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FOREIGN POLICY

How the Biden/Harris Admin Helped Iran Get to the Brink of a Nuclear Bomb America and the world desperately need a strong and decisive U.S. president to undo the damage done to American and global security by the Biden/Harris administration’s disastrous Iran policies. By Fred Fleitz

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/11/how-the-biden-harris-admin-helped-iran-get-to-the-brink-of-a-nuclear-bomb/

Iran has made enormous progress in its nuclear weapons program during the Biden/Harris administration and reportedly can now enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel nine nuclear bombs in one month. Although Iran may be nine months to a year away from having an operational nuclear weapon, recent attacks by Iran and Israel against each other’s territory have raised concerns that Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program could lead to a nuclear war in the Middle East.

Biden/Harris administration officials have tried to blame President Trump for the advances in Iran’s nuclear program because he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA. Democratic Governor Tim Walz made this claim during the October 1 vice presidential debate when he said, “There had been a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in . . . Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place.”

This is absolutely false. The huge advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons program are the result of major flaws in the JCPOA and a series of terrible national security policy decisions, including repeated attempts to appease Iran, by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The first of these bad policy decisions was when the Obama administration conceded to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, such as nuclear medicine and nuclear reactor fuel.

This decision reversed the positions of prior Republican and Democratic administrations who believed Iran could not be trusted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes because of covert Iranian efforts to establish a nuclear weapons program and because it is easy to reconfigure uranium centrifuges supposedly constructed for peaceful purposes to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Allowing Iran to enrich its own uranium for peaceful purposes has never made economic sense due to a glut of reactor fuel and nuclear medicine on the world market. Iran also does not need nuclear power due to its vast oil and natural gas reserves.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained this to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in an October 2014 interview when he said Iran’s centrifuges “are only good for one thing: to make bomb-grade material.”

The JCPOA Was a Dangerous Fraud

Biden to Jews: ‘No’ to Defending against Iran’s Nuclear Weapons by Robert Williams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20997/no-defending-against-iran-nuclear-weapons

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” — United Nations Charter, Article 51.

On October 1, 2024, Iran directly attacked Israel for the second time in six months, launching at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli towns cities and towns and sending millions of Israelis into bomb shelters. Iran simply did what it has been doing for decades: trying to obliterate Israel.

Iran, both alone and through its proxies, has attacked Israel — a country smaller than New Jersey – for the past year, non-stop, on seven fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran itself. Lately, Iran has been eyeing an eighth front from which to fire on Israel: Sudan.

If a country is in danger of being attacked by nuclear weapons, within “one or two weeks,” as it is, according to the US Department of State, a request for “proportionality” is nonsensical.

What Israel’s leadership needs to do is ensure that Iran will not be able to attack the Jewish state ever again, either with conventional weapons or nuclear ones. This obligation, elementary for any country, means that Israel needs to incapacitate Iran’s nuclear sites and arguably put an end to Iran’s theocratic regime. There is no point in having an “accommodation” with Iran. To have peace in the Middle East, the West will need to defeat Iran.

Iran, cordially loathed by many of own its trapped citizens, already controls four countries in addition to its own: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The regime has made no secret of its commitment to exporting its Islamic revolution globally — including to Sudan, the rest of Africa, the Western Hemisphere and the world. As the founder of the 1979 Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

“Islam says,” he also noted: “Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword!”

Yet the Biden-Harris administration, together with the other G7 countries, who represent almost the entire West, apparently cannot agree that the world would be better off if “the leading state sponsor of global terrorism” — on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons — were stopped in its tracks.

The UN resolution also showed those countries’ disregard for Western civilization – a civilization which Israel, with no thanks from anyone, is paying the highest price imaginable to protect from tyranny and barbarism.

All this, however, concerns more than “just the Jews.” If Western countries actively enable autocracy, terrorism and savagery not just by standing passively by but by disabling a country that is fighting these onslaughts — where does that leave the West when those forces move on to their next targets?

The Biden Administration and Iran: DEI Manifested as Foreign Policy For the DEI crowd, Iran was the perfect petri dish for a new foreign policy rooted in Western self-abasement, guilt, and deference to “indigenous” voices. By Michael Ginsberg

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/07/the-biden-administration-and-iran-dei-manifested-as-foreign-policy/

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been killing and harming Americans directly or through proxies from the moment of its birth in 1979. America has suffered 45 years of murder, mayhem, and the perpetual targeting of American interests at the hands of radical Islamofascists.

Yet since 2008, Democrats, led by President Obama, have reoriented American foreign policy to actively seek a rapprochement with the blood-soaked mullahs of Iran. Time and again, the Iranians have shown they are committed to violence against America and its allies, and time and again, Democrats have ignored Iranian actions to pursue accommodation.

From where did this delusional notion that the US could reach an understanding with fanatics who scream “Death to America” come? And why is the Democratic foreign policy establishment committed to this policy in the face of overwhelming evidence Iran has no interest in détente with the US?

If you ask me, it’s the same scourge that has undermined so many American domestic institutions: DEI.

The Biden Administration’s Iran policy—which is nothing more than a resumption and continuation of the Obama Administration’s Iran policy—is DEI manifested as foreign policy.

Iran is DEI catnip. For the DEI crowd, Iran today is a non-Western, Third World country, the alleged victim of Western meddling and colonialism that threw off its supposedly Western-imposed chains and established a government whose defining characteristic was hostility to the West. It was the perfect petri dish for a new foreign policy rooted in Western self-abasement, guilt, and deference to “indigenous” voices.

U.S. Foreign Policy: Dangerous and Disastrous by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20985/us-foreign-policy-dangerous-and-disastrous

The permissive environment created for Iran by the Biden administration’s foreign policy of not just granting it impunity, but actually funding it through sanctions waivers and direct payments, appears to have financed the Iranian regime into acting with increasing aggression.

This week, just as Israel, in of one of the most breathtaking campaigns in military history, sent the terror-master regime of Iran on the defensive, the US administration is calling — now — for a ceasefire. “I’m comfortable with them [the Israelis] stopping,” President Joe Biden told reporters in on September 30. “We should have a ceasefire now.”

The Biden administration’s shaping of US foreign policy had led the world into a state of unprecedented instability. There are conflicts raging in the Middle East and Eastern Europe; China is threatening the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan, and we all are facing the looming threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. The trajectory of the Biden administration’s foreign policy is not hard to see.

During the last four years since the Biden-Harris administration assumed office, the world has been marked by escalating global crises. One of the most significant has been the war against Israel, in which, a year ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas, a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched a brutal attack on Israel. The assault consisted of massacres, rapes, torture, beheadings, burnings-alive, kidnapping and other crimes against humanity.

Possibly emboldened by the perceived weakness of the US, since its surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2021, and its constant appeasement of China, Iran, for the first time, took direct military action on April 13, 2024 by launching hundreds of attack drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at Israel.

Iran’s relentless escalation did not stop there. Its other proxies, including Hezbollah and the Houthis, also stepped up their hostilities, not only against Israel but also against the United States. Since last October, they have attacked US troops in the region more than 160 times and effectively blocked most commercial shipping in the Red Sea. These moves have massively destabilized the region — all with virtually no adverse consequences for Iran.

The permissive environment created for Iran by the Biden administration’s foreign policy of not just granting it impunity, but actually funding it through sanctions waivers and direct payments, appears to have financed the Iranian regime into acting with increasing aggression.

‘The Biden/Harris Doctrine’ Has Brought the World Closer to World War III Despite claims of success, the Biden administration’s national security policy, marked by incompetence and misguided strategies, has increased global instability and the risk of major conflicts. Fred Fleitz

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/04/the-biden-harris-doctrine-has-brought-the-world-closer-to-world-war-iii/

By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check.

A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.

In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security.

This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.

Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.

In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.

How To Blow Up the Middle East War in Five Easy Steps The Biden administration’s approach to Iran destabilized the Middle East and led to the October 7 Hamas attack and subsequent regional chaos. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/03/how-to-blow-up-the-middle-east-war-in-five-easy-steps/

When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm. Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.

So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on September 29, 2023—and just eight days before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis—Biden’s national security advisor Jack Sullivan could still brag that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?

In a word, theocratic Iran—the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict—was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.

The Biden-Harris administration adopted a 5-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The result was a near guarantee that something akin to the October 7 massacres would inevitably follow—along with a subsequent year of violence that has now engulfed the Middle East.

First, on the 2020 campaign trail, Biden damned long-time American ally Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”

He overturned the policies of both the previous Obama and Trump administrations by siding with the Iranian-supplied terrorist Houthis in their war on Saudi Arabia.

Biden accused the kingdom of war crimes, warning it would “be held accountable” for its actions in Yemen. Biden-Harris took the murderous Houthis off the U.S. terrorist list.

Almost immediately followed continuous Houthi attacks on international shipping, Israel, and U.S. warships—rendering the Red Sea, the entryway to the Suez Canal, de facto closed to international maritime transit.

Worse still, by the time of the 2022 midterms, when spiraling gas prices threatened Democratic congressional majorities, Biden opportunistically flipped and implored Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to lower world prices before the November election. Appearing obnoxious and then obsequious to an old Middle East ally is a prescription for regional chaos.

News Flash for DC: Diplomacy Gets You Slaughtered by Ruthie Blum

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20967/diplomacy-gets-you-slaughtered

Then there’s Kirby’s delicacy in describing how “it doesn’t appear like Mr. Sinwar is prepared at all to keep negotiating in good faith—especially after he murdered six hostages in a tunnel … execution-style.”

When, one wonders, did he ever negotiate “in good faith?”

Somebody should let [US National Security spokesman John] Kirby know that “all those people”—as well as the majority of Israelis throughout the country—have been urging Netanyahu to eliminate the threat through serious military action beyond tit-for-tat strikes of attrition.

Stephanopoulos pressed him further. “So, what is the U.S. doing exactly to advance a diplomatic initiative?” he asked.

“We have been involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy,” Kirby said proudly, clearly referring to pressure on Israel from the White House and State Department.

[Kirby] failed to clarify that Hezbollah attacked Israel, unprovoked, a day after Hamas committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. Nor did he bother to remind Stephanopoulos that both are Iranian proxies. He did stress, however, that “we don’t believe military action is in either side’s best interest.”

Here’s a news flash for him and anyone else who hasn’t been facing a seven-front war of annihilation: Diplomacy gets you slaughtered. Military action, which is the only option in this case, should be welcomed—and victory championed—not hampered, by Israel’s professed allies.

It Is Biden and Harris Who Are Not Doing Enough to Free the Hostages by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20952/biden-harris-hamas-hostages

Why should Hamas agree to a ceasefire when its refusal is blamed on Israel by the president of the United States? In addition, when Biden blames Israel, he encourages other allies, such as Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany, to do the same.

[Biden] blamed Netanyahu alone without even mentioning Hamas. And this was after Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages, including an American.

Although Biden did say that the Hamas killers would pay a price for the murders of the hostages, he did not say that Iran— which controls Hamas— would pay any price, including increased sanctions, or worse, unless the hostages, including the Americans, are released, unharmed, immediately.

[Biden and Harris] should warn Iran that if Hamas harms any American hostages, we will regard that as an attack on the US that warrants a military response against Iranian military targets.

Instead, Biden is demanding that Israel compromise its security by allowing Hamas to return to its terrorist tunnels under the critical Philadelphi Corridor.

Iran’s proxies are its human shields. Unless Iran itself is punished for the terrorism of its surrogates, the mullahs will have no incentive to stop, and we, the Middle East, and South America will all be less secure – especially after Iran unveils its nuclear bombs.

Biden should be placing maximum pressure on the criminals — Hamas and Iran — who continue to endanger our citizens and those of our ally. Instead, he is pressuring and blaming the victim, Israel, which has no control over the perpetrators.

When Iranians took American diplomats hostage in 1979, and then ordered its surrogates to kill hundreds of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, it essentially declared war on our nation. Now their surrogates have kidnapped and murdered more Americans. Our responses to these acts of belligerency have been woefully insufficient. Instead, the Obama administration enriched the Iranian mullahs in exchange for a controversial nuclear deal that would have enabled Iran to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked after about a dozen years…

The message sent by this administration’s weakness and lack of will is being heard loud and clear not only by Iran but by our other enemies as well.

An America First Foreign Policy By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/an-america-first-foreign-policy/

America First is America’s traditional foreign policy, and only President Trump offers the possibility of returning the United States to its traditional principles.

A major component of Americans’ decision-making as they go to the 2024 polls will be foreign policy. That is entirely appropriate, first, because of the importance of what happens abroad to Americans’ lives. Americans should remember Leon Trotsky’s purported observation that “you might not be interested in war, but war might be interested in you.” That is, the world is a dangerous place. There are many people who wish to destroy America. They need to be met not by attempting to hide from them or with rainbow flags, but with the force of a Mike Tyson punch to the face. Second, this election provides Americans a choice between an America First foreign policy or the disastrous alternative of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration. In this essay, we offer our interpretation of an America First foreign policy and what it means for Americans.

Based on the past three and a half years of performance, the Biden-Harris regime has sustained a foreign policy, largely born from the Obama administration, that ignores the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), undermines our allies like the Philippines, distances itself from key partners like India and Taiwan, fuels the Russo-Ukrainian war, punishes Israel, embraces the Islamic Republic of Iran, and supports international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement that advance the PRC’s interests. All of which has undeniably damaged the sovereignty and national security of Americans. In addition, there is the joint domestic-foreign policy issue of America’s open borders. The Biden-Harris administration has imported 12 to 15 million people from around the world in almost four years, and tens of millions more will certainly enter the U.S. if Harris is elected.

US hypocrisy marks the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s murder Ruthie Blum

http://US hypocrisy marks the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s murder

In his press briefing on Friday, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about how the Biden administration is responding to the dire situation for women in the Islamic Republic. The journalist referred to the latest report by a United Nations fact-finding mission on the increase in suppression of women’s and girls’ rights in Iran.

She prefaced her question by mentioning the second anniversary of the Sept. 16, 2022 murder of Mahsa Amini.
Amini was a 22-year-old woman from Saqez in Iran’s Kurdistan Province. While on a trip with her family to Tehran, she was arrested by the regime’s “morality police” for not having her head covered properly. According to eyewitnesses, she was beaten as soon as she entered the van that was transporting her to the station for “education”—mullah-style. Three days later, she was dead.

One can only imagine the kind of torture she endured before she was taken to the Kasra Hospital in northern Tehran. Photos that emerged of her lying in a coma matched the medical center’s statement that when she was admitted on Sept. 13, she showed “no vital signs.”

This notice was removed from the hospital’s social-media pages after hardliners called its staff “anti-regime agents.” In parallel, police denied having beaten Amini to death, insisting that she had passed away from a heart attack. It was a lie, of course, and everybody knew it