was captured on July 22 in Cairo.

The violence continues. The county’s top prosecutor was assassinated in Cairo an unknown militant group calling itself Tahrir Brigades’, militants in northern Sinai have carried an attack on soldiers killing tens of them, and the latest major attack was on the Italian Consulate’s compound in downtown Cairo, in which ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing that resulted in the death of a man, immense damage to the building and rupture of the underground water pipes.

Sisi’s dictatorial and repressive policy is resulting in the expansion of insurgency in Egypt; Islamist youth are resorting to violence, like Sarah.

After the disposal of Morsi, hundreds of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership were arrested, leaving thousands of youth with no guidance. The leadership structure of the well-organized group was ruptured.

It isn’t just the regime that is cracking down on the Islamists, the society is also discriminating against them and the media are perpetuating this sentiment.

After the court outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, identifying or being seen as a member of the group or even a sympathizer has became tantamount to being a terrorist. The government and media have portrayed the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood as a fight against terrorism. Media in Cairo have encouraged regular citizens to report Muslim brotherhood members to the police. TV channels have broadcasted hotlines for citizens to call upon their suspicion. The media in Egypt is controlled by the government.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a discussion at George Washington University on the dangers and motives of foreign fighters from Europe and the U.S. who travel to the Middle East to join ISIS.

Muslims in European societies, especially in France, are not fully integrated. They are often marginalized, poor and discriminated against — motives that drive European Muslims to go to fight in the Middle East, according to Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London. Neumann was one of the speakers of the three-member panel.

“Imagine you are a 20-year-old Muslim in a deprived suburb of Paris and you know that you don’t have a lot of opportunities in French society,” Neumann told the audience.

“You look at the fighters’ pictures with guns, amongst brothers, who are seen as heroes in that society, who are incredibly successful and powered and admired. Yet, six months ago, looked like someone like you with no prospects in European society, with no hope and probably a life of petty crime ahead of himself.”

With social media today, it is easy to communicate with those people and create personal ties and identity, Neumann added.

Neumann’s point carries weight outside of Europe, too. Don’t Egyptians have stronger motives to join militant groups? At least, in Europe there aren’t mass arrests, torture, extreme poverty and high illiteracy rates.

The Egyptian authorities should stop relying on mass arrests, torture and death sentences to fight radicalism and shut dissent, because in fact it is contributing to the instability.

Neumann talked about the importance of integrating returning foreign fighters from the Middle East into the society — at least those who haven’t committed major crimes.

He referred to a story not widely known about the late Osama bin Laden, who was a foreign fighter in Afghanistan before he became an international terrorist. After the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan and ended the war in 1980, he tried to reconcile with the Saudi government and he offered his services to help fight the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Bin Laden didn’t have a game plan for the next 10 to 20 years. In short, he was not re-integrated into civil society.

“I think it is the same for a lot of foreign fighters who decided to return to their home countries, but they are keeping their options open,” Neumann said.

One would wonder, if the Saudi government reconciled with Bin Laden in the 90’s, would 9/11 unfold the way it did?

This is similar to the foreign fighters returning to Europe; they should be reintegrated into the society.

In Egypt, also, the government should start reconciling with the Islamist youth and reintegrate them back into the society.

Neumann had another interesting suggestion: every European country should have a hotline that parents could call – one not answered by police.

“Ninety-nine percent of parents don’t want their kids to go to Syria and die, but they often don’t call the police because as much as they don’t want their children to die, they don’t want them to go to prison for 20 years,” he said.

This suggestion could also work in Egypt, but first, the regime should start building trust with its people and put aside all the political disputes.

In 2013, Sarah warned of violent escalation if the regime continued to crackdown on dissent.

The government “is creating terrorists,” she said back then.

Unfortunately for Egypt and the world, her prediction has come true.

(Some of the quotes I’ve used in this blog are taken from a story I wrote for McClatchy Newspapers in 2013: http://bit.ly/1IOyk4j)

US Army Europe officers speaks to reporters at the Pentagon about their rotational training in Eastern Europe, Wednesday, July 22, 2015. (Amina Ismail/Medill NSJI)

Officers of the US Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, currently stationed in Vilseck, Germany, stopped by the Pentagon last week to talk about their rotational training in Eastern Europe and the larger array of efforts in the region being held to reassure NATO allies.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea from February 2014, and his increasingly aggressive actions near NATO’s stomping grounds, the Pentagon has been beefing up its military exercises and rotations in Central and Eastern Europe to ensure what US military officials say is the security and stability of its NATO allies.

“I can tell you that the countries that we are training with are concerned with Russia as a threat to the stability of Europe,” Army Colonel John V. Meyer III, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, told journalists at a roundtable. “We are working on strengthening the alliance. We want a strong Europe.”

The Obama administration’s European Reassurance Initiative was launched in June 2014 with a $1 billion budget for training and temporary rotations.

These rotations are less costly and less politically sensitive than permanently stationing troops in Europe because joint exercises and a temporary presence ensure the allied nation’s sovereignty and improve its military capabilities.

“It is not perceived at all that the US is trying to expand its influence,” Meyer said. “Our host nations, our allies helped sustain us.”

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, commanding general of US Army Europe, hinted at the long-term goal for the army in a promotional video. “Being able to rotate units to come over to train, but also have an in-depth understanding of the culture, the history, the geography, the infrastructure… This is going to be a permanent part of how the army operates,” he said.

One of the things that proves a regular hindrance for US crisis response is sending hundreds or thousands of troops overseas who don’t know the people, language, culture, or terrain of the country where they’re expected to be fighting.

Meanwhile, local forces have little or no experience working with US forces, procedures, or practices. By cycling troops through a region, it gives local forces ample opportunity to practice with US forces, while giving a wide range of American forces at least a basic working familiarity with the area.

For more than a decade, the US and NATO have avoided deploying permanent troops and military equipment to NATO’s newer member states which, during the Cold War, were part of the Soviet bloc, or even the Soviet Union.

This has been avoided in part to minimize tensions and prevent friction with the Kremlin, and is in keeping with the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security “to give concrete substance to their shared commitment to build a stable, peaceful, and undivided Europe.”

Apart from that more peaceful rationale, the US Army had actual wars to fight elsewhere anyway: Afghanistan and Iraq called for the majority of US troops to be in, going to, or coming from the Middle East and Central Asia.

Last month, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the army — for the first time since it downsized its presence in Europe — would store tanks, heavy weapons, and infantry combat vehicles in Eastern and Central Europe, a bold move that may be viewed as a violation of the essence of the treaty, which states that NATO members and Russia should not consider each other adversaries.

Carter’s decision was part of the European Reassurance Alliance and Operation Atlantic Resolve, a training program launched by the US Department of Defense in May.

Operation Atlantic Resolve is the European counterpart to the Pacific Pathways model introduced last fall. In September, the US Army Pacific deployed about 1,200 soldiers for the month-long Garuda Shield training exercise in Indonesia. This joint effort with the Indonesian military served as the pilot program, and was the first time the army deployed troops for rotational training exercises with multinational partners.

The move to expeditionary-style forces in many ways dates back to the end of the Cold War, which marked the beginning of a steady decline of US Army presence in Eastern Europe and pre-positioned Overseas Material Configured to Unit Sets (POMCUS). The last US tanks, stationed in Grafenwöhr, Germany, were pulled out of Europe in March 2013, just one year before Russian tanks began moving into Crimea.

After heavy speculation and rumors about the US decision to store such equipment, and before Carter’s official announcement, Putin responded at an arms fair west of Moscow.

“More than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems will be added to the make-up of the nuclear arsenal this year,” he said.

Considering Russia’s satellite nuclear warning system will be out of service until November, this addition to Putin’s arsenal — and his public announcement — leaves the rest of the world hoping he will become neither brash nor desperate enough to make use of it.

Under Operation Atlantic Resolve, smaller companies of about US 100 soldiers are deployed to the Baltic States, while larger battalions of troops deploy to Poland to engage in rotational training exercises with allied armed forces. These so-called Regionally Aligned Forces are units that rotate into the country without bringing equipment, but instead use the European Activity Set, which contains a combined-arms, battalion-sized group of vehicles, and pre-positioned equipment permanently stationed in the US Army’s training area in Grafenwöhr — the exact location where only two years ago soldiers marked the end of an era, as the last US tanks withdrew from European soil.

The current US operations throughout Europe have a Cold War precedent. NATO’s annual REFORGER — Return of Forces to Germany — exercises filled a similar role: proving to both NATO and Russia that the US is capable of moving a large, decisive combat force quickly into the region in the event of war.

According to the official fact sheet, “Operation Atlantic Resolve will remain in place as long as the need exists to reassure our allies and deter Russia from regional hegemony.”

But is this rotational presence really going to send a clear and strong message to the Kremlin? Magnus Nordenman, an analyst with the Atlantic Council, thinks it sends “somewhat of a message.”

“The preference is to have permanently based forces, but if we can’t have that, then certainly rotations are better than nothing,” he told VICE News.

Both Marine General Joseph Dunford, the nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his prospective vice chairman, General Paul Selva, bring not only experience in strategic mobility, but also described Russia as a greater threat than China, North Korea, or Iran during their confirmation hearings, and encouraged deployment of heavy weapons in Europe to defend NATO allies.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who initially disagreed with Dunford and Selva, was alarmed by Putin’s comments. “Nobody should hear that kind of announcement from a leader of a powerful country and not be concerned about what the implications are,” Kerry said.

The short-term objective of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s training now seems obvious. “It provides us with operational mobility to maneuver throughout the alliance, and that is an incredible capability that we have inside Europe now,” Colonel Meyer said.

“A lot has been said over the last weeks about whether or not Russia is a threat, and what I can say is, I am training the formation to deal with any of the threats we can be faced with,” he added.

That same type of training has already occurred in the Pacific. Garuda Shield, along with the other training operations in Malaysia and Japan, were framed as a “Pacific Rebalance” — the current bureaucratic moniker of the Obama administration’s 2013 Pacific Pivot. The official Army Pacific Command website calls these efforts a “tangible demonstration of US commitment to Indo-Asia Pacific region security and stability.”

This operation, like its European equivalent, aims to train US forces with allied forces and familiarize the troops with the region.

Interestingly, the US Army is also focused on increasing its maritime and expeditionary capabilities, and appears to be reassessing its roots and fundamentally rethinking its structure and responsibilities.

With the implementation of this new, lighter-footprint form of power projection, some of the highest-ranking army officers envision a smaller, more flexible force capable of doing the strategic job of a much larger force. European commander Hodges would like “30,000 soldiers [to] achieve the strategic effect of 300,000 soldiers.”

“I don’t think he was being literal,” army spokesman Joseph Buccino told VICE News. “In a literal sense, it is impossible to replicate 30,000 [troops] with 300,000.”

But at least one commander sounded a word of caution.

“Rotating presence is no substitute for permanent forward presence,” said General Philip Breedlove, commander of the US European Command, which controls all military forces in that theater, in a Pentagon press briefing in April. But, he added: “Genuinely and fully funded rotational presence can play an important role in helping meet the requirements in our theater.”

This is ultimately the rub. This sort of “virtual presence” is a good way to extend limited peacetime resources, but is still just a placeholder for non-existent troops that will be sorely needed should conventional deterrence fail and war break out.

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“I don’t want to comment on the record now,” one hardline Iranian politician told the New York Times Tuesday, “but it seems our negotiators have gone too far with some of their promises, especially on the level of inspections. And the system for the lifting of sanctions is also not clear.”

Reactions from around the Middle East, and further afield, were just as mixed.

The deal was welcomed by many international leaders, including Pope Francis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and, surprisingly, even by some Sunni Muslim state officials.

Egypt “expressed hope that the deal between both sides is complete and prevents an arms race in the Middle East as well as ensuring the region is free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” read a statement by the Egyptian foreign ministry.

For more than 36 years, Egypt and Iran have not had full diplomatic relations since President Anwar Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel and after Iran went through the Islamic revolution.

The Saudi Gazette reported that an official source told the state-run Saudi Press Agency said, “Given that Iran is a neighbor, Saudi Arabia hopes to build with her better relations in all areas on the basis of good neighborliness and non-interference in internal affairs.”

Iran’s allies, of course, were elated with the nuclear agreement. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the deal constitutes a “major turning point in the history of Iran, the region and the world.”

Iran has been the main backer of Assad in his fight against a rebellion that has challenged his rule since 2011. Many Syria analysts credit Iran with providing critical weapons, supplies and funding to Assad, without which his regime may not have survived.

“We are quite assured that the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue, with greater momentum, supporting the just issues of peoples and working for peace and stability to prevail in the region and the world,” read an article on the agreement by the Syrian Arab News Agency.

One of the groups Assad has been battling, with Iranian and Hezbollah’s help, is the Islamic State. At the same time, Sunni Arab countries around the world have been sympathetic to the largely Sunni insurgency battling Assad, including IS.

Hassan Hassan, an associate fellow with the London-based think tank Chatham House told the Wall Street Journal that the deal would complicate efforts by the United States to assemble a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to battle IS.

“ISIS will benefit a lot from this deal; segments of the Sunni community in the region will see Iran as having won and brought in from the dark,” he said.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of Arms Control Association, told VICE News that although Congress has expressed doubts during the negotiations, there is “no better deal on the horizon.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it obvious that he thought a better deal was possible.

“What a stunning historic mistake,” he said at a news conference in Jerusalem. “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons.”

Since the start of the Iran talks, relations between the US and Israel have been “very contentious,” according to Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “And that seems to be the recurring theme coming out of Jerusalem these days,” he said.

Tuesday’s deal aimed at reining Iran’s nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions that have been straining Iran’s economy for decades.

The Republican-led Congress has 60 days to review the agreement. If Congress rejects it, President Barack Obama vowed Tuesday that he would veto the resolution of disapproval.

In that event, the only way Congress could block the deal from taking effect would be by achieving a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override a White House veto.

VICE News spoke to Daryl Kimball, who in addition to serving as director of the Arms Control Association is also the former head of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers and a Herbert R. Scoville Peace Fellow. He reviewed the “complex and consequential” agreement.

The agreement, he said in a phone interview, blocks Iran’s ability to produce enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons for at least ten years.

The document also puts in place a layered inspection system that has some “novel, new and strong elements that will make it exceedingly difficult for Iran to cheat on the agreement and seek to build nuclear weapons.”

Iran agreed to these terms in return for easing punitive sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

“The deal specifically prohibits Iran from engaging in activities that they’re suspected of doing about a decade ago that have utility for building a nuclear bomb,” Kimball said. “Now they are strictly prohibited from doing that work.”

Under the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency will be able to conduct on-site inspections on short notice at any site, including military sites. If there is a dispute about an inspection or any other issue in the agreement, there’s a commission that includes each of the countries that are party to the agreement, and Iran.

If Iran does not comply, UN sanctions can be imposed.

“It will clearly be against Iran’s interest not to cooperate, and they cannot stonewall IAEA visits or questions about something that they’re doing,” Kimball told VICE News.

Related: Critics Say Nuclear Deal Will ‘Fuel Iran’s Terrorism’

However, Michael Makovsky, chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, who at a July 9 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing urged Congress to reject the looming agreement, is still concerned.

“They are gonna get a lot of money for some limitations on their nuclear program, and in 15 years they will have international blessings for their nuclear program,” Makovsky told VICE News in a phone interview.

“The ballistic missile and arms embargo is also concerning,” he said. “This is really a historical blunder with really severe consequences.”

Christopher Bidwell, senior fellow at Federation of American Scientists, agreed with the Nuclear Information Project’s Hans Kristensen that implementation and monitoring of the agreement will be the next challenge.

“Proof is always in the pudding,” Kristensen told VICE News.

Kimball said that if the US were to walk away from the deal the “alternatives are not very bright.”

“Holding out for a better agreement would have led to deadlock and the end of limits on Iran’s nuclear program,” he added.

“Diplomacy,” Kristensen agreed “was the only way forward.”

But Republican leaders in Congress remain skeptical. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, expressed concern that Iran could turn into another North Korea.

“That’s a bad deal for us: Permanent concessions in exchange for temporary benefits, and that’s only if Iran doesn’t cheat, like North Korea did,” he said.

Kimball told VICE News “such analogies are simplistic and they don’t apply because there are two very different agreements.”

The 1994 agreement with North Korea did not provide strong incentives, he told VICE News.

“It was in their interest to violate the agreement because the benefits were not strong enough,” Kimball said.

The agreement with Iran “has an extremely robust monitoring verification system” and Iran faces “severe penalties if they violate the agreement and for a very long period of time,” he added.

Criticism will likely increase in coming days as experts review the agreement in depth.

“End of day, the real question is whether or not this deal is a much better deal than the type of uncertain future that was there before, and I think in that sense, it’s definitely a win-win for the Obama administration,” Kristensen said.

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Photo credit: mbeo/Flickr (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

WASHINGTON – After 17 days of talks and two blown deadlines, the US and five other nations gave themselves until midnight on Monday in Vienna to reach the final terms of an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for rolling back economic sanctions. Iranian media initially reported that an announcement was imminent on Monday evening, but asked later if the deal would indeed be unveiled, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said simply: “No.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry has cautioned that the administration’s patience is not unlimited. “We are not going to sit at the negotiating table forever,” he said.

“If tough decisions are not made, we are absolutely prepared to call an end to this process,” he added.

Zarif struck a more hopeful note in a video posted Friday on YouTube. “We are ready to strike a balanced and good deal and open new horizons to address important common challenges,” he said.

Since the deal passed Friday’s third deadline extension, the skeptical Republican-led Congress will have 60 days — rather than the expected 30 — to review the agreement, which may not bode well for the White House. As Republicans in the US House of Representatives geared up last week for their congressional review of the agreement, they lined up a series of witnesses that foreshadowed a tough struggle for the Obama administration to get any pact through Congress.

At a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on Thursday, Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, was blunt in his disapproval of the administration’s plan.

“That’s a bad deal for us: Permanent concessions in exchange for temporary benefits, and that’s only if Iran doesn’t cheat, like North Korea did,” he said.

“Iran is left a few steps away from the bomb and more able to dominate the region,” Royce continued. “How does that make us and our allies more secure? Or conflict less likely?”

“The alternative to a deal would surely mean some kind of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear plant.”

The committee had lined up expert witnesses to speak against the negotiations, including Richard Nephew, a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “This is all a political showmanship,” Nephew told VICE News.

Stephen G. Rademaker, assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush and current advisor to the Foreign Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, warned that lifting sanctions would only result in more nuclear weapons down the road.

“If it is dangerous today for Iran to be able to produce a single nuclear weapon in just two or three months,” he said, “why won’t it be even more dangerous for them to be able to produce a much larger number of nuclear weapons in a much shorter period of time beginning just 10 years from now?”

Both Rademaker and Michael Makovsky, chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, said that the deal would spur and accelerate other regional countries’ pursuit of nuclear weapons, and that the US would also need to monitor what Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other allies might do on the nuclear front.

“The emerging agreement will represent acceptance by the international community of Iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state,” Rademaker said.

Even before details of the agreement were announced, Makovsky urged members of Congress “to reject this deal and restore and reinvigorate American leverage to achieve an acceptable deal to prevent a nuclear Iran and reduce the chances of a nuclear contagion cascade and war.”

His concern is that it would give Iran “guns and butter,” meaning the sanctions relief would give Iran tens of billions of dollars from released funds that would “strengthen this radical and repressive regime and supercharge its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorism.”

However, Kenneth M. Pollack, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, had different advice for the committee. “I think the deal is disappointing, but certainly I would not advise you to override the veto, because the alternatives are far worse than this,” he said.

Another top House Democrat at the hearing went so far as to say that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities is the only option.

“The alternative to a deal would surely mean some kind of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear plant,” New York’s Eliot Engel said.

But not everyone thinks military aggression is the best — or only — option.

“They might try to airstrike, but it won’t work, that’s the problem,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, told VICE News.

Striking the nuclear facilities will only buy Iran more time before the starts building a nuclear weapon, which would lead to a “terrible outcome,” he said.

“Bombing will not make [Iran’s nuclear program] go away,” Lewis said. “The sanction regime will collapse and Iran will build a nuclear weapon.

“I would be desperately open for a deal, because they don’t really have a lot of other options,” he added.

In April, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded all sanctions be lifted when the deal is signed. In the same month, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his cabinet are united in “strongly opposing” an agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear program, instead suggesting that the program be completely dismantled. He also demanded that any final deal contain Iran’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

“Israeli security experts have suggested an Israeli military strike could push back Iran’s nuclear program three or so years,” Makovsky said in his testimony. “US military action, with our greater capability and easier access, would likely push it back further.”

But in June, President Barack Obama told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that a military strike wasn’t the answer. “A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates, it would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it will not eliminate it,” he said.

At Thursday’s hearing, Texas Representative Ted Poe suggested another scenario. “Iran is the number one terrorist state in the world and we are not dealing with good people,” Poe warned. “Regime change is the solution.”

Analysts have also expressed concerns about escalation from both Iran and the US if the deal falls apart.

“Iranians will increase and expand their nuclear program, and the US will increase and expand their sanctions program, and the risk of confrontation will grow,” Nephew told VICE News. “I think the idea that [the US] is just going to increase sanctions and eventually not go to a military conflict is probably a ridiculous idea.”

But the discussions of potential confrontation between the two countries come at a time when the US and Iran share a common enemy: The self-proclaimed Islamic State.

“Our common threat today is the growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism,” Zarif said in his video. “The menace we are facing… is embodied by the hooded men who are ravaging the cradle of civilization.”

But even if there’s a meeting of the minds on countering extremism, the drama surrounding the nuclear talks suggests that there won’t be a consensus any time soon on the sincerity and reliability of either Iranaian or Western pledges coming from any agreement.

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ARLINGTON, Va. – A missing U.S. soldier from the Korean War, whose remains were identified in December, was buried 64 years after his death with full military honors at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery Monday.

Army Sgt. Joseph Snock, of Apollo, Pennsylvania, was 21 years old when he went missing in North Korea, east of the Chosin Reservoir, according to a Defense Department news release. Snock disappeared after heavy fighting on Nov. 29, 1950.

Snock’s niece Kathleen Baker said in an interview that the deceased soldier’s twin brother and fellow soldier, John Snock, ran for help after seeing that his brother was injured. When John Snock returned to assist his brother, he was gone.

“It was hard, I don’t think he ever recovered from that,” Baker said of her uncle John Snock who came home from Korea and died in 2007. “He died not knowing.”

Joseph Snock died from malnutrition and lack of medical care while he was held prisoner in December 1950, according to the Defense Department.

The remains of Joseph Snock and an estimated 400 other unidentified U.S. servicemen were handed over by North Korea between 1990 and 1994, the Pentagon said. While 7,846 American servicemen are still missing from the fighting in that conflict, new technology has allowed the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory to identify lost members of the military.

DNA from Joseph Snock’s twin brother and another sister led to the identification of his remains, Baker said. In December Baker said she received a phone call confirming that the military had bones belonging to her uncle.

“Whenever they said that he was home and that he was positively identified, it was fantastic,” Baker said of the call. “It was a relief for me, in place of his parents and in place of his brother, to actually know.”

Although Joseph Snock disappeared two years before Baker was born, she said she felt she knew him from the stories that her mom and Uncle John Snock told about him.

“He’s at peace, he’s home,” Baker said. “He was a brother and a son for 21 years, then he went into the service and he has been a soldier for 64 years. He’s where he belongs.”

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WASHINGTON— After months of delay, Secretary of State John Kerry released a long-awaited report Thursday, raising concerns about human rights violations in Cuba and Iran, among other countries.

The 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practice was due to come out in February but was delayed amid speculation that the Obama administration was concerned about the impact on on-going negotiations with Iran over nuclear power.

However, State Department officials said the Iran talks had no effect on the timing of the release of the report. They said the delay was due to conflicts in Kerry’s schedule and his leg injury in a bike accident in France.

Improving relations with Cuba and Iran are among President Barack Obama’s priorities in his foreign affairs agenda.

Iran continues to severely restrict civil liberties, according to the report. The document drew heavily on non-U.S. government sources since the United States does not maintain an embassy in Tehran.

The State Department said the government of Iran officially announced 268 executions, though according to the Human Rights Watch World Report, the number is believed to be higher. In 2012, Iran carried out more than 544 executions, second in number only to China, according to Amnesty International, which said at least 63 people were executed in public.

The negotiations on conditions for Iran’s nuclear program have taken more than a year of talks between the U.S. and Iran. The talks face a diplomatic deadline Tuesday for settlement of a deal.

As for Cuba, the report said the island nation has continued human rights violations, barring its citizens’ access to uncensored information and severely restricting Internet availability. The report acknowledged that Cuba indicated “a willingness to consider expanding telecommunications investment on the island,” which would create more Internet access in the future.

The report also noted the release of 53 political prisoners in Havana as a consequence of the Dec. 17 agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Cuban government. Cuba’s willingness to allow greater access by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross is also cited.

Human rights have taken a turn for the worse in some regions of the world because of terrorist organizations such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front. These groups, the State Department said, have “perpetrated human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law against innocent non-combatants.”

More than 3.2 million were forced to flee Syria and have been classified as refugees by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner due to the ongoing civil war. The State Department singled out Syrian President Bashar Al Assad for his part in the bloodshed. As a result, the so-called Islamic State was able to take advantage of this instability and gained territories and members.

Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’s major allies, was criticized for the prosecution of Internet activist Raif Badawi, and also for abusing detainees.

The delayed release of the report sparked outrage for some lawmakers, including, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who wrote in a Washington Times op-ed, “the issue of Iran’s abysmal human rights record is inextricably intertwined with its nuclear ambitions.”

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