Displaying the most recent of 91900 posts written by

Ruth King

A Paradigm Shift for the Middle East How Trump Can Build on Israel’s Success and Keep Iran Off Balance Elliott Abrams

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/paradigm-shift-middle-east-trump-israel-iran

The Middle East that U.S. President Donald Trump faces today features dangers and opportunities that were not present when he first took office, eight years ago. The greatest dangers are Iran’s advances toward nuclear weapons and the close relationships that the Islamic Republic has forged with Russia and China. The best opportunities have emerged from Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah and Hamas, its successful attacks on Iran, and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

The dangers are unquestionably grave. But on balance, the potential upsides outweigh the possible downsides. Indeed, it has been a long time since the Middle East has offered an environment so favorable to American interests.

A year and a half ago, Iran’s foreign policy could possibly have been considered enormously successful. The country’s nuclear weapons program was steadily producing enriched uranium; by 2024, it had enough for several bombs. Washington was largely not enforcing its sanctions on Iran. China was purchasing about 90 percent of Iran’s oil, greatly improving the regime’s finances. Political and military relations with China and Russia were growing closer; Iran had secured their protection against action in the UN Security Council and had earned money and gratitude from weapons shipments to Moscow. And the “ring of fire” of Iranian proxies and allies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen—seemed to be a problem Israel could not solve.

But since then, Israel has turned the tables. Hamas has survived the invasion of Gaza that Israel carried out after the group’s attacks in October 2023, and Hamas remains dominant there. But it will never again pose a serious military threat to Israel. The Israelis have wiped out Hezbollah’s leadership and given Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Assad’s regime is gone, and the weapons highway that has long run from Iran through Syria to Lebanon—and to terrorist groups and their supporters in Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank—appears to be closing.

USAID Sent Over $18 Billion to Islamic Terror States by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/usaid-sent-over-18-billion-to-islamic-terror-states/

“It is really, really a sad day in America,” Rep. Ilhan Omar declared at a rally by Democrats outside USAID headquarters protesting President Trump’s reconstruction of the aid agency.

It wasn’t a sad day for America, but it was so for Somalia.

Over the last two years, USAID had funneled $2.3 billion in “humanitarian assistance” to Omar’s native Somalia. Last year it reported a request for $1.6 billion in aid and even with the Biden administration on the way out the door, it sent an additional $29 million in December 2024.

USAID support for Somalia had doubled under the Biden administration and with $3.3 billion from USAID allocated in the last 5 years, the end of the USAID gravy train for the Islamic terrorist state of Somalia must have been a painful blow for Omar, who is very close to the Somali regime. Former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Khaire had reportedly celebrated that “the interest of Ilhan are not Ilhan’s, it’s not the interest of Minnesota, nor is it the interest of the American people, the interest of Ilhan is that of the Somalian people and Somalia.”

It’s unknown if any of Omar’s Majerteen clan members benefited from the billions in American money, but considering the prominence of the clan in Somali politics, it’s likely to be the case.

Somalia, along with other Islamic terrorist entities, including the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, were among the top beneficiaries of USAID cash.

USAID boasted of having sent $2.1 billion to Gaza and the West Bank since the Hamas attacks of Oct 7. In 2024 alone, $917 million was programmed for the terrorist areas occupying Israel.

USAID provided over $3.7 billion to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over with $832 million in the previous fiscal year alone. The money was so unaccountable that USAID refused to cooperate with the U.S. Government’s Afghan War watchdog tracking money going to terrorists.

Even while the United States of America was at war with the Houthis, the Iran-backed Islamic terrorist group firing on US Navy vessels, USAID continued to direct billions of dollars to Yemen.

Wealthy Hampton residents hold meeting over nannies being deported

Wealthy Hampton residents hold meeting over nannies being deported©News 12

The wealthy residents of East Hampton went into panic mode over the possibility their hired help could face expulsion from the US as part of Donald Trump’s mass deportation program. The exclusive Long Island village – with an average home value of $2 million and residents that include Sylvester Stallone’s daughters – held an emergency meeting amid fears that ICE would round up the employees of locals.

Iranian Regime’s Survival Strategy: Delay, Deceive, Outlast Trump by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21376/iran-nuclear-survival-strategy

Possessing nuclear weapons provides any regime with a protective shield against foreign intervention, removing the fear of retaliation. Given this reality, no diplomatic effort — regardless of its structure — will convince Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions voluntarily.

For the Iranian regime, the tactic of negotiating to buy time has paid off really well. Iran successfully reached a deal with the Obama administration which provided it with financial relief, and diplomatic legitimacy, and the promise of nuclear weapons in just a few years, which just so happens to be this coming October.

Unfortunately, Iran appears to be dangerously close to achieving nuclear breakout The only viable solution is to neutralize Iran’s nuclear facilities now.

The correct course of action from the Trump administration is clear: reimpose maximum pressure, support Israel in targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and ensure that the regime’s delaying tactics do not succeed once again.

The Iranian regime, currently at one of the weakest points in its recent history, presents a crucial opportunity for the United States and its allies.

The collapse of its strongest regional ally, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, has left Tehran without a key pillar of support in the Middle East. Iran’s most powerful proxy groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, have suffered significant setbacks thanks to Israeli military operations. With Iran’s economy in shambles and its isolation increasing, the regime is more vulnerable than ever before. This moment should not be squandered. It presents an unparalleled opportunity to curb Iran’s ambitions — permanently.

China’s Spies Move to Cuba by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21375/china-spies-move-to-cuba

The Chinese military is firmly embedded in a country not far from Key West, Florida.

At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island.

[Secretary of State Marco] Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.

Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.

That is bad news for the leftists and hardline regimes in the Western Hemisphere, especially the Republic of Cuba and its new patron, the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese military is firmly embedded in a country not far from Key West, Florida.

In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that China and Cuba had agreed in principle to establish a new eavesdropping site on Cuban soil. The Biden administration termed the story inaccurate, but two days later the White House declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.

Washington had repeatedly tried to downplay Chinese involvement on Cuban soil, and the declassification was, as a practical matter, misleading. It is not clear when China first started collecting signals intelligence, commonly termed SIGINT, in Cuba, but it was evident that the effort began more than a decade before 2019.

“Rumors of China’s intelligence presence on the island appear to have begun with Chi’s visit,” states a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to a trip by then Chinese Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 1999.

R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College told Gatestone Institute that the Chinese may have been engaged in this activity in Cuba since 1993. Some believe that the Chinese military moved into the Lourdes facility, the Soviet Union’s largest listening post outside its territory, soon after the fall of the USSR.

Our Self-Important, Self-Deluding, Self-Unaware ‘Elites’ By J.B. Shurk

ttps://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/02/our_self_important_self_deluding_self_unaware_elites.html

Our self-appointed “ruling class” is insufferable.  Two-plus weeks into the restored Trump administration, and the Democrat/media outrage template has become utterly banal:

(1) Trump delivers on a campaign promise.

(2) Democrats collapse onto fainting couches and wail, “He can’t do that!,” and then

(3) those same sobbing sad sacks get back up, clutch their pearls, and collapse in anguish yet again.

It would be amusing if their funerary pantomime were not so exhausting.  

Unindicted “Russia collusion” co-conspirator and former acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe ran to the Communist News Network to complain that all his old friends at the Bureau are terrified of being fired.  He reported to fellow Democrat traveler Anderson Cooper that FBI officials are worried about how they’re going to pay their bills and take care of their families.  “If you get fired,” McCabe explained energetically, like one toddler telling another toddler about the world, “you’re done.  That’s the end of your reputation, your ability to get any job.  You lose your pay, you lose your chance at a pension, you lose your health insurance.”  Baby Cooper agreed with Baby McCabe that those consequences sound scary.  

Yet neither had the requisite self-awareness to ponder, “Is this what J6 protesters felt like when the Gestapo FBI hunted down alleged trespassers as if they were America’s ‘Most Wanted’ criminals?”  Watching the two Democrat babies cry about FBI agents losing their jobs and reputations after we have seen the Bureau do the exact same thing to law-abiding Americans for years is absolutely surreal!  

The End of ‘Palestine’ Donald Trump reminds the world that ideas have sell-by dates by Lee Smith

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/end-of-palestine

Yesterday, President Donald Trump single-handedly collapsed the most destructive idea of the last hundred years—Palestine. During meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Trump said he was going to move 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza. And just like that, he broke the long spell that had captured generations of world leaders, peace activists, and Middle East terror masters alike, who had paradoxically come to regard the repeated failure and haunting secondary consequences of the idea of joint Arab Muslim and Jewish statehood in the same small piece of land as proof of its necessity.

Palestine was a misshapen idea from the beginning, engendered by an act of pure negation. The Arabs could have gone along with the U.N.’s partition plan like the Jews did, and chosen to build whatever version of Switzerland or Belgium on the eastern Med in 1948. Instead, they resoundingly chose war. That’s the storied “Nakba” at the core of the Palestinian legend—the catastrophe that drove the Arabs from their land and hung a key around the neck of a nation waiting to go home. The Arabs chose the catastrophe; they chose war, based on the premise that they would inevitably win and exterminate the Jews.

Yet despite repeated military failures, and the increasing distance between the first-world powerhouse that the Israelis built and their increasingly war-torn, third-world neighborhood, the global conscience was always predisposed to rebuilding what the Palestinians destroyed. Accordingly, the Palestinian Arabs became a tribe of feral children whose identity was carved out of the relentless vow to eliminate Israel and slaughter the Jews en masse—despite repeated failures, each one more crushing than the last.

Trump said, enough, we’re not rebuilding Gaza. Time for a new idea—the Gazans have to to go, they can try to start again somewhere else, in a land where every building still standing isn’t already wired to explode.

Gazans waged an exterminationist campaign against Israel, and they lost. At any other time in history, save the last 75 years, they would be lucky to lose only territory and not have their legend and language permanently deleted from the book of the living.

What if they won’t go, or if the Egyptians and Jordanians won’t take them? They’ll take them, said Trump. Ah, he’s talking big, but it’s not real, say the experts—after all, he’s a real estate guy, and he’s pretending it’s just another property deal to pressure Hamas—Mar-a-Gaza. You can’t move a million people just like that, says an American electorate that elected Trump because he promised to deport tens of millions of illegal aliens who crossed the U.S. border in the last four years. He’s nuts says the D.C. foreign policy crowd: He’ll destabilize Egypt and Jordan, and undermine America’s best Arab friends and allies in the region.

Militant Group Teaching ‘Self Defense’ Against ICE Raids Lincoln Brown

https://pjmedia.com/lincolnbrown/2025/02/06/militant-group-teaching-self-defense-against-ice-raids-n4936751

Under the Obama administration, we were repeatedly told about the “fundamental transformation” of America, and we have seen what that looks like scrawled in broad strokes across the national canvas. Then came “The Great Replacement Theory,” which the MSM and progressives laughed and hooted at and labeled as a conspiracy. Of course, anyone with the capacity to reason understood that the theory in question was subtle, multi-pronged, and a component of Obama’s vision for fundamental transformation. 

A bit of that has been played out recently in the mass protests in which people waving Mexican flags and those of other nations have blockaded freeways and storefronts while engaging in acts of violence, destruction, and intimidation. The message they are sending, whether intended or not, is clear: they have no intention of living the American Dream, even if they did enter the country clandestinely. Whether they know it or not or even if they don’t care, they look for all the world like an occupying force.

Now, they are putting the flags away as the movement takes its next natural step. The Washington Free Beacon reports that a left-wing militant group, Unión del Barrio (UdB), has been offering what it calls “self-defense” training to help illegals respond to ICE raids. Using the Black Panthers as a model, UdB is trying to recruit patrols to identify ICE vehicles and personnel and drive the agents out of Latino neighborhoods. 

The Free Beacon had a quote from the group’s website (which incidentally featured a photo of Cuban soldiers armed with AK-47s):

The Community Patrols are a means of building community-based power that will challenge police and migra (sic) attacks. These agencies are trained to profile, harass, detain, arrest, and brutalize our people. We are determined to build … barrio [neighborhood]-centered self-defense and prevent the detention and family separation that has taken place over the last several decades.

The objective is to organize our people in every barrio, block by block, to defend our communities from colonial violence and threats to our human and democratic rights. We intend to expose the anti-Raza [race] nature of the colonizer state that has now openly declared itself a tool to terrorize, repress, and exploit the lives and labor power of the Mexicano-Raza working class.

Trump’s Tariff Proposals Are Already Working Paul du Quenoy

https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-tariff-proposals-are-already-working-opinion-2026576

Newly reinstalled U.S. President Donald J. Trump looked askance at an Oval Office press conference on Monday when a reporter asked him about the presence of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who was sitting awkwardly just outside of camera view. The previous Friday, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal had vociferously criticized Trump’s plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on most Mexican and Canadian goods, as well as a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

Trump intended the tariffs, which were scheduled to take effect on Tuesday, to equalize the U.S. trade balance with its neighbors and its largest competitor, and to punish Mexico and Canada for weak border enforcement, which has allowed large-scale crossings by illegal aliens and lax interdiction of shipments of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid largely manufactured in China that claims tens of thousands of American lives every year.

Despite Trump’s well-documented position, the Journal declared the expected trade war “the dumbest” in history and predicted that the new administration’s economic protectionism would backfire. It was wrong. Just before the Monday press conference, where Trump declared his “great respect” for the 93-year old Murdoch while also saying his paper’s editorialists “didn’t have any idea what they were talking about,” the world learned that Trump’s protectionist inclinations were not so dumb after all.

Despite a lot of noisy grandstanding over the weekend, during which Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum and lingering Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau promised to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs on a “dollar-for-dollar” basis, on Monday morning Sheinbaum signaled in a phone call with Trump that she would back down. She offered 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to patrol Mexico’s side of the border in exchange for a 30-day pause on the tariffs. During that period, Trump announced that he would lead high-level trade negotiations between the two countries, alongside his secretaries of state, treasury, and commerce.

By late Monday afternoon, Trudeau caved in his own call with Trump, also pledging 10,000 “frontline personnel” to ramp up border security while implementing a $1.3 billion border security plan that will include technological upgrades, helicopter deployments, and cooperative measures with American law enforcement specifically directed at preventing fentanyl from crossing the U.S.’ northern border. Canada, too, will have a 30-day pause of tariffs while negotiations take place.

Trump is Forcing the World to Face Its Hypocrisies on the Palestinians and Gaza Trump’s radical Gaza plan—U.S. ownership, mass relocation, and a “Riviera” rebuild—forces the world to confront long-ignored Palestinian hypocrisies. By Fred Fleitz

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/07/trump-is-forcing-the-world-to-face-its-hypocrisies-on-the-palestinians-and-gaza/

You could see heads exploding in the Middle East, the international media, and among Republicans and Democrats during President Trump’s February 4 joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he raised stunning new proposals for the U.S. to take over, “own,” and rebuild the Gaza Strip so it can become “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump also repeated his earlier call to relocate two million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.

Predictably, Trump’s critics harshly condemned his proposals, calling them unrealistic, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, morally bankrupt, etc. But just like their rejection of Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, his critics offered no solutions for the hypocrisies Trump raised about the Gaza crisis.

On February 5, Trump’s advisers responded to questions about Trump’s new Gaza ideas. White House Press Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt noted that President Trump has not committed to sending troops to Gaza and will not spend U.S. funds rebuilding it. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said President Trump’s ideas would “bring the entire region to come with their own solutions.”

Yesterday, the president clarified but also doubled down on his new Gaza proposals. In a February 6 Truth Social post, the president said no U.S. soldiers would be needed for his plan, Israel would turn over Gaza to the U.S. after the fighting ends, and Palestinians would be resettled in a safer area. President Trump added about his Gaza reconstruction proposal:

“The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.”

Trump’s out-of-the-box ideas to solve the Gaza crisis are part of his radical Middle East strategy, which is much broader, more serious, and more ambitious than his predecessor’s confusing and feckless policies, which caused the deterioration of Middle East security.

At the heart of President Trump’s radical Middle East strategy is his belief that the world must face and resolve several hypocrisies about the Palestinians and Gaza.

Even the anti-Trump Wall Street Journal editorial board believes this. Although it unsurprisingly slammed Trump’s new Gaza proposals as “preposterous,” the Journal’s editorial board conceded in a February 5 editorial that the president’s Gaza ideas “have the virtue of forcing the world to confront its hypocrisy over the fate of the Palestinian people.”