RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18177/yemen-humanitarian-crisis

The humanitarian situation in Yemen is indeed unbearable, but it is the Houthis who are causing and compounding it.

If the international community wants, it can pay a ransom to the people causing the suffering. It is a form of manipulation…. What the Houthis and similar groups see is: Extortion works, let’s keep doing it!

The Houthis are backed by Iran, just like its designated terror proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. All three terror groups are disruptive forces in the Middle East, and used by Iran in its efforts to undercut U.S. influence in the region and threaten Israel and the Gulf states.

The government of the internationally recognized Republic of Yemen also has presented intelligence showing that the Houthis work with al-Qaeda and ISIS to spread terror and conflict in the country.

The problem, therefore, is not just the Houthis, it is also Iran. When the Houthis are not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), Iran is effectively invited to advance its nuclear weapons program and “export its revolution” — with no obstruction.

Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS are not groups that have earned the trust of the international community to help alleviate humanitarian crises anywhere in the world, ever.

Delay or failure to re-list the Houthis will only allow the problem to metastasize and further spread across the Middle East — exactly the objective of Iran’s regime. The Houthis’ attacks on the UAE has shown the Iranian-backed terror proxy’s reach expanding to build fear; they have already threatened more attacks.

How the U.S. addresses the threat posed by the Houthis will be closely watched by Iran’s friends, the Russians and the Chinese. It will be watched by Iran’s other proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. It also will be watched closely by the friends of the U.S., including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

Allowing the Houthis — and Iran — unchecked freedom to terrorize the Middle East will only make the humanitarian crisis expand in scope and severity. Iran, Russia and China are saber rattling. The Biden Administration needs to show it will protect our allies, immediately redesignate the Houthis as an FTO, and make aggression unthinkable to our adversaries – not reward them.

The U.S. and the international community can no longer ignore or reward the malign behavior of Iran or the Houthis.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-694816

It was clear from the outset that the nuclear talks in Vienna would turn out to be a farce. Promoted by the administration of US President Joe Biden as a means of returning to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) from which former president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018, the move to go back to the literal and figurative table was born of a pipe dream, at best. At worst, it stemmed from cynical disregard for the consequences of a hegemonic regime in Tehran armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The fantasy on the part of American and European liberals is that achieving a new and improved JCPOA is the safest — or only — way to prevent Iran from building atomic bombs. Western “pragmatists,” meanwhile, are concerned more about trade with the Islamic Republic than matters of war and peace.

The far-left apologists for a Russia-China-Iran axis possess a mixture of the above, but with a heavier ideological bent. Members of this camp, which includes radical Islamists, have an inverted view of good and evil. They see the West in general, particularly the United States, as an embodiment of the latter.

But all share a desire for a deal to be forged with the mullah-led government of Ebrahim (“the butcher”) Raisi, along the lines of the one signed between the P5+1 countries (China, France, Russia, Britain, the US and Germany) and his “moderate” predecessor, Hassan Rouhani.

Following last week’s Abu Dhabi attack, Biden said he will consider reversing the decision. That would be the right move and he should do it immediately.

Biden’s moves were a classic example of the failure of appeasement. Inevitably, the Iranian ayatollahs were not won over by these and other US placations. Instead they have become increasingly hard-nosed, demanding more US compromises in exchange for fewer restrictions on their nuclear weapons project — a typical Iranian regime response to perceived weakness.

Ansar Allah still represents a direct terrorist threat to the US. In the past it has taken American citizens hostage and in 2016 fired anti-ship missiles at US vessels off the coast of Yemen…. Ansar Allah also jeopardises wider American interests in the region, as well as its allies.

So far the West has proved impotent in helping to end this devastating war, with all efforts at agreeing a negotiated settlement frustrated largely due to Ansar Allah’s intransigence. Its violent offensive against Yemen’s Marib Governorate that began last February is further evidence that — with Iranian backing — it continues to seek only the path of war. As events since Biden became president have shown, appeasement is the opposite of the answer.

It is essential that the US renew its strong opposition to Iran’s expansionist actions, countering them at every opportunity…. An implacably hard-line stance towards these terrorists is essential to reassure US allies that there are consequences for violence against them.

Re-designation would not prevent Iran from continuing to fuel the Yemen insurgency but it would send a message of US strength to Tehran, one sorely needed in the months following the Afghanistan debacle and the administration’s open desperation to renew the nuclear deal at almost any price.

The US administration could overcome this [problem of delivering humanitarian aid] by granting broad licenses and waivers to organizations and companies operating in and around Yemen, enabling essential supplies including food, fuel and medicines to be delivered. This would also need to take account of Ansar Allah’s demands for bribes from aid agencies, and their propensity to steal aid for their own profit. This is a challenge the US administration has so far side-stepped but must now clarify.

No doubt such a licensing regime would introduce further complications to the already desperate and fraught humanitarian programmes — on top of the theft of aid by Ansar Allah. But such additional bureaucratic effort is a price that needs to be paid for the wider political and strategic benefits in countering Iranian and Ansar Allah violence.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-pathetic-energy-theater/

The New York Times reports that President Biden has a plan to counteract Russia’s energy stranglehold on Europe:

The Biden Administration announced on Tuesday that it was working with gas and crude oil suppliers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia to bolster supplies to Europe in coming weeks, in an effort to blunt the threat that Russia could cut off fuel shipments in the escalating conflict over Ukraine.

The EU currently imports about a third of its oil and gas from Russia. And, of course, the Germans have been busily making the situation worse by shuttering their nuclear-powered electric plants and pushing for the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would bypass Ukraine and further entrench German dependence on Vladimir Putin’s petro power.

“We expect to be prepared to ensure alternative supplies covering a significant majority of the potential shortfall,’’ a Biden administration official told the Times.

And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. . .

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ric-grenell-ukraine-russia-biden/2022/01/22/id/1053553/

The situation with Ukraine is a “disaster” with only “terrible and bad choices,” says former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, and foreign leaders “smell weakness” with President Joe Biden in charge.

“All the work we did, whether it’s the border, whether it’s the Middle East, and now what we’re seeing in Europe is frustrating,” Grenell, who served under former President Donald Trump and is now a senior national security analyst for Newsmax, said on “The Count.”

“We don’t have any good choices. But the reality is that the leaders of Russia and China and a whole bunch of other places smell weakness.”

And now, with the news that the United States is starting to evacuate nonessential personnel from Ukraine, that shows that there is no plan for what will happen if Russia invades Ukraine or what will happen if Americans are left behind enemy lines, like they were in Afghanistan.

“We don’t have a handle on the numbers,” said Grenell, adding that the U.S. does not have an ambassador in Ukraine, so lower-level individuals are left to coordinate with Washinton.

“I can tell you from experience,” he said. “I’d been at the State Department for 11 years. The individuals who are in charge of our embassy in Ukraine right now are not making decisions on their own. They’re going back and organizing with the assistant secretary of state for Europe, who is Karen Donfried, who used to work for the German Marshall fund where the Germans paid part of her salary. So this is a disaster situation all over.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10439847/Three-Bidens-Iran-negotiating-team-RESIGN-not-tough-nuke-deal.html

Republican Rep. Michael Waltz praised the negotiators who have stepped back for ‘recognizing when diplomacy is getting too desperate’
Waltz has had his own experience in the Middle East as an Army Green Beret 
State Department official confirmed Tuesday that Richard Nephew stood down
He was  U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran and known as sanctions architect
Nephew, who wanted Biden to take a harder stance against Iran, has reportedly been avoiding the meetings in Vienna since December 
At the same time, reports emerged that two other negotiators had left
It comes at a critical time in negotiations between the West and Tehran 
Iran has rejected talk of an interim agreement and wants a legal guarantee that the U.S. will not walk away from the nuclear deal

A Republican member of Congress on Tuesday praised three Biden administration officials who walked away from their roles on the State Department’s nuclear talks with Iran.

Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida, who served in the Middle East as one of the Army’s elite Green Berets, told DailyMail.com their departure at a critical junction of the discussions is a reflection of President Joe Biden’s policies putting ‘national security at risk.’

A State Department official confirmed that Richard Nephew, known as the architect of sanctions on Tehran, had stepped down as U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran after urging a tougher stance on nuclear talks.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18174/biden-latest-mayhem

It should not be surprising that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin believes he can invade Ukraine, a sovereign neighboring nation, and claim it as an historic part of his empire. After all, there is a shameful European history to reflect upon, combined with the most recent actions of the United States under the current White House.

In 1938, Western democracies were more than willing to hand over a free and stable central European nation to Hitler. The Czechs found themselves abandoned and served up on a plate to the Third Reich as Hitler threatened war if the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia was not annexed by Germany. The reason for his demand was that it was territory long populated by many ethnic Germans. (And this may sound disturbingly familiar if you follow Putin’s logic why Ukraine is his, given that part of its diverse population is Russian.)

Some 84 years ago, Britain’s Neville Chamberlain conspired with the French to appease Hitler, and telling a BBC audience, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

The deal forced onto the Czech leadership by the democracies was that the Sudetenland would become part of the Reich but the rest of the Czech nation would be secure. It was cynical nonsense of course. Hitler sensed the moral bankruptcy of the democracies and within 12 months would take over the rest of Czechoslovakia. He did it without firing a shot and without the democracies confronting him.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/cameronarcand/2022/01/24/pentagon-8500-troops-being-placed-on-high-alert-for-possible-deployment-to-europe-n1552382

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby announced that 8,500 American troops are on standby for swift deployment to Eastern Europe in order to assist NATO allies if Russia decides to invade Ukraine.

“Secretary Austin placed a range of units in the U.S. on a heightened preparedness to deploy, which increases our readiness to provide forces if NATO should activate the NRF or if other situations develop,” he said Monday.

“All told, the number of forces that the secretary has placed on heightened alert comes up to about 8,500 personnel.”

The administration is hoping that this move will deter Putin from starting combat at the Russian-Ukrainian border, but reporters quickly scrutinized the decision, particularly if those troops are not going directly to Ukraine.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/russia-ukraine-biden-weakness-mike-pompeo

From negotiating with the malign Iranian regime while they have threatened former President Trump, or allowing the Taliban to sweep through Afghanistan and directly imperil American lives, or refusing to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its central role in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic or for its aggression towards Taiwan, the Biden administration’s record after one year in office is marked by abject weakness.

But his weakness has been unmatched in attempting to deter Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine.

For months now, Vladimir Putin has massed Russian military forces on the Ukrainian border. Last month, on December 17, the Kremlin unveiled two draft agreements that essentially acted as ultimatums for NATO and the Biden administration.

The demands? For the United States and NATO to guarantee that NATO would not expand further east, that the United States would withdraw its nuclear missiles from Europe, and that no NATO country would cooperate militarily with former Soviet countries.  In effect, Vladimir Putin wants to reestablish Russian dominance over Eastern Europe by recapturing old Soviet bloc countries.

Of course, this would be disastrous for Europe and American national security.  President Putin made no offers or concessions in exchange for these demands.  He included no guarantees to withdraw the mass of Russian troops in the Donbass region of Ukraine, and proposed no plan to end Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea.

All he ‘promised’ was to no longer threaten America.  Any competent team in the White House, any capable American president, would have responded to such threats with immediate and tangible costs to the Russians.

They would have responded to the massive military build-up on Ukraine’s border with preemptive, crushing economic sanctions and an ironclad guarantee to help Ukraine defend itself should Russia invade.  President Biden should be rallying European allies to commit themselves to standing against Putin and his lawless, authoritarian actions.  But deterrence was lost with Biden’s weakness.