RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/12/biden-invites-pro-taliban-pakistan-democracy-daniel-greenfield/

A day after the Taliban seized power in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani fled the war-torn country, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Afghans have “broken the chains of slavery in the country.”

Doesn’t stop Pakistan from getting an invite to Biden’s Democracy Summit.

Even Foreign Policy mag and the Washington Post both note that being a democracy doesn’t seem to be a requirement for participating in Biden’s democracy summit.

No one can actually articulate how the attendees are in any way consistently democratic.

 “Inclusion or an invitation is not a stamp of approval on their approach to democracy,” Jen Psaki argued.

Then why bother and why call it a democracy summit at all? Call it an international ice cream social.

But, despite Biden inviting Pakistan, Osama’s pals aren’t sure they actually intend to virtually show up.

Pakistani decision-makers are holding extensive consultations on whether to attend the virtual summit on democracy convened by US President Joe Biden this week, as certain issues are making it difficult for Islamabad to make the final call.

Official sources, however, said the decision would be announced soon. The Foreign Office is tight-lipped over the subject, while diplomatic sources have told The Express Tribune that the White House is still waiting for Pakistan’s official response to the invitation.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/china-and-russia-race-ahead-america-caroline-glick/

Over the past several weeks a hard truth has become undeniable: The United States of America is no longer the all-powerful superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War. Far from it. The strategic implications of this state of affairs are profound, for both the United States and its allies.

A nation’s position in the global pecking order is based on two things—its capabilities and its credibility. America’s capabilities have diminished in a stunning way relative to its superpower competitors. And so has its credibility.

For over a generation, U.S. leaders eschewed “the weaponization of space.” But as they congratulated themselves on their restraint, the Chinese and the Russians weaponized space.

On Nov. 16, Russia launched a surface-to-air missile into space that destroyed an antiquated Cosmos spy satellite located dangerously close to the International Space Station. The satellite exploded into 1,500 pieces, all of which were large enough to imperil the space station and the eight astronauts (including two Russians) on board. NASA responded with a nasty condemnation.

This brings us to China.

China’s anti-satellite program is far vaster than Russia’s. China has missiles capable of destroying satellites, and it fields laser and jamming technologies capable of blocking satellite communications. Last month, China raised its anti-satellite capabilities several notches with its launch of “Shijian-21.” “Shijian-21” is a satellite with a robotic arm the Chinese claim is geared towards cleaning “space junk.”

U.S. Air Force Gen. James Dickinson has a different, more plausible explanation for the arm’s purpose. Speaking to Congress in April, Dickenson said, “Space-based robotic arm technology could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-a-hypersonic-capability-china-xi-beijing-missile-weapons-attack-defense-budget-11638827597?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Eighty years ago, imperial Japan used a technology first developed by the U.S. and the U.K.—carrier-based bombing and torpedo attacks—to cripple the American Navy at Pearl Harbor. Americans must now wonder whether China is setting the stage for another devastating attack on American forces using another U.S.-pioneered technology: hypersonic missiles.

China’s July 2021 test of a hypersonic missile was literally a shot “around the world,” according to Gen. John Hyten, the departing vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It went around the world, dropped off a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China, that impacted a target in China,” he told CBS News. When asked why China was developing this advanced technology, Gen. Hyten replied, “They look like a first-use weapon. That’s what those weapons look like to me.”

Hypersonic weapons don’t follow a single trajectory like ballistic missiles. They can twist and turn on their way to a target, while their incredibly high speeds—above Mach 5, or a mile a second—make it impossible for existing land- and space-based systems to detect a hypersonic attack until very late in the missile’s flight path. It also isn’t clear whether current U.S. command-and-control systems can process data fast enough to respond to a head-on hypersonic threat.

China tested a second nuclear-capable missile carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle on Aug. 13. This means that Beijing is surging ahead with a technology against which the U.S. has very limited capability for defense or detection.

The shame is that the U.S. has been the primary developer of hypersonic vehicles, going back to the X-15 program in the 1960s. According to Mike Griffin, a former undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, the U.S. effectively shut down its hypersonic effort in the mid-2010s—while China made hypersonics a Manhattan Project-level priority. As a result, Gen. Hyten told the website BreakingDefense.com in October, China has performed “hundreds” of tests of hypersonic weapons in the past five years, while the U.S. has conducted nine.

https://bit.ly/32WalHj

Since the 1978/79 revolution against the Shah of Iran, the Ayatollahs regime has adhered to its mega-goal of global Shite domination, developing mega-capabilities (nuclear, ballistic technologies and worldwide terrorism), aiming to remove/subordinate its mega-obstacle, the USA.

During 1962-1970, then anti-US Egypt was involved in the Yemen civil war, as a springboard to topple the pro-US regime in Saudi Arabia and, subsequently, all other pro-US Arab regimes in a most critical region to global trade, oil and security, the Arabian Peninsula.

Since 2011, Iran’s anti-US Ayatollahs are deeply involved in the Yemen civil war on the side of the anti-US Shite Houthis (“Soldiers of Allah”) – via Iranian and Hezbollah manpower, military supplies, training and intelligence – as a springboard to oust the pro-US Sunni House of Saud (bordering north Yemen), and subsequently, all other pro-US Sunni regimes in the Arabian Peninsula.

In February, 2021, the US removed Yemen’s Shite Houthis – who are Iran’s proxy – from the list of terrorist organizations, courted Iran’s rogue Ayatollahs, terminated US support of the pro-US Saudi military offensive against the anti-US Houthis, and pressured Saudi Arabia on account of human rights violations. However, in November, 2021, the Houthis stormed the US Embassy in Sanaa, holding a few of the local staff hostage, demonstrating – once again – that Islamic/Arab terrorists bite the hands that feed them.

Yemen’s geostrategic importance for the US

The limbs of the Iranian octopus extend from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia to the whole Middle East, Europe, Africa, South, Central and North America, including Yemen, where Iran’s Ayatollahs outflank the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, playing a decisive role in fueling the civil war, as a dagger aimed at its Sunni arch-rival, the pro-US Saudi Arabia.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/americas-enemies-fill-the-vacuum-she-leaves-abroad/

The oft-discussed Middle Eastern power vacuum does not exist. America’s adversaries have already filled it.

P resident Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping on November 15 shifted media attention from COP26 back to great-power politics, but a more subtle, yet perhaps more consequential, shift has occurred over the past month. This shift is remarkable for its lack of American involvement — it presages a Middle Eastern regional transformation over which the United States will have little to no influence. Rather, Russia and increasingly China have become the region’s key external powers. The central question for both as they move forward will be the degree of Iranian expansionism they will accept.

On October 22, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett met Russia’s maximum leader Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The meeting was critical for Bennett given his domestic political position. Prime Minister Bennett’s minority right-wing Yamina/New Right party holds only seven seats, compared to his coalition ally Yair Lapid’s 17. Moreover, the rest of the coalition is composed of numerous splinter, generally secular parties from left and right. Bennett will retain some control in 2023, when the premiership is scheduled to rotate to Lapid. But his numerical disadvantage bodes ill for his and his party’s long-term political prospects.

In the next election, one would expect Bennett to tilt back toward the Right, playing a key role in a center-Right coalition government to box out the secular Left, with which Yesh Atid aligns. Yet Bennett’s erstwhile ally and mentor, recently ousted prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, retains significant political power despite his ongoing corruption trial. Not only has Netanyahu emerged as Bennett’s fiercest critic — his policy criticisms have some substance. Bennett is a shrewd politician, having served in ministerial positions since 2013, and as defense minister from 2019 to 2020. But Netanyahu’s foreign-policy experience was a critical selling point for Likud voters, and a line of attack he has exploited since leaving office. Netanyahu claimed that his personal relationship with Putin gave Israel greater flexibility in Syria, allowing the IDF to conduct a long-term interdiction campaign against Iranian targets without sparking Russian resistance.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/biden-admin-waives-sanctions-on-iran-as-nuclear-talks-restart/

The Biden administration quietly waived sanctions on Iran to allow the hardline regime to sell electricity to Iraq, according to a non-public notification obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that was provided to Congress just as nuclear talks between the United States and Tehran resumed this week.

The timing of the waiver notification—which was signed Nov. 19 but not transmitted to Congress until Nov. 29, the day nuclear negotiations resumed—has prompted accusations the Biden administration is offering concessions to Tehran to generate goodwill as talks aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal restart following a months-long standoff.

During the several-month pause, Tehran increased its nuclear program, including the enrichment of uranium and installation of advanced nuclear centrifuges. One senior congressional source familiar with the matter said the delay in transmitting the waiver to Congress indicates the administration is sensitive to the optics of waving sanctions just as negotiations resume.

Richard Goldberg, the former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction on Trump’s White House National Security Council, told the Washington Free Beacon that the latest electricity waiver amounts to a “dressed-up Chanukah present to” Iran.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rogues-are-on-the-march-russia-kremlin-ukraine-putin-iran-nuclear-putin-xi-china-biden-11638724476?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s

If you think President Biden has trouble at home, take a look at what’s happening around the world. Iran, Russia and China are all seeking to establish new regional hegemony, and they’re often working together to do it. Their leaders don’t appear to believe Mr. Biden can or will do anything to stop them.

Iran revealed its disdain for U.S. entreaties last week as nuclear talks resumed in Vienna. The U.S. opened the proceedings with a sanctions waiver to let Iran sell electricity to Iraq. The result? A senior U.S. official conceded Saturday, after the latest round of talks finished, that Iran had shown no willingness to slow its uranium enrichment and even walked back its agreements from previous rounds.

U.S. and European officials briefed the press about Iran’s intransigence but seemed at a loss about how to respond. The Iranians are “continuing to accelerate their nuclear program in particularly provocative ways,” a U.S. official told the press on background, and their “latest provocation” was preparing “for the doubling of their production capacity of 20% enriched uranium” at its secret Fordow facility.

Sounds serious. So what is the U.S. prepared to do? It will beg Iran some more to return to the table with a better attitude.

“The world is prepared to support a mutual return to compliance by both sides. The world is prepared even to engage economically with Iran and diplomatically with Iran. But for that, Iran has to show seriousness at the table and be prepared to come back in short order in compliance with the deal,” the U.S. official said. Pleading with Iran to do what it has already refused to do will reinforce the view in Tehran that it will pay no price if it keeps enriching uranium until it gets to the brink of having a bomb.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17998/biden-summit-democracy

[W]hen you lack a foreign policy, why not pretend that you have one by holding an international summit?

To start with, what does Biden mean by democracy?

Biden’s invitation excludes at least 20 long-standing allies of the United States.

… Obama went around the UN and its agencies on a number of issues, including the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs of Tehran, the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, and the public-relations hoax known as “saving the planet”.

The doppelganger may furnish the emptiness for a few days and furnish a rudderless administration with a few favorable headlines. But it will provide no answer to problems the world faces today, problems that cannot be tackled without the participation of all nations within the framework of a world order based on law, not ideology.

What do India, Iraq and the Solomon Islands have in a common?

The answer is that US President Joe Biden has certified all three as “democracies” along with 106 other countries, by inviting them to a virtual “Summit for Democracy” on December 9-10, 2021.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17986/iran-killing-protesters

“We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic was destined to fail from day one.” — Iranian Americans for Liberty, reported by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, November 27, 2021.

“[W]hen millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, ‘Are you with us, or are you with them?’ – the American president was silent,” — Mitt Romney, October 8, 2012.

“If the free world wants to stand on the right side of history, they should support the Iranian people who have been fighting for their freedom for the last 43 years. The Iranians need free internet because the regime has already shut down the internet in Isfahan. They want to kill the protesters ….” — Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi, Jerusalem Post, November 26, 2021.

Will the Biden administration stand with the Iranian people?

The Biden administration appears to be repeating the Obama Administration policy of choosing to be silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns that kill and wound peaceful protesters.