RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20735/obama-biden-nuclear-armed-iran

America’s “diplomatic efforts,” instead of putting a stop to Iran’s nuclear program, have only resulted in a series of concessions that have empowered the Iranian regime. The lack of stringent enforcement and verification measures, and especially lifting secondary sanctions — by which any country that does business with Iran is prohibited from doing business with America — have allowed Iran to accelerate its nuclear activities “under the radar.”

Iran’s continued development of ballistic missile technology and its persistent test firings of missiles, both in clear violation of UN resolutions, were largely overlooked. In addition, the growing bellicosity of Iran’s huge militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as the nuclear program itself, were apparently never addressed with the seriousness they warranted — thereby allowing Iran to expand its military capabilities and regional aggression unchecked.

The Iranian regime strategically allocated these funds to support and expand its own proxy presence throughout the region, including, among other spots, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Gaza Strip.

The Trump administration implemented a “maximum pressure” policy aimed at curtailing Iran’s economic capabilities by particularly focusing on reducing the country’s oil exports, and, most importantly, establishing “secondary sanctions” that banned any country doing business with Iran from doing business with the US.

The Biden administration’s passive approach of trying to use what might look like “protection money” to try to bribe Iran into compliance has simply backfired. Iran took the billions and, unsurprisingly, appears to have fungibly used them to finance several wars in the region — Hamas and Hezbollah’s war against Israel, the Houthis’ war against Israel and the US, and Iran’s own April 13 missile- and drone-attack against Israel — as well as Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The Biden administration, sadly, seems to have been the enabling factor in Iran’s continued regional assertiveness and nuclear advancement. The administration’s series of policies favorable to Iran significantly strengthened the regime to the point where Iran and its proxies are now actively engaged in a comprehensive war against Israel, the Sunni Arab Gulf States and, since October, more than 150 attacks on US troops in the region.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20733/china-dangerous-delusion

Americans may think they are at peace with China, but China’s ruling organization has already announced otherwise.

[I]n May 2019, People’s Daily… carried a landmark editorial declaring a “people’s war” on America.

This phrase sounds like meaningless propaganda to American ears, but it has special significance to the Party. “A people’s war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods,” declared a column carried in April 2023 by PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army.

China has in fact weaponized just about everything. In 1999, two Chinese air force colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, in Unrestricted Warfare, listed 24 methods of warfare and advocated the use of all of them against the United States.

[U]nrestricted warfare contemplates the turning of everything into a weapon, from business interactions to tourism to terrorism to illegal drugs to disease.

All of these incidents are in defiance of about a dozen written and oral warnings, from the Biden State Department and President Biden himself, that the U.S. was prepared to use force against China to discharge America’s obligations to Manila pursuant to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty

The American political class—both Democrats and Republicans—refuse to see Chinese hostility and act appropriately against it. The Communist Party, therefore, did not have to deceive Americans because Americans were determined to deceive themselves.

Xi Jinping has made it clear that his goal is to bring down the international system, to “crack skulls and spill blood” as he announced in a landmark speech on July 1, 2021.

“It’s very hard for China to take certain steps without harming its own economy,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on June 12. “And I think we now understand that economic performance is central right now to what is important to President Xi.”

http://bit.ly/3KM3rXS

FBI Director Chris Wray’s position on Islamic terrorism/Iran

FBI Director, Chris Wray reiterated – during his June 4, 2024 Senate testimony and April 11, 2024 House testimony – his warning of an October 7-like terrorism on the US soil:

“We have seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole another level after the October 7 [Hamas terrorism]….Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the [US] homeland, akin to the ISIS attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall in March, 2024 [137 murdered, 180 wounded]…. Nations such as the PRC, Russia and Iran are becoming more aggressive and more capable than ever before.  These nations seek to undermine our core democratic, economic and scientific institutions….

“We are in an environment where the threats from international terrorism, domestic terrorism and state sponsored terrorism are all simultaneously elevated…. We are paying heightened attention to how the events abroad could directly affect and inspire people to commit violence here in the homeland….

“Our top concern stems from lone offenders inspired by the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, as they pose the most likely threat to Americans.  In recent years, there have been several events in the US that were purportedly motivated, at least in part, by the Israel-Hamas conflict….

“Iran and its global proxies and partners, including Iraqi Shia militant groups, attack and plot against the US and our allies throughout the Middle East.  Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force has also provided support to terrorist organizations. And, Iran has supported Lebanese Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. Hezbollah has sent operatives to build terrorist infrastructure worldwide [including in Latin America all the way to the US-Mexico border]. The arrests of individuals in the US allegedly linked to Hezbollah’s main overseas terrorist arm, and their intelligence-collection and procurement efforts, demonstrate Hezbollah’s interest in long-term contingency planning activities here in the homeland….

“We continue to see the drug cartels [which intensely collaborate with Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah, that supply them predator unmanned aerial vehicles and tunnel construction equipment] push fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of the country, claiming countless American lives….

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-half-century-of-appeasing-iran/

A measure of how feckless and dangerous the Biden administration’s Iran policy has become, was blatantly obvious last week. The International Atomic Energy Agency finally censured Iran for violating the terms of the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” that Barack Obama signed with several European countries in 2015. As the Wall Street Journal asked, “What took so long? The answer, we’re sorry to say, is U.S. opposition. Credit to the U.K., France and Germany for pushing the rebuke anyway, and winning President Biden’s reluctant support at the last minute, when he had no other way to stave off the embarrassment of defending Iran.”

Embarrassment indeed, when three of Nato’s richest military skinflints show more spine than the U.S. did. Biden’s appeasement may be the reductio ad absurdum of nearly 50 years of Western nations “running scared of Tehran,” as Daniel Pipes put it, since the Islamic revolution.  For all those decades, a nation viable only by dint of possessing the world’s third largest oil reserves–– and a ruthless totalitarian government so hated by its people that only murderous force and cruelty can keep its clerical leaders alive––is treated by the West as though it were a peer rival one must approach with cautious solicitude.

First in the catalogue of appeasement came the sacrifice of the Shah, a geostrategically reliable and loyal ally, who like his father was a reformer in the mold of Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk. Next came the abandonment of Iran despite the unpunished kidnapping of our embassy staff, and the subjection of Iran’s citizens to committed jihadists led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

An esteemed Shia cleric, Khomeini’s tracts and sermons featured traditional Islamic doctrines like “Kill the unbeliever” and “Islam is the religion of blood for the infidel.” More ominously, he promised, “We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” and jihad will be waged “[u]ntil the cry ‘There in God but Allah’ resounds over the whole world.’” And so it has, as Iran and its proxies have terrorized this a critical region.

From that point on, there followed numerous failures to punish Iran’s aggression against the “Great Satan,” as Khomeini dubbed the U.S. Iran’s shock-troops and trained proxies murdered 241 of our military personnel in Beirut, serially kidnapped our citizens and government officials, and incessantly facilitated attacks on our soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Indeed, the Mullahs struck at every flash-point in the region, including Hamas’s murders, rapes, brutalizing, and kidnappings of hostages in the October 7 terrorist attacks. Only the blind or willfully ignorant can fail to trace the role of serial appeasement in inviting and furthering these assaults on our security and interests.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-president-who-cannot-conceive-of-victory/

Yesterday, I wrote of President Joe Biden and his administration’s extraordinary facility for self-sabotage that this White House “cannot envision victory, either for America or its allies.” Indeed, “it sees only the prospect of ambiguous outcomes, to which it can muster the contribution of only half measures.” It was only hours later that one ranking administration official proved the observation correct.

Israel and the United States are “struggling over what the theory of victory is,” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told CNN reporter Kylie Atwood on Monday. “They talk about mostly the idea of some sort of sweeping victory on the battlefield, total victory,” he said of his Israeli counterparts. “I don’t think we believe that that is likely or possible.”

As CNN’s Alex Marquardt observed, Cam’s comments dovetail with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s befuddling remarks on Sunday. Then, Blinken insisted that Israel’s small-footprint strategy in Gaza — the very strategy the U.S. lobbied Israel to adopt — was failing because it had allowed Hamas to reconstitute itself in areas the Israeli Defense Forces had already cleared. Since that calibrated approach had been unable to achieve its tactical goals, Israel should abandon its strategic objectives entirely. Victory over Hamas is unachievable “no matter what they do in Rafah,” Blinken said, “or if they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do.”