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FOREIGN POLICY

China Accelerates Nuclear Buildup, Military Modernization; Biden Speeding U.S. to Defeat by Judith Bergman

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.

Bipartisan Majority in Congress Slaps Down Biden on Iran Deal By Rick Moran

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.

Foil the Financiers of Iran’s Terrorism The Biden administration believes Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization. So why lift sanctions on banks that help fund it? By Richard Goldberg

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.

Why America Changed Its War Aims in Ukraine By Charles Lipson –

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.

Giving Carrots to Iran Will Not Alter Its Brutal, Expansionist Plan by Majid Rafizadeh

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?

Why Is the Biden Administration Determined to Help Terrorist Iran Get a Bomb? by Majid Rafizadeh

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”?

China or the USA? by Pete Hoekstra

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.

The Temple Mount travesty and poor US policy  By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-704745

After Israel’s ambassador to Amman was summoned on Monday for reprimand over the riots on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh praised “every Palestinian who throws rocks and every Islamic Wakf worker who stands tall against the pro-Zionists defiling the Aqsa Mosque under the auspices of the Israeli occupation government.”

Rather than call Al-Khasawneh to task for openly inciting violence in an official address to the Jordanian Parliament – especially during Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to focus on faith, spiritual contemplation and self-discipline – King Abdullah II complained to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Israel was committing “provocative acts [that] violated the legal and historic status quo” on the compound.

The falsehood that Israel is storming and trying to take over the Aqsa Mosque is an ongoing antisemitic propaganda ploy with multiple aims. One involves the rejection of ancient Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Another is to obfuscate the fact that Israeli security forces were, as they always are, dispatched to the area solely to prevent the very deadly activities that Jordan’s premier is unabashedly encouraging.

A third is to fan Muslim flames within and beyond Israel’s borders whenever it suits the Hashemite Kingdom to do so. Finally, the fabrication is aimed at minimizing the enthusiasm of the Sunni states that signed or tacitly back the 2020 Abraham Accords with Israel, brokered by former US president Donald Trump.

Theoretically, this makes no sense. Jordan inked a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has greatly benefited from it.

Biden’s Middle East: Saudi Arabia Embraces China; Will They Topple the Dollar? by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18450/biden-middle-east-saudi-arabia-embraces-china

If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or various currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

“China must brace for a full-blown escalation of the struggle with the United States and prepare to gradually decouple the Chinese yuan from the US dollar,” Zhou Li, former deputy director of the Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, South China Morning Post, July 5, 2020.

That Saudi Arabia now seems to be seriously considering selling its oil in yuan signifies the extent to which the Biden administration’s Middle East policies have left countries such as Saudi Arabia hedging their bets on China, as the ascendant power in the Middle East. China, on the other hand, is simply taking advantage of the current US administration’s deprioritization of the region and its alienation of strategic US allies such as Saudi Arabia.

That alienation has mainly come, according to reports, because of Saudi “security concerns” — a diplomatic euphemism, presumably, for America’s enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. This game-changer is doubtless seen by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Sunni Gulf states, as a mortal danger.

The vacuum that the US left behind – the second one after Afghanistan — is rapidly being filled by China.

The BRI initiative seeks dramatically to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. China has signed cooperation agreements with 19 Arab countries for construction projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….

In August 2021, the fifth China-Arab States Expo took place in China; during it, agreements worth an estimated $24 billion in investments between China and Arab countries were made.

Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil to China — which buys more than 25% of Saudi oil exports — in exchange for yuan (China’s currency), according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. The move would be unprecedented. Saudi Arabia, ever since its 1974 agreement with US President Richard Nixon, has been selling oil in exchange for US dollars.

The change, if realized, would be significant. The status of the US dollar, including as the world’s reserve currency, depends on its dominance of global markets, especially the oil market, where 80% of sales are done in US dollars. If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or other currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone’s Holy Sites, Including Their Own by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18436/palestinians-desecrate-holy-sites

“We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah.” – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, MEMRI, September 16, 2015.

The Jews who have been peacefully touring the Temple Mount area in the past few years have never even set foot inside the Aqsa Mosque or on the nearby Dome of the Rock. The Jewish visitors do not go there to assault or humiliate Muslims. They go there as part of organized tours that are coordinated with the Israeli authorities.

Blinken’s remarks show that he considers the construction of new homes for Jews more dangerous than the murder of Israelis on the streets of Israeli cities.

This is all happening while the Biden administration airily disregards endless Palestinian blood libels and vicious incitement against both Israel and the Jews.

Prominently, Blinken did not threaten to suspend US financial aid to the Palestinians over the payments to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews and the ongoing incitement to attack Israelis.

Take note: as long as Secretary Blinken considers the construction of apartments for Jews a greater threat than shooting and stabbing Israeli men and women at shopping malls and bars, the Palestinians will not cease their blood payments and murderous incitement.

Unless the US administration makes it unmistakably clear that the Palestinians will pay dearly for continuing to reward terrorists and their families, the Palestinians will not even slow down either desecrating holy sites or committing their terror attacks.

The Palestinians have once again been caught lying to the world by claiming that Jews are “desecrating” the Islamic holy sites, in particular the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

If anyone is desecrating the mosque and other holy sites it is the Palestinians themselves.