RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsweek.com/biden-faces-evolving-middle-east-opinion-1548377

The news that Bahrain’s foreign minister is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week highlights the predicament that president elect Joe Biden faces in the Middle East: he wants to restore a U.S. approach to the region that relies on increasingly out-of-date assumptions.

For starters, Biden promises to rejoin the U.S.-led global nuclear agreement with Iran, under which Tehran agreed to temporary restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions.

President Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president, considered the agreement his top global achievement. The Democratic foreign policy establishment has sharply criticized President Trump’s decision to leave it in 2018 and the administration’s attempts to force Iran to renegotiate the deal through a “maximum pressure” campaign.

Rejoining the agreement would be reassuring to U.S. allies in Europe, particularly France and Germany, which criticized Trump’s move and sought to convince Iran to abide by the agreement in exchange for European efforts to help Tehran evade Washington’s increasingly tight economic sanctions. But rejoining the agreement and picking up where they left off may be no simple matter.

In a confidential report this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran has secretly stockpiled at least 12 times the amount of enriched uranium that the agreement allows, a quantity that experts say is enough to build an atomic bomb in less than four months. Iran is also enriching uranium to a higher purity level—thus, closer to weapons-grade enrichment—than the agreement allows.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-alliance-trump-didnt-break-11604361129?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Joe Biden has hit Donald Trump, sometimes fairly, for alienating U.S. allies. But one example of a bilateral relationship that has strengthened on Mr. Trump’s watch is with India, as demonstrated by a military intelligence-sharing pact signed last week.

Under the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement, the U.S. will share maps and databases from the Defense Department’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). That could strengthen India’s defenses against its traditional rival, Pakistan. But more important to the U.S., it will help New Delhi balance Beijing’s bid to dominate Asia.

Indian leaders since the Cold War have been wary of strategic partnerships, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signed three military cooperation agreements with the U.S. since 2016. Chinese President Xi Jinping can’t be happy, but his actions are accelerating the trend. China has built up its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, defied maritime law in the South China Sea, and pressed territorial claims along India’s northern border, leading to a deadly clash in June.

U.S. satellite data, the best in the world, can identify Chinese troop movements and guide precision weapons. Many of India’s current weapons are Russian. But this agreement could encourage India to buy more interoperable American and allied systems, especially as Moscow moves closer to Beijing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16702/iran-new-nuclear-deal

How then can the United States get around the Iranian regime’s adamant opposition to any restrictions on its nuclear or missile ambitions and secure a sound nuclear deal?

Even if the United States secured a new nuclear agreement with Iran, or resuscitated the old one, what makes anyone think that Iran would honor a deal any more than it honored the last ones?

Given the seriousness of these issues and the lack of trust in the mullahs, all provisions must not have “sunset clauses” but be permanent.

Even if these six factors may now make it possible to give “diplomacy a chance,” it might be advisable only to try that route if it is reinforced with resolute military force.

The JCPOA it is not only a fraud, it is camouflage for the appeasers of the world to pretend they are doing something about Iran’s nuclear ambitions when in fact they are not doing anything but allowing Iran, after a short delay, to have nuclear weapons…. The mullahs will not change on their own. Diplomatic options are poor and unrealistic.

The JCPOA deal not only fails to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, it also hides Western inaction in confronting Iran’s missiles, nuclear sites and terrorism.

Both US contenders of the presidency, the incumbent Donald J. Trump and the challenger, former Vice-President Joe Biden, have indicated that no matter what the election results are around November 3, they intend to negotiate with Iran. Even if the United States secured a new nuclear agreement with Iran, or resuscitated the old one, what makes anyone think that Iran would honor a deal any more than it honored the last ones?

US choices seem to come down to : (1) keeping the current JCPOA, a seriously deficient semi-agreement that, contrary to what was promised by the Obama administration — that it would prevent Iran from having a nuclear bomb, instead leads straight to Iran’s having as many as it would like; or (2) pin US hopes on a wholesale campaign of diplomatic, political, and economic sanctions against Iran in the hope that Iran might secure an internally generated revolution and overthrow the mullah’s regime.

There are those who say that the current nuclear deal is the best option for the United States. They assert without a doubt that going back to the JCPOA will bring Iran into complete compliance with a non-nuclear future. One adherent of such an approach is apparently former Vice President Joe Biden, with whom the Iranians say, understandably to judge from his financial track record, they would rather “do business.”