RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-doctrine-of-american-unexceptionalism?token=

Russian leader Vladimir Putin was supposed to have used his Victory Day speech yesterday to reveal his intentions regarding the Ukraine war. Russia watchers expected him to define his aims, signaling a prolonged conflict or, possibly, a path to peace. As it turned out, Putin did neither. His war against Ukraine drags on.

But although this week failed to clarify the future of the war in Europe, there is still a small chance that it will offer us some clarity on another front: Iran’s ongoing efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. Enrique Mora, the European Union’s Iran nuclear talks coordinator, is visiting Tehran today, May 10, seeking to break the deadlock in the negotiations between Iran and the United States. His mission might teach us whether Tehran has decided to cut a deal with President Biden. Chances are, however, that we will end the week as much in the dark about Tehran’s intentions as we are about Putin’s.

To help us understand why, I turn to Michael Doran, the author of today’s essay. Doran sees a connection between the way the Biden administration has approached both the Ukraine war and the conflict with Iran. Namely: in both cases the White House has profoundly weakened America’s diplomatic hand by shying away from traditional deterrence.

Doran has never gone along with the crowd. He first came on my radar in 2005, after what we would now call “woke” professors mobilized against his bid for tenure at Princeton. I liked him immediately.

He has a knack for writing topical articles that age well. His 2002 Foreign Affairs article on Osama bin Laden, “Somebody Else’s Civil War,” remains one of the best things written on al-Qaeda and radical Islam. When his 2015 piece, “Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy,” first came out, Doran’s view about Obama’s eagerness to please Iran was controversial. It’s now common wisdom. And last year, when Biden took office, he co-authored a piece in Tablet Magazine, “The Realignment,” which predicted that President Biden would zealously follow Obama’s Middle East playbook.

Today’s essay tries to make sense of this administration’s baffling foreign policy strategy, which seems to offer succor toward our enemies, like Iran and China, while isolating allies in the Gulf and Israel. As Doran explains, this is not borne out of incompetence, but out of a deeply held ideology about the trajectory of America and the West. — BW

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18472/china-nuclear-buildup

“The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020.” — Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021, US Dept. of Defense.

“In space, China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States and “fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” — General David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations, quoted in The Washington Post, November 30, 2021.

“Look at what they [CCP) have today…. We’re witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed.” — General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, breakingdefense.com, November 4, 2021.

“[T]he Chinese are building up their military capabilities in space, cyberspace, and in the conventional force. It’s all happening at the same time.” — Timothy Heath, senior international and defense researcher at Rand Corporation, Business Insider, January 4, 2022.

“To fully assess the China threat, it is also necessary to consider the capability of the associated delivery system, command and control, readiness, posture, doctrine and training. By these measures, China is already capable of executing any plausible nuclear employment strategy within their region and will soon be able to do so at intercontinental ranges as well.” ­­— Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.

There is now as well the added probability of China and Russia engaging in military coordination…. a strategic partnership of “no limits” and with “no forbidden areas” in an agreement that they said was aimed at countering the influence of the United States.

This cooperation has already seen China undermining Western sanctions on Russia and supplying Russian President Vladimir Putin with the lifeline he needs to continue his war in Ukraine.

“The friendship between the two peoples is iron clad.” — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Associated Press, March 7, 2022.

“For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently.” ­­— Admiral Charles Richard, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.

[T]his is NOT the time for the US to cancel the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N), as President Joe Biden plans to do.

Meanwhile, Biden’s proposed defense budget risks speeding the US to defeat by insufficiently taking into account the current skyrocketing inflation, as acknowledged in early April by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord. “This budget assumes an inflation rate of 2.2%, which is obviously incorrect because it’s almost 8%,” said Milley. “Because the budget was produced quite a while ago, those calculations were made prior to the current inflation rate.”

“Nearly every dollar of increase in this budget will be eaten by inflation. Very little, if anything, will be left over to modernize and grow capability.” — Representative Mike Rogers, (R-Ala.) House Armed Services Committee, Defense News, April 5, 2022.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/05/06/bipartisan-majority-in-congress-slaps-down-biden-on-iran-deal-n1595762

A bipartisan supermajority in Congress voted on Thursday night to require that any nuclear agreement with Iran must also address Iran’s support for terrorism in the region, and that the U.S. should not lift sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The non-binding resolution also stated that the administration should address Iran’s illegal ballistic missile program and China’s continuing purchases of Iranian oil that evade U.S. sanctions.

It’s unclear whether the Senate would have the opportunity to advise and consent on any deal that is struck as it would a treaty. The original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) was not presented to the Senate as a treaty and Congress was unable to give a meaningful vote on the agreement.

But Biden may be under considerable pressure from Senate Democrats to allow a vote on the deal. The Democrats know they are vulnerable on this issue and need the cover of a vote to weather what is certain to be fierce Republican attacks.

Politico:

Lawmakers from both parties said it was a warning shot to Biden’s negotiating team, who have all but acknowledged in private that an agreement that goes beyond curtailing Iran’s nuclear program is no longer possible, according to multiple people familiar with classified Hill briefings on the subject.

The vote was also a preview of the bipartisan rebuke that’s likely to come if the U.S. and Iran clinch an agreement that doesn’t address Iran’s non-nuclear activities and removes the IRGC’s terrorist designation — a “test vote,” in the words of one senator.

Iran wants the sanctions lifted while keeping their terrorist force, the IRGC, and their ever-improving ICBMs that threaten Israel, the Europeans, and soon, the USA.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foil-the-financiers-of-irans-terrorism-revolutionary-guard-quds-sanctions-congress-deal-11651432838?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Signals out of the White House suggest President Biden won’t give in to Iran’s demand that the U.S. remove Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department list of terrorist organizations as a condition for a nuclear deal. But if Mr. Biden believes the IRGC is a terrorist organization, he must go further and withdraw his administration’s offer to lift terrorism sanctions on the group’s top financiers.

When news broke in March that Mr. Biden was considering Iran’s request to take the IRGC off the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the White House faced outcries from Congress, allies in the Middle East, former U.S. officials and Gold Star Families whose loved ones were killed by the IRGC in Iraq. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if the IRGC is a terrorist organization. “They are,” Mr. Blinken replied.

The next day at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Mark Milley faced the same question. “In my personal opinion, I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist organization, and I do not support them being delisted from the foreign terrorist organization list,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. The Quds Force is one of several branches of the IRGC.

A State Department spokeswoman added last month that “the president shares the chairman’s view that IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists.” A senior administration official told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that the president “doesn’t intend to concede on the terrorist designation, even though this may be a dealbreaker,” in Mr. Ignatius’s paraphrase.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/05/01/why_america_changed_its_war_aims_in_ukraine_147543.html

Slowly, slowly, the United States has expanded its war aims in Ukraine and significantly altered its pipeline of military supplies. Those two changes are mutually reinforcing. The U.S. is finally sending Ukraine the heavy weapons it needs because the Biden administration has finally decided it actually wants Ukraine to win and the Russian army to suffer losses so drastic it will not threaten other Western countries.

Highlighting these changes is not meant to downplay the support America has already given Ukraine. Biden’s team has done a lot. Not nearly as much as Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted, but a lot. Biden and his administration forged a coalition of NATO partners, provided Ukraine real-time intelligence about Russian forces, and shipped huge quantities of light weapons and ammunition. Those supplies were critical in protecting Kyiv.

Still, the U.S. and its NATO partners could have done much more. They did too little to deter an invasion when they could have prepared for it by training and equipping Ukrainian forces on NATO-standard equipment. As the invasion loomed, they delayed sending military equipment because the CIA predicted that Russia would win quickly and capture those supplies. After Ukraine fended off the Russian attack on Kyiv, the U.S. rejected Zelenskyy’s urgent requests for heavy weapons, including artillery, long-range drones, cruise missiles, planes, and anti-aircraft batteries. (It is still wisely refusing to insert Western troops and airpower into combat, fearing that could provoke a wider conflict with Russia.) Nor had the U.S. endorsed Ukraine’s principal war aim: to defeat Russia and recover as much territory as possible. All that changed over the past week. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went even further. In a dramatic announcement, he said the U.S. wanted to weaken Russia.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18479/giving-carrots-to-iran-will-not-alter-its-brutal

“The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps … will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world.” – Constitution, Islamic Republic of Iran

“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.” — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, 1981

“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” –Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, The Economist, November 20, 2007

Does anyone seriously think that having a bomb and billions of dollars will make the mullahs less aggressive?

It is time for the Biden administration and the European Union to see that, as with Putin’s Russia, no amount of appeasement or concessions is going to pressure the Iranian regime – called by the US State Department itself “The world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism — to change its ruthless, expansionist program for the better.

The Biden administration and the European Union continue to appease the ruling mullahs of Iran while ignoring the regime’s threats to annihilate Israel. Do they really believe that appeasing the Islamic Republic will lead to a positive change within the regime? Or do they secretly hope that Iran will do them a favor and finally, to paraphrase King Henry II, rid them of this troublesome country?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18452/help-terrorist-iran-bomb

Why would any administration in its right mind permit an official state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to have nuclear weapons, as well as billions of dollars that will assuredly not be used for a “GI Bill for returning members of the Revolutionary Guard”?

Just this week, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called Iran, a “sponsor of terrorism.”

With Biden’s deal, restrictions on the regime’s nuclear program would be lifted only two years after the agreement is signed, permitting the regime to enrich uranium at any level it desires and spin as many uranium enrichment centrifuges as it wants.

Astonishingly, Russia will be trusted to be the country that stores Iran’s enriched uranium, and Moscow will get paid for this mission. More uranium for Russia? How nifty: maybe Putin can use it for his next “Ukraine” — in Poland, Sweden or France?

The new deal will not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, meaning that the Tehran regime will continue attacking other nations with its ballistic missiles, provide missiles to its proxy militias in other countries, and advance the range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles to reach the US territories. Iran could even use shorter-range ballistic missiles to reach the US, perhaps launched from Venezuela or Cuba, where Iran is already deeply entrenched.

To meet the Iranian leaders’ demands, the new deal will most likely include removal from the terrorist list of the IRGC, which has killed countless Americans, both on American soil and off.

The Islamic Republic of Iran began murdering Americans in Beirut in 1983, and also had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.

The Biden administration, if it actually cares about peace in the region — a subject that seems open to question — would do well to listen to the warnings of these many US military leaders and Congressmen, and refuse to revive the disastrous nuclear deal. It will only a make even more dangerous a country that the US State Department itself has called “the world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism,” as well as frankly creating an unnecessary security threat in the region, Europe and the US.

Why would any administration in its right mind permit an official state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to have nuclear weapons, as well as billions of dollars that will assuredly not be used for a “GI Bill for returning members of the Revolutionary Guard”?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18463/china-or-the-usa

The new agreement with Iran, then, is based on an imaginary assistance from Russia and China, when all three countries are committed to unseating America as the world’s leading superpower and evading US sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The US, in short, is sacrificing significant progress in the Middle East to help the three greatest threats to America’s international safety and security: these brutal and authoritarian regimes, China, Russia and Iran.

The actions of the past 18 months demonstrate the key challenges of American foreign policy — policies that swing back and forth from one administration to the next, creating a total lack of consistency. Secondly, they highlight the fact that one administration seems unwilling to accept or learn from the previous administration.

America will continue to see its international role diminish if foreign policy continues to resemble a roller coaster, changing direction every four to eight years, based more on political, partisan whims than an actual results-oriented approach. This is how China conducts its foreign policy: on the back of such American unreliability.

We must stay loyal to our allies such as the UAE for the long-term for them to see the US as a reliable ally, so that they and other countries can risk taking the courageous, groundbreaking steps that they have been implementing over the last few years.

Two recent reports highlight a disturbing trend in the global power dynamic. They are not receiving much attention because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, but China is exploiting this out-of-the-spotlight moment to work smartly at increasing its influence within the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the US is squandering this moment by trying to negotiate a renewed Iran nuclear deal with Russia’s assistance.