RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18284/biden-capitulation-iran

“The parties of the international community that are negotiating with Iran…. must realize that the extremist Iranian regime has not, and will not, abide by international laws, regulations and agreements, even if it swore and signed or pledged to abide by and implement them. The Iranian regime was founded on the… Khomeini ideology that adopts terrorism and believes in exporting chaos and destruction.” — Dr. Ibrahim al-Nahhas, Saudi political analyst and academic, Al-Riyadh, February 23, 2022.

The Khomeini ideology… has already brought destruction to Arab countries, including Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. — Dr. Ibrahim al-Nahhas, Al-Riyadh, February 23, 2022.

“Although the Biden administration pledged upon its arrival at the White House that it would not be a third term for former President Barack Obama, it is following him step by step. This is evident in the Biden administration’s position on the Iranian nuclear issue. This position seems to be weak, hesitant and subject to Iranian blackmail…. In the end, the countries of the region will not accept being hostage to Iranian nuclear technology.” — Rami Al-Khalifa Al-Ali, Syrian political analyst, Okaz, February 23, 2022.

The most dangerous point is that the US administration “has ignored other issues in which Iran poses a threat to the region, including the ballistic missile program” as well as the terrorist militias. — Rami Al-Khalifa Al-Ali, Okaz, February 23, 2022.

“These militias are Iran’s arm in the region and they intend to spread chaos and destruction wherever they are. The [new] agreement is expected to unleash Iran’s hand in the region, as what happened during the Obama era, which led to an increase in violence in the region.” — Rami Al-Khalifa Al-Ali, Okaz, February 23, 2022.

“It is not surprising that Vladimir Putin went to the end in Ukraine after discovering that he faced an American administration that could not be more than an extension of Barack Obama’s administration. The Biden administration can yell and threaten as much as it wants.” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, veteran Lebanese journalist, Al-Arab, February 16, 2022.

In [Fahs’s] view, not reaching any agreement would be better than reaching a new one. “The lack of agreement will keep the conflict with Iran confined to the great powers.” — Mustafa Fahs, Lebanese editor, Asharq Al-Awsat, February 25, 2022.

“Biden has decided to acquiesce in Iran… to yield to its expansionist project, which ultimately aims to impose Iranian hegemony in the region.” — Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of the Bahraini newspaper Akhbar Al-Khaleej, February 25, 2022.

“In other words, it means that Iran and its proxies feel at liberty to do whatever they want. We should expect that reaching a new agreement with Iran will mark the inauguration of a new era of escalation of the Iranian terrorist threat in the region. The Arab countries must prepare for this.” — Sayed Zahra, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, February 25, 2022.

Most disturbing is what a growing number of Arabs are trying to warn the Biden administration about: that striking a new deal with Iran would not only embolden Iran and its terrorist proxies and endanger America’s friends in the Middle East, but create calamitous turmoil, including a nuclear arms race “on steroids” in the region — all of which would justifiably be blamed on the Biden administration. It appears that the Biden administration has chosen to ignore the likelihood of this terrifying scenario. It is a decision that is causing irreparable damage to America’s credibility in the Middle East.

Moreover, as Arab analysts are saying in no uncertain terms, America and its Western allies are themselves in the sights of the mullahs in Tehran.

Worse, as with Biden’s generosity to Russian President Vladimir Putin in extending the new START treaty and gifting him the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (which yesterday filed for bankruptcy), it will not buy goodwill. It will only appear as weakness and accelerate aggression against the West.

As the world’s attention is focused on the Russia-Ukraine war, the Arabs are continuing to express fear about the possibility that the Biden administration and the world powers will revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/as_russia_eats_up_headlines_dont_forget_about_iran.html

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has occupied all of the media’s attention, leaving several other international priorities of the Biden administration to continue without much scrutiny.  One of these is the effort to revive a version of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

From the outside, it would appear that Iran holds most of the cards when it comes to a new nuclear deal.  Even though deadlines for reaching a new accord have come and gone, the U.S. has granted extensions of sanctions waivers and kept the negotiations alive.  Whether this is driven by a dire need for a foreign policy victory or a sense that a new agreement is within reach remains an open question.

As the director of the Center to Advance Security in America, I am following the issue closely.  My organization is seeking records to help the public better understand whether a new deal is in America’s interest and what this means for exposing the priorities of the current administration.  On its face, the U.S. government’s position is that the deal is the best chance we have to stop Iran from joining the nuclear club.  But recent foreign policy debacles have raised concerns over the genuineness of this claim.

The most notable defeat is the embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan despite internal analysis indicating that senior decision-makers were aware of the potential for disastrous consequences from their planned actions, which my organization is also looking into.  History may be repeating itself in the Iran nuclear deal.  For instance, it recently came out that Richard Nephew and two other American negotiators resigned from the negotiations because they wanted a tougher posture.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/25/our-silence-in-exchange-for-a-nuclear-weapons-deal-with-iran/

Politically suffering from America’s debacle extraction out of Afghanistan and his inability to deter Putin’s aggression on Ukraine, President Biden is in search of recognition for some positive accomplishment. Problem is he is focusing this effort on resurrecting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, otherwise known as the Nuclear Weapons Deal.

President Trump was justified in pulling out from JCPOA for two reasons. First, from the very beginning, Iran never honored a single element of the deal. Second, Trump’s predecessor ignored mandated consent.

By claiming JCPOA was an agreement and not a treaty, President Obama approved it as an executive decision rather than receive Senate approval as stated in Article 2, Section 2, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution. A treaty by any other name is still a treaty. There is no reason to believe that Biden will honor the U.S. Constitution any more than did his former boss.

Biden will also follow Obama’s policy of ignoring anything negative about Iran during the negotiations. Iran had basically a free run to commit terrorist acts throughout the world without much attention paid to it from 2009 to the first month of 2017. Iran also had $140 billion of frozen assets freed up by the Obama Administration and a relaxation of previous sanctions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18281/biden-europe-eastmed-pipeline

Biden surprised EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline on January 9, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified supply of energy to Europe, and further assuring even greater revenues for Russia and its war machine.

“The Biden Administration’s actions in this matter are particularly objectionable and hypocritical in light of its tacit approval of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which will only deepen Europe’s energy dependence on a volatile adversary.” — U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis, January 24, 2022.

As Biden was busy undercutting three staunch U.S. allies in the Mediterranean [Cyprus, Israel and Greece] to appease Erdoğan and a fantasy of “green energy” — that is years from being either ready or affordable — to appease America’s Democrat Party, Ankara would once again prove to be only a part-time Western ally.

“During the vote [against Russia]… Turkey decided to abstain,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said. “We don’t want to break off the dialogue with Russia.”

Biden should immediately reverse his decision and permit the EastMed pipeline.

In December 2019, Biden had described Erdoğan as an autocrat and promised to empower Turkey’s opposition parties through democratic processes. Was that a joke, or is Biden a crypto-fan of Erdoğan?

Once again U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategic miscalculation is coming with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-and-american-power-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-joe-biden-fossil-fuels-energy-11645902803?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a 3 a.m. wake-up call to President Biden and America’s liberal political class: Cease your war on U.S. energy. Europe’s climate obsessions have rendered it vulnerable to Vladimir Putin’s extortion, and the U.S. is in danger of repeating that tragic mistake.

No less than Igor Sechin, CEO of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft, warned Europe last summer: “Some ecologists and politicians urge for a hasty energy transition, yet it requires an unrealistically fast launch of renewable energy sources and faces issues with storage, ensuring reliability and stability of power generation.”

Europe’s hefty renewable subsidies have rendered nuclear and coal power economically uncompetitive. Governments have also forced loads of nuclear and coal plants to retire prematurely, believing wind and solar could replace them. Hello? Renewables don’t provide reliable power 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Europe has been left to rely increasingly on natural gas to keep the lights on. But governments have effectively banned hydraulic fracturing, which would have let them charge their economies with domestically produced gas. Europe now imports almost all of its gas, with 40% coming from Russia.

Sluggish wind last summer sent natural gas demand and prices soaring. Some manufacturers had to shut down. Then Russia slowed gas deliveries, limiting Europe’s supply heading into the winter. Strategic advantage: Putin.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gamble

Russian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?

Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.

While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.