RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20440/biden-not-stopping-iran-houthis

What is essential to remember is that the Houthis and other proxies of Iran are in all likelihood deeply apprehensive about the prospect of their senior leadership being targeted. By refraining from targeting Houthi leaders, the United States has inadvertently emboldened the group and allowed them to act with impunity.

In recent months, the Red Sea has become a battleground for attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen, with the Biden administration facing mounting criticism for its failure to quell the escalating violence. As the Houthi group continues to build its weapons stockpile in Yemen, supported by the Iranian regime, the urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. It is critical that the United States reevaluate its military strategy to effectively address this growing threat.

The current approach, adopted by the Biden administration, is characterized by a reluctance to directly target Houthi leadership. The administration has opted instead to focus solely on destroying weapons and equipment.

This approach, however, has proven ineffective in deterring the Houthis from launching further attacks. What is essential to remember is that the Houthis and other proxies of Iran are in all likelihood deeply apprehensive about the prospect of their senior leadership being targeted. By refraining from targeting Houthi leaders, the United States has inadvertently emboldened the group and allowed them to act with impunity.

A former US military official, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, pointed out that the current campaign against the Houthis is similar to previous failed endeavors:

“The US campaign against the Houthis appears to bear the hallmarks of many of these highly circumscribed, scrubbed campaigns of the past where we seek to avoid causing them actual pain.”

The Trump administration’s targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for instance, resulted in cessation of Iranian harassment of the US as long Trump was in office. If one wants to induce meaningful change in the behavior of the Houthis, unfortunately decisive blows will be necessary.

Sadly, the reliance on cosmetic strikes to destroy Houthi drones and missiles is both financially unsustainable and strategically futile. Continuously expending resources on missiles, worth multi-millions dollars each, to counter far less expensive Houthi weaponry is not a dazzling long-term solution. The Biden administration would be better served targeting Houthi weapons depots and missile launchers to disrupt their military capabilities in a significant way.

Merely intensifying attacks on Houthi infrastructure, however, will not suffice. Without substantially degrading Houthi military capabilities, the recently redesignated terrorist group will continue to pose a significant threat. Therefore, it is imperative to adopt a multifaceted approach that also targets the source of the problem – Iran’s regime.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20397/stop-iran-hit-irgc

“No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they are attracted to the strong horse.” — Thomas Friedman, newyorker.com, July 5, 2010.

Especially in the Middle East, leaders are looking for who will protect them.

The Biden administration’s passive response to Iranian aggression is imperiling the region, the United States and the Free World. Iran, along with Qatar, have brought all the mayhem to the Middle East. When Iran achieves nuclear weapons capability, as it appears on the verge of doing, just think of what mayhem it will be able to bring then. Stop Iran now.

The Biden administration’s approach to dealing with Iran has been marked by a series of delayed responses, ineffective actions, and cosmetic sanctions that have clearly failed to deter the Islamic Republic’s aggressive behavior. This passive stance not only bolsters the Iranian regime but also jeopardizes the safety and security of Americans and their allies. A thorough reassessment of strategy and a commitment to assertive diplomacy would seem necessary to say the least.

When Iranian assets have been targeted, or even when a serious intent to do so was conveyed, Iranian leaders have relented from launching attacks on other countries, including the US and its allies. The most recent example occurred last month when Iran launched a missile strike into Pakistan. Pakistan, maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran, responded swiftly by launching multiple strikes into Iran shortly after the attack — in contrast to the delayed responses often observed from the Biden administration. Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes resulted in casualties; Iran has appeared to reconsider its aggressive stance. Iran adopted a softer tone; its foreign ministry issued statements expressing a commitment to fostering good neighborly relations with Pakistan.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-biden-admins-shadow-iran-nuclear-deal-5581437?utm_medium=app&c=share_pos2&pid=iOS_app_share&utm_source=iOS_app_share

Commentary

The Biden administration is allegedly executing a shadow “nuclear deal” with Iran.The administration never bothered to tell us about the deal.

It clinched the deal without Congress’s approval.

And it may well have purposefully never committed the deal to paper.

But make no mistake, every indicator suggests we are party to an arguably illegally consummated pact that’s getting Americans killed.

The proof is in the pudding not only of the jihadist violence raging across the Middle East—leaving nearly 40 Americans dead and dozens more injured—but the Biden administration’s unwillingness to strike the leading state sponsor of that violence, Iran, with anything remotely resembling sufficient force to deter it, and the White House’s fixation on forcing Israel to end the war on Hamas and abide by the establishment of what would almost certainly amount to a Palestinian terror state to boot.

The shadow Iran nuclear deal can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for “peace.”

Upon entering office, President Joe Biden eased his predecessor’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran and its proxies, such as the Houthis, in the run-up to an effort to reprise the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the so-called Obama–Biden Iran nuclear deal.

Saving America’s Future from the Blob
https://americanmind.org/salvo/saving-americas-future-from-the-blob/

Never believe what bipartisan foreign policy establishment hacks say about China and Russia. They don’t believe what they say, either. The Blob (as Obama aide Ben Rhodes called it) learned through generations of strategic blunders that if everyone closes ranks and sticks to the same story, its members will survive a strategic disaster of any magnitude with their careers intact. The same principle explains why not a single American banker went to jail after the subprime collapse of 2008, the biggest fraud in all financial history. The Blob’s logic is simple: If you go after one of us, then you have to go after all of us, and who will be left to put things back together?

Whether it was right for America to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy in Moscow and Beijing, the way we went about it was abominably stupid. “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared,” Machiavelli advised. Washington has wounded Russia and China but not disabled them, setting in motion a tragic sequence of responses that in the worst case will lead to war, but more likely will leave the United States with vastly diminished strategic standing.

The rise of China and the resilience of Russia have persisted through serried waves of tech restrictions, $125 billion of NATO support for Ukraine, and an unprecedented sanctions regime against Russia, including the seizure of $300 billion in reserves, among other measures.

The Black Legend propounded by the Blob states that China is on the verge of invading Taiwan because its Communist leaders hate democracy, and because it wants to distract its citizens from their economic misery. It claims that Vladimir Putin wants to revive the Russian Empire and invaded Ukraine because it “is a country that for decades has enjoyed freedom and democracy and the right to choose its own destiny.”

In fact China has bracing economic challenges, but no crisis, and no widespread popular discontent. It wants to preserve the status quo, barring a Taiwanese move toward sovereignty, which is all but ruled out by the results of Taiwan’s national elections this January. China is a formidable strategic competitor, but its global plan centers on dominating key industries and export markets rather than military deployments—and that plan is proceeding at a rapid clip, despite American efforts to hobble it.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-must-re-focus-curbing-iran%E2%80%99s-nuclear-program-209298

Iran’s latest nuclear and ballistic missile advances make Israel’s war with Hamas and America’s skirmishing with Iranian proxy forces look like regional sideshows of a far more ominous main event.

The current situation in the region gives Iran “a unique opportunity and amplified internal justification for building nuclear weapons while the United States and Israel’s resources to detect and deter Iran from succeeding are stretched thin…,” the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a new report. “[F]or the first time in years, we are facing the real possibility that Iran may choose to weaponize its nuclear capabilities and build nuclear weapons.”

It wouldn’t take Tehran long to do so. With a large stockpile of uranium enriched to sixty percent purity, the institute estimated that the regime could further enrich enough uranium to weapons-grade purity, with the ability to produce a nuclear bomb in a week. Along with strengthening its nuclear infrastructure through building more reactors, enriching more uranium, and refusing to cooperate with international nuclear inspectors, Tehran also continues to advance its ballistic missiles, which could carry nuclear warheads to strike U.S. allies in the region and possibly even the United States itself. In January, the Islamic Republic launched a satellite 450 miles into space, using technologies with “significant overlap” with those of longer-range ballistic missiles.

The implications of Iran’s nuclear-related advances are enormous. Iran could launch an attack against the United States or Israel, its most hated adversaries. Furthermore, it could also transfer a bomb to a proxy (e.g., Hamas or Hezbollah) to use against Israel or another adversary.

All of this demands U.S.-led action on at least two fronts.

NO URL ERIC LEVINE IS AN ATTORNEY IN NEW YORK WHO SPEAKS AND WRITES FREQUENTLY ON ISRAEL AND FOREIGN POLICY

Speaking at the Atlantic Festival on September 30, 2023, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan proudly bragged: “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

Last week – a mere four months later – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ominously proclaimed: “[W]e’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the [Middle East] since at least 1973, and arguably even before that….”

How did we go from the golden age of American diplomacy to the dark ages of war in such short order? The answer is: Nothing has really changed. Unbeknownst to a clueless Administration, we have been in the dark ages of war since Joe Biden took office. His appeasement of Iran has seen to that. 

Despite Iran’s funding of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and a vast terrorist network in Syria and Iraq, the Administration remains wedded to the fantasy that with the just the right policy and the right amount of cajoling from the United States, Iran will end its nuclear program and turn into a responsible citizen in the community of nations.  AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and their fellow Squad members are more likely to host next year’s Israel Day Parade in New York City.

Part of the Administration’s strategy of modifying Iran’s behavior entails failing to enforce economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic and providing outright gifts of billions of dollars of cash.  What could go wrong?  When Joe Biden became President, Iran had $4 billion dollars in foreign currency reserves; virtual bankruptcy.  As a result of this Administration’s policy of appeasement, Iran now has $70 billion to fund the precise malign behavior Biden claims he is seeking to prevent. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20381/biden-global-war

China and Russia [do]… not respect the sovereignty of other states.

Biden… should realize that there can be no accommodation with regimes that either seek the destruction of the United States—China and Iran, for instance—or regimes helping such enemies—most notably Russia. Biden should be supporting America’s friends to the hilt and seeking total victory for Ukraine and Israel.

Continuing with existing policies is perhaps the most dangerous option of all. Those policies may sound reasonable, constructive, and pleasing to the ear, but they have in fact created the disastrous situation that now exists.

Biden has opened the floodgates of Hell. Although nothing is inevitable, we are fast approaching the point where, as a practical matter, he will not be able to stop China and Russia, directly and through proxies, from merging existing conflicts and turning them into the next global war.

President Joe Biden should realize that there can be no accommodation with regimes that either seek the destruction of the United States—China and Iran, for instance—or regimes helping such enemies—most notably Russia. Biden should be supporting America’s friends to the hilt and seeking total victory for

President Joe Biden’s foreign policy has collapsed. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan effectively admitted that to CNN’s Dana Bash on February 4.

“You have said now a couple times on this show and you have said this many times before that the administration is trying to prevent this from spreading into a regional conflict,” Bash told Sullivan on “State of the Union,” referring to the war in Gaza.

The CNN anchor proceeded to list some of the places to which the Gaza conflict has now spread. Then she asked this:

“My colleague Peter Bergen smartly pointed out that this conflict involves 10 countries, at least four major terrorist groups, so isn’t this already a regional conflict?”