RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17454/iran-biden-nuclear-dream

The improvement in Iran’s technical ability to develop nuclear weapons is the result of a number of steps Tehran has taken during the past year to increase its nuclear activity, all of which constitute clear violations of the terms Tehran agreed under the JCPOA.

Consequently, if the predictions are correct and Raisi emerges triumphant in the presidential elections [June 18], the prospects of the hardliners making any tangible concessions over the country’s nuclear programme will be negligible…. [Raisi] made his name during as a prominent member of Iran’s notorious Death Commissions, when opposition activists were either executed or sent to clear minefields during the Iran-Iraq war.

As a result, the only achievement of Mr Obama’s deeply-flawed nuclear deal with Iran will have been to enable the ayatollahs to achieve their dream of acquiring nuclear weapons, with all the implications that will have for the future security of the globe.

The most likely outcome of US President Joe Biden’s ill-considered attempt to revive the nuclear deal with Iran is that it will lead to a dramatic reduction in the time frame Tehran requires to build an atomic warhead.

One of the central goals of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) struck with Iran by former US President Barack Obama was to delay Tehran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons for more than a decade.

At the time the deal was agreed in 2015, intelligence experts predicted it would take it Iran about one year to develop the technological know-how to develop a nuclear warhead if Iran was allowed to continue with its nuclear activities.

In an attempt to slow Iran’s research into nuclear weapons, the JCPOA required Tehran to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years. For the next 15 years, Iran would only enrich uranium up to 3.67%.

Yet, despite the JCPOA being in force for nearly six years, the latest estimates suggest that Iran is only a matter of months away from having the ability to produce sufficient quantities of weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear warhead.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/2021/06/05/countering_chinas_intimidation_of_taiwan_780228.html

On the first weekend following President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reported back-to-back incursions by two large fleets of Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s self-declared southwestern air defense identification zone. On Jan. 23, the fleet comprised eight nuclear weapon–capable Chinese H-6K bomber planes, four J-16 fighter jets and one anti-submarine aircraft. This was followed the next day by another fleet of 12 fighters, two anti-submarine aircraft and a reconnaissance plane. Beijing repeated these exercises several times in the subsequent months.

Since the election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, Beijing has markedly stepped up military pressure on Taipei. According to Taiwan, Beijing sent warplanes into the same area on at least 100 days in 2020. In January 2021, Chinese military planes flew into that zone 26 out of the first 30 days. Previously, such flights were usually conducted by one to three reconnaissance or anti-submarine warfare aircraft. According to Bernard Cole, a professor at the National War College, the latest incursions “demonstrate the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s ability to put together a multiplane strike, which we would likely see in the event of a hot war against Taiwan.” Additionally, Taiwan’s defense minister informed its legislature last October that nearly 50 Chinese aircraft had crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait in the first nine months of 2020.

Analysts have concluded that the latest intrusions are specifically intended to pose a direct challenge to the Biden administration regarding its future policy toward Taiwan and the region. On Jan. 23, for example, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office asserted that these exercises are designed as warnings to “separatists” in Taiwan and “external forces” who intend to interfere in China’s affairs. Following the exercises, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters: “The United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles. This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region.”

In response to the exercises, the State Department issued a press release: “The United States notes with concern the pattern of ongoing PRC attempts to intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan.” State added: “The United States will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues, consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people on Taiwan” and “to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability.” It concluded: “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region.”

Just How Solid Is the Commitment?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17413/biden-administration-rewards-terrorists-abbas

Ironically, the same Abbas who told Blinken that he (Abbas) is committed to a peace process with Israel is the same Abbas who also wants to see his Israeli “peace partners” put on trial at the ICC.
Now comes Blinken and announces that the reopening of the consulate in the city. Here is how the Palestinians understand his gestures: If you fire 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel, you get a US embassy in Jerusalem and millions of dollars of US taxpayer money. It works! The solution, then, is to keep on doing it!
By reopening the consulate, Blinken is telling both Hamas and Abbas that the US does not recognize Jerusalem as the united and undivided capital of Israel.
Blinken has also sent a message to Abbas and Hamas that former US President Donald Trump’s formula of “peace for peace” in the Middle East is off the table; they no longer need to worry.
Abbas and Hamas are rubbing their hands because, the way they see it, the Biden administration has just achieved their goal of scrapping Trump’s peace plan, “Peace to Prosperity: A vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
By rewarding Abbas, Hamas and the anti-normalization camp in the Arab world, the Biden administration has bludgeoned its declared objective of reviving a peace process in the Middle East. It has demonstrated decisively that corruption and dictatorship pay. It has shown that terrorism pays – to the tune of millions of dollars. Palestinian incitement and violence against Israel are unlikely to recede in the context of such an encouraging outcome.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s May 25 announcement that the Biden administration will ask Congress to allocate $75 million in aid to the Palestinians and that Washington will reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem — which previously had served as a de facto embassy handling US relations with the Palestinians — is sending the wrong message to the leaders of the Palestinians.

First, these overtures signal Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the US will support and lavish funding on any Arab leader who seriously abuses not only his own people but also his neighbors. This policy would also include leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Xinping in China and Supreme Guide Ali Kamenei in Iran, as well as other despots.

One pretext for the war that Hamas initiated was that Abbas had cancelled parliamentary elections to have been held this month and July. The real reason the elections were canceled was that they would have resulted in another victory for Hamas.

Hamas won the last parliamentary election in 2006 due to the Palestinians’ frustration over the rampant political, administrative and economic corruption in Fatah, the dominant faction of Abbas’s PA.

The Biden administration — by offering Abbas more money and reopening the US diplomatic mission that deals directly with the Palestinians — is actually rewarding Abbas for those attributes.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17417/gaza-iran-blinken

Ali Khamenei asserts that he has received “a divine pledge that total victory is on the way”, and demands that the two groups continue the fight until “our holy land is cleansed of the existence of the usurper”.

The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claims that Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and missiles could now reach 75 percent of the Israeli territory. The aim now is to increase that to 100 percent which, if combined with the Lebanese Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenals, could pave the way for the “total victory” that Khamenei demands.

In other words, at least part of the misery that Gazans suffer is due to the no-holds-barred civil war between Fatah and Islamist Jihadis led by Hamas.

The “urgent aid package” that Khamenei promises includes none of those things. The “Supreme Guide” couldn’t care less how Gazans live or die; he is only interested in how many rockets and missiles they can launch against Israel, providing him with a bunker to boast about and hide the fundamental weakness of his shaky regime.

What if Gazans don’t want their tiny chunk of God’s earth to be a bunker for foreign potentates in search of cut-price glory…?

Blinken should not throw money where it ends up in the hands of Hamas, which pursues jihad as part of a global terror organization.

“The advanced bunker of the Resistance Front”. This is how official media in Tehran describe the Gaza Strip as it emerges from its latest mini-war against “The Zionist enemy”. Needless to say, Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, regarding himself as leader of the “Resistance Front,” is already looking forward to the next round of this sordid duel. In messages to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and Ziyad Nakhalah of the Islamic Jihad for the liberation of Palestine, “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei asserts that he has received “a divine pledge that total victory is on the way”, and demands that the two groups continue the fight until “our holy land is cleansed of the existence of the usurper”.

Tehran media claim that “the great victory” supposedly achieved by Hamas and Islamic Jihad is, to a large extent, due to financial, material and training support from the Islamic Republic.

The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claims that Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and missiles could now reach 75 percent of the Israeli territory. The aim now is to increase that to 100 percent which, if combined with the Lebanese Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenals, could pave the way for the “total victory” that Khamenei demands.

Last January, the “Supreme Guide” ordered the allocation of an extra $200 million to the Quds Force, the body in charge of “exporting revolution”. And last week, the Islamic Majlis, Tehran’s ersatz parliament, increased the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by over 60 percent. Khamenei’s spending spree is premised on the hoped of a quick lifting of US and other sanctions, which have produced the worst cash flow problem the 41-year-old regime has ever seen.