RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18035/china-us-enablers

For Ray Dalio, moral relativism is great for business.

Bridgewater’s business is investment funds. Having more of those in China means more money for Bridgewater. It is really that simple. But in China business deals are not done with fellow capitalists who are dedicated to economic liberty and the free flow of capital to its most rational uses.

Dalio is willfully ignorant defense of Chinese communism… it is the calculated hypocrisy of the rope-selling capitalist.

Major American businesses are more worried about the prospect for growing or even losing their Chinese business revenues than about standing up against tyranny abroad, the silencing of Americans at home, and the outspoken intention of the Chinese Communist Party to supplant the United States — and the freedom that comes with it — as the world’s preeminent nation.

Apple also bowed to the Chinese government’s demand to give it full access to the data of its customers in China, even banning apps that would allow ordinary Chinese citizens to bypass their government’s sophisticated surveillance.

This is in contrast to Apple’s refusal in 2016 of an FBI request to break into the encryption of its iPhone after a domestic terrorist mass shooting incident in San Bernardino, California. Tim Cook told Apple employees at the time that his refusal was based on civil liberties concerns, which apparently did not stop him from agreeing to the Chinese Communist Party’s demands.

“Of course, Apple and Nike publicly claim to decry slave labor. But to be clear, the behavior we are seeing from US corporations is not about a company surviving: It’s about discontent with just hundreds of millions of dollars, desiring instead billions of dollars.” — Jake Tapper, CNN, December 5, 2021.

One of the sadder realities of modern business is seeing how China has managed to co-opt and make hostages of American capitalists dazzled by the riches of the Chinese market. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates is just the latest financial titan to play the “Who am I to judge how another country runs itself?” card.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18042/west-illusion

Are economic relations and trade effective tools with which Western democracies could persuade totalitarian states to introduce reforms that could lead to democratization?

[T]he question is back… to encourage the Biden administration to give Iranian mullahs what they want in the hope that they might mend their ways. These days one reads op-eds and pseudo-research papers presenting Iran as “a potential market of $3 trillion” and the last missing piece in the great global market.

The thesis has been tested numerous times and proven wrong.

Lenin and Stalin weren’t the only 20th century despots to seduce some in Western democracies.

Decades later, that illusion found its bureaucratic echo in a report to President George W Bush by his Assistant Secretary of State Robert Zoellick urging aid and trade to help Communist China reform and come out of poverty.

Bush fell for that narrative, also marketed by Kissinger as a paid lobbyist for Beijing.

Zoellick’s predictions proved wrong. Under President Xi Jinping, China is moving further away from democratization and casting itself as a rival if not adversary of the United States.

Western beautification of ugly regimes has never led to a change of trajectory to join what Americans tout as “the democratic world.” Regimes that oppress their people can never become trusted friends for anyone, let alone countries where power is based on at least some respect for human rights and government with some consent by the governed.

Next time anyone plays the tune “let’s help mullahs reform”, listen but remember Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao and others.

Are economic relations and trade effective tools with which Western democracies could persuade totalitarian states to introduce reforms that could lead to democratization?

Hotly debated for decades, the question is back with a campaign by the usual suspects to encourage the Biden administration to give Iranian mullahs what they want in the hope that they might mend their ways. These days one reads op-eds and pseudo-research papers presenting Iran as “a potential market of $3 trillion” and the last missing piece in the great global market.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18036/iran-terror-threat

The conflict in Yemen means more to the Iranian regime than merely taunting its Gulf rivals. Rather, it seems to be an ideological crusade to unite the Muslim world under its own Islamist rule, one that will always see any attempts at peace as merely a delay in the process.

One of the Iranian leaders’ main objectives in empowering their militias and terror groups in other countries is to export the Islamic Republic Revolution to other nations. This mission is, in fact, part of Iran’s Constitution.

Iran’s Army and Revolutionary Guards “will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of (Shiite) jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s (Shiite) law throughout the world … in the hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.” — Iran’s Constitution.

The Biden administration needs, once and for all, to abandon its appeasement policy towards Iran’s ruling mullahs. They are in charge of a predatory regime that has understatedly been called the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism. Yet the current US administration seems hell-bent on empowering them.

In the wake of the largest seizure of arms and fuel from Iranian terror groups to date, the Biden administration has remained silent.

The US Department of Justice announced on December 7, 2021 the successful forfeiture of two large caches of Iranian weapons. The weapons reportedly included advanced arms such as “171 guided anti-tank missiles, eight surface-to-air missiles, land attack cruise missile components, anti-ship cruise missile components, thermal weapon optics and other components for missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles [drones]”. The U.S. Navy also seized Iranian petroleum products from “four foreign-flagged tankers in or around the Arabian Sea while en route to Venezuela. These actions represent the government’s largest-ever forfeitures of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/586166-iran-has-good-reasons-to-hang-tough-in-nuke-talks

Why won’t Iran cut a deal? Its regime has taken an uncompromising line in renewed talks over its nuclear program. Although that has left the United States and its allies bewildered and frustrated, the regime has solid reasons for doing so.

After all, it is currently managing to weather the tough U.S. and global economic sanctions that were supposed to force the Islamic Republic to compromise. Washington and its allies, meanwhile, are split over how best to approach the talks with Tehran, while — after years of empty bluster — U.S. threats of military force to cripple Iran’s nuclear program simply lack credibility. At the same time, the regime is watching America’s current reaction to other global threats, and clearly finding all of it quite reassuring.

None of that bodes well for Washington’s hopes of reviving the 2015 global nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or JCPOA), and then negotiating a broader deal that would cover such matters as Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its terror sponsorship.

With few signs of progress at the talks in Vienna, the Biden administration is moving to tighten the U.S. sanctions that are in place. But, while the sanctions of recent years have clearly battered Iran’s economy — leaving its gross domestic product shrinking, its currency nosediving, and unemployment skyrocketing — the regime believes it can weather the sanctions and continue to make progress on its nuclear and its related ballistic missile programs. The decisions of China and Venezuela to buy Iranian oil and gas, and a $400 billion deal under which China will invest in Iran’s economy and buy Iranian oil at discounted rates far into the future, give Tehran important ways to sidestep sanctions.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/bidens-summit-of-babble/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The notion that the United States will rally all liberal democrats worldwide to act against all illiberal non-democrats is nonsensical.

L ast week, President Biden hosted a virtual conference entitled the Summit for Democracy and invited dozens of heads of state. The premise of the summit was that democratically oriented government, civil society, and private-sector leaders would meet to lay out a practical agenda regarding the common threat from authoritarianism. Predictably, they failed to do so.

From the beginning, media coverage of the Summit for Democracy obsessed over the meeting’s invite list. Treating the event as if it were a Hollywood award-show after party, journalists gossiped about the attendees: Who’s in? Who’s out? But since there is a gray zone of semi-democratic states in the world — and since the United States must inevitably retain working relationships with many such states — there was never any way to satisfy critics with the concept of a global democratic summit.

A more apt complaint might have been that some of the invitees are not really functional democratic states at all. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, was on the list of attendees. Here is how the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies described that country in its 2021 Armed Conflict Survey:

Over a hundred different conflicts plague the Democratic Republic of Congo (DROC). State and non-state armed groups fight over land, minerals and identity, compounded by competing international interests. The distinction between state and non-state is blurred: the Armed Forces of the Congo is one of many armed groups and it allows certain other actors to control territory and state institutions. . . . Violence escalated in 2020-21, with an increasing number of attacks on civilians and clashes between armed groups. Armed groups frequently attacked, abducted, burned, pillaged, murdered and committed sexual violence, leading to large displacements of people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18023/iran-nuclear-deal-biden

[T]he Biden administration’s objective is not to halt Iran’s deeply flawed nuclear program permanently — the biggest flaw being that in a few years Iran is permitted in its “sunset period” to have as many nuclear weapons as it likes — but just to limit Iran’s program for a period of time while removing the sanctions that hurt it economically.

The Biden administration has suggested a new sunset period of 25 years — assuming the Iranian regime does not lower it to 10 or 5 years. This will allow the Islamic Republic to resume enriching uranium at any level they desire, spin as many advanced centrifuges as they want, make its reactors fully operational, build new heavy water reactors, produce as much fuel as they desire for the reactors, and maintain higher uranium enrichment capability with no restriction after the period of the agreement.

All that is really needed is for Iran to stop enriching uranium. Totally. No enriched uranium, no nukes. But the realistic chances of Iran complying with anything even resembling that are less than zero.

[T]he Biden administration is also planning to lift the remaining sanctions against Iran’s regime on the first day of agreement — before Iran has even complied with anything. Washington will then have no actual leverage against the regime.

This is the same dangerous mistake that the Obama administration made…. All four rounds of UN sanctions that were putting pressure on Iran — which had taken decades and a significant amount of political capital to put in place — were lifted on day one.

Finally, the Biden administration has not so much as mentioned curbing Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program. A report by Iran’s… Afkar News… stated: “The same type of ballistic missile technology used to launch the satellite could carry nuclear, chemical or even biological weapons to wipe Israel off the map, hit US bases and allies in the region and US facilities, and target NATO even in the far west of Europe.”

Why would the Biden administration want to propose a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime that will only empower and embolden the malign actions of the ruling mullahs?

The Biden administration, in an attempt to revive the nuclear deal, is continuing to forge ahead by negotiating with the government of Ebrahim Raisi, known — for his crimes against humanity and his involvement in a massacre of nearly 30,000 political prisoners — as the “Butcher of Tehran.”

First of all, the Biden administration’s objective is not to halt Iran’s deeply flawed nuclear program permanently — the biggest flaw being that in a few years, Iran is permitted in its “sunset period” to have as many nuclear weapons as it likes — but just to limit Iran’s program for a period of time while removing the sanctions that hurt it economically.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-increasingly-short-path-to-a-bomb-nuclear-deal-biden-trump-jcpoa-11638887488?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The U.S. and Europe are still begging Iran to return to the increasingly irrelevant 2015 nuclear deal. But a new report on Iranian nuclear advances shows how far Tehran’s program has come—and why President Biden should rethink his strategy.

Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear accord’s formal name, in 2018 and began his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. The economic restrictions weakened the regime and gave the U.S. more leverage. Yet Tehran waited out Mr. Trump, betting that he would lose the election, as he did.

Meanwhile, Tehran activated advanced centrifuges, while stonewalling international nuclear inspectors, enriching uranium at higher concentrations and stockpiling more of it. Perhaps most troubling is how much the “breakout” time to a nuclear weapon has shrunk thanks to Iran’s better understanding of advanced centrifuges, which produce enriched uranium more efficiently.

“Unless compensatory steps are taken, such as destroying rather than mothballing advanced centrifuges, a renewed [nuclear deal] will not maintain a 12-month breakout timeline to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon,” David Albright and his colleagues at the Institute for Science and International Security write in a Dec. 2 report. “If Iran mothballs its advanced centrifuges, timelines of only five to six months are likely.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17995/arabs-biden-iran

Iran has been insisting on its conditions and demands, including that Washington and the Western powers release frozen Iranian funds before reaching an agreement, according to Tariq Alhomayed, a Saudi journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. He added that Iran was refusing to discuss ballistic missiles, drones and its terrorist militias in the Middle East as the mullahs continue their alarming rate of uranium enrichment.

“It is evident that Washington has been begging Iran to return to the negotiating table,” he said. “Washington did not threaten Iran with the use of force. It is true that we hear statements from Washington about impatience, but they are neither serious nor real. The Americans did not convey any serious message to the Iranians.” — Tariq Alhomayed, Asharq Al-Awsat, November 24, 2021.

Iraqi writer Ali Alsarraf believes that by seeking guarantees that the US will not reimpose sanctions on Iran in the future, the mullahs in Tehran are hoping that they will become immune from anything that their militias do in the Middle East, including striking American bases and forcing them to leave Iraq and Syria.

“As with North Korea, the world would be forced to grapple with Iranian aggression very cautiously because of the likelihood that it could rain down ballistic and nuclear weapons upon neighbors. Unlike North Korea, Iran has proxy forces deployed throughout the region which henceforth could act with impunity, shielded by Iran’s nuclear umbrella.” — Baria Alamuddin, award-winning Lebanese journalist and broadcaster, Arab News, November 28, 2021.

It is impressive to see that a growing number of Arabs, especially those… whose countries are occupied by Iranian-backed militias, share Israeli fears of the mullahs’ evil plans.

The message these Arabs are sending to the Biden administration: take a tough stance towards Iran before it is too late. Far from being a danger to Israel alone, Iran is terrorizing Arab countries and threatening world peace and security.

On the eve of the resumption of the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, Arabs have again warned the Biden administration against being duped by the mullahs of Tehran.

The Arabs, who share Israel’s concern over Iran’s accelerated efforts (and deceptive tactics) to achieve nuclear weapons, also warned the Biden administration against reaching a temporary deal that would give Iran more time to proceed with its disastrous and dangerous plans.