Arabs: A Warning to Biden about Iran’s Mullahs by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17162/arabs-warning-biden-iran

President Biden’s decision to pursue the sanctions against Iran, however, has failed to reduce the fears of many Arabs. They say they remain skeptical about Washington’s policy toward the threats posed by the mullahs in Tehran.

“He [Biden] should not make any concessions [to Iran] that do not serve stability in the region. Iran will continue with its tricks and deception to avoid sanctions and attempts to stop it from possessing a nuclear bomb that would pose a danger to countries in the region.” — Khaled bin Hamad al-Malek, Saudi newspaper editor and writer, Al Jazirah, March 5, 2021.

“Iran is an evil, terrorist, and rogue state, and it does not abide by what is agreed upon with it.” — Khaled bin Hamad al-Malek, Al Jazirah, March 5, 2021.

“The current Iranian ploy aims to delude the American side into believing that Tehran wants to return to the agreement, but it cannot make concessions due to street pressure, so it needs Washington to drop the sanctions before starting any negotiations…. With regards to Iran, it wants to pursue its goal of achieving nuclear weapons that threaten the region and the world.” — Dr. Salem Hameed, Emirati political analyst and academic, Al-Ittihad, March 6, 2021.

“Iran’s mullahs are like dangerous poisonous snakes. The mullahs cannot be tamed unless their fangs are completely pulled out. President Biden does not seem to be aware of how dangerous they are.” — Mohamed al-Sheikh, prominent Saudi writer, Al Jazirah, March 5, 2021.

The Biden administration, “especially the left-wing of the Democratic Party, still hope to win the mullahs into their camp and pull them out of the Chinese-Russian camp,” he remarked.

“The mullahs of Iran are still dreaming of establishing the Great Persian Empire, and for the sake of this goal they are not averse to harnessing all efforts and funds to reach this goal, even if they are forced to be patient.” — Mohamed al-Sheikh, Al Jazirah, March 5, 2021.

Former Egyptian diplomat Amr Helmy lashed out at the Biden administration for “dropping” most of the 12 conditions… set for returning to the nuclear agreement with Iran. The conditions … require Iran… to stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing, provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with unqualified access to all its sites, end its proliferation of ballistic missiles, halt support to Middle East terrorist groups and end its threatening behavior against its neighbors.

“US begging for negotiations [with Iran] will lead to more Iranian intransigence and promote its extremism,” [Egyptian political analyst Dr. Tarek] Fahmi said. He warned that the US would be the “biggest loser” if Iran is allowed to continue with its maneuvers and threats against the security of the region. — Al-Ain, March 4, 2021.

Significantly, such voices seem to be shared by a large number of Arabs in different Arab countries – not only the Gulf states.

The Biden administration has decided to extend for another year the “national emergency” (Executive Order 12957), issued in 1995 in response to the threat Iran posed to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the US.

The Executive Order imposed a series of sanctions against Iran in response to its support for international terrorism, its efforts to undermine the Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Biden’s Iran policies should reflect the rising cost of living there By Hassan Mahmoudi

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/bidens_iran_policies_should_reflect_the_rising_cost_of_living_there.html

2020 has been an economically disastrous year for the Iranian people, perhaps the worst since the Mullahs took over in 1979. Even before 2020, Iran ranked as one of the most miserable countries in the world. An International Monetary Fund report said Iran’s 2019 economic growth was negative 9.5 and the final numbers for 2020 are expected to be even worse. If he were smart, Biden would capitalize on this, benefitting both America and the Iranian people.

By August 2020, Iranians were plagued by anger, anxiety, helplessness, depression, insecurity both for themselves and their children. Unsurprisingly Suicide steadily increases in Iran, at a rate of more than 5% annually. In the first eight months of 2020 alone, suicides increased by more than 4% over the same period the previous year. At least 15 Iranians take their lives daily.

People’s economic circumstances are grim. The Labor Council has set the 2021 Iranian minimum wage at 2.65 million tomans (almost $132). That’s inconsequential when one considers that Hamidreza Imam Gholi Tabar, the inspector of Supreme Assembly of Workers, said:

The poverty line of a family of four has reached 10 million tomans [almost $500] and more than half of the Iranians are living in absolute poverty. Workers are not even able to buy mobile phones in installments for the continuation of their children’s education.

Support Taiwan to Deter China By Dean Chang

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/support_taiwan_to_deter_china.html

How is it the U.S. does not claim Taiwan as a strategic ally nor consider Taiwan an adversary?  Taiwan is what we want in a trustworthy ally: a rule-based, thriving democracy that upholds human rights.  Unfortunately, we do not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation though it has its own government and its own defense and monetary systems.  In fact, Taiwan, the keystone island strategically positioned between U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines, has the world’s 20th largest economy, is America’s 10th largest trade partner and produces 60% of the world’s semiconductor chips.

If defending Taiwan is one of our most vital strategic interests, the U.S. should immediately stop worrying about offending the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), act as the global leader that we are, shed the outdated strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, and acknowledge the reality that Taiwan is a nation.    

History shows strategic ambiguity has led to conflicts 

Strategic ambiguity, peppered with opaqueness in the mistaken and forlorn hope that it can deter adversaries, has invited miscalculations and unintended armed conflicts. In 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s speech to the National Press Club on January 12, 1950  made no mention of the Korean peninsula being part of the U.S. defensive perimeter.  Six months later North Korea, encouraged by China, invaded South Korea.  The resultant Korean War yielded three million deaths, including 35,000 U.S. servicemen

On July 25, 1990, U.S. ambassador April Glaspie told Iraq’s Saddam Hussein that “we (the U.S.) have no opinion on… Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,”  A week later Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait drew the U.S. into a conflict that heads into its third decade and at a cost of thousands of U.S. lives and untold billions of dollars.     

US: The Urgency of Keeping a Credible Deterrence by Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17205/credible-nuclear-deterrence

The current consensus position is pretty straightforward. Modernize the three aging elements of the land, sea, and air Triad — strategic bombers and related cruise missiles, land-based missiles, and submarines and related sea-launched ballistic missiles — and build a new nuclear command-and-control system to protect the US from cyber threats, while also refurbishing the nuclear warhead laboratories and facilities.

Some critics, however, want to take down nuclear systems across the board, including: (1) low-yield nuclear weapons on US submarines; (2) the Navy cruise missile, just starting research; (3) the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) and (4) the bomber cruise missile or long-range strike option (LRSO). Critics even want to stop the US from being able to build from 20-80 nuclear warheads annually.

There are also those who want the US to adopt a “no first use” policy. The US deterrent, however, extended over NATO and America’s Western Pacific allies, has historically included the threat of responding to a major conventional attack from Russia, North Korea or China, for example, with the first use of nuclear weapons. Many US allies might legitimately be worried if that option were “undone” by explicit US policy.

Given then the survivability of the current US nuclear forces, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR, p.67) determined that, should the US get rid of its ICBM force, the likelihood of a Russian attack on the US nuclear forces would only be increased. But with the entire Triad of US forces modernized, any chance of an attack on the American ICBM force would be “vanishingly small” — a conclusion reached recently by a number of analysts at the Federation of American Scientists.

As the current commander of US Strategic Command Admiral Charles Richard explained, if the US chooses not to modernize, it is choosing to go out of the nuclear business. The old legacy forces simply cannot be sustained much beyond this decade, when the replacements need to be delivered.

Various elements in the US Congress are saying that they want US nuclear policy to go in a decidedly new and different direction. This conflict between views on nuclear deterrence may place in jeopardy the hard-fought bi-partisan consensus created over the past ten years, in which the country agreed to fully modernize the aging US deterrent while also implementing arms control with its adversaries.

The current consensus position is pretty straightforward. Modernize the three aging elements of the land, sea, and air Triad — strategic bombers and related cruise missiles, land-based missiles, and submarines and related sea-launched ballistic missiles — and build a new nuclear command-and-control system to protect the US from cyber threats, while also refurbishing the nuclear warhead laboratories and facilities.

Some critics, however, want to take down nuclear systems across the board, including: (1) low-yield nuclear weapons on US submarines; (2) the Navy cruise missile, just starting research; (3) the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) and (4) the bomber cruise missile or long-range strike option (LRSO). Critics even want to stop the US from being able to build from 20-80 nuclear warheads annually.

No Vietnamese Need Apply Joe Biden’s politically motivated hypocrisy on immigration. Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/no-vietnamese-need-apply-joseph-hippolito/

Nearly half a century before igniting the current border crisis, Joe Biden tried to keep another group of immigrants out of the United States.

As Delaware’s junior Senator in 1975, the future virtual president opposed allocating federal money to help refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia establish new lives after their homelands fell to Communist insurgents.

Biden was not alone. Other Democrats opposed such mass resettlement. Among them was California Gov. Jerry Brown, who even tried to forbid aircraft filled with refugees from landing at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco.

Also among those Democrats was South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, who insisted that American troops leave South Vietnam. As his party’s Presidential nominee in 1972, McGovern lost to incumbent President Richard Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in national history.

In 1975, McGovern said during a lecture: “Ninety per cent of the refugees would be better off going back to their own land … The Communist government has already given orders that the people are not to be molested … Our program should include the highest priority steps to facilitate their early return to Vietnam.”

But Biden’s opposition became conspicuous by its unwavering tenacity. 

The Nature of Chinese Contempt for Us China welcomes U.S. self-loathing that it interprets as weakness and decadence to be exploited not as self-reflection to be admired, much less emulated. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/24/the-nature-of-chinese-contempt-for-us/

Last week in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese diplomats dressed down Biden Administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Both seem stunned by the Chinese broadsides. 

Apparently, as elite Americans readily confess to inherent white supremacy and racism—highlighting the complaints of BLM and Antifa—the Chinese are happy to agree that such admittedly toxic Americans should not dare to criticize China’s racist policies. 

Not since newly elected President John Kennedy was humiliated at the Cold War Vienna summit in June 1961 by USSR strongman Nikita Khrushchev have American diplomats been so roughly manhandled by a Communist government.  

China’s defiant provocations are not just verbal. Nor are they aimed only at our high officials. 

New York University students, at an overseas satellite Shanghai China campus, were manhandled and jailed by Chinese authorities. Not long ago U.S. diplomats in China were subject to Chinese COVID-19 anal swab testing—supposedly “in error.”  

These examples of continued humiliation and harassment could be multiplied. Yet they are simply the current public face of China’s insidious and systematic theft of U.S. patents and copyrights. It brazenly violates trade agreements, as well as manipulates its currency, dumps products below cost on world markets, cyber-assaults, expropriates Western technology, and stonewalls accurate information on the origins of COVID-19. 

If China gives out money, it logically believes it owns the recipient. New York University in the last five years has received some $47 million in Communist Chinese-affiliated gifts. So Beijing apparently believes that it now “owns” NYU, and can send any message it likes to its clients. 

Stanford University recently was cited by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to report over $64 million from Chinese sources since 2010. No surprise that China, in a demonstration of their contempt, recently sent a visiting researcher to Stanford, who turned out to be connected with the Chinese military. 

Hollywood claims that it is woke. But recently it was disclosed that some directors had selected their actors on the basis of skin color. They were obeying China’s requirements for American films to enter the lucrative Chinese film market, slated to become the world’s largest in 2021. 

General Flynn Video: ‘How an Adversary Comes Inside of Our Home’ Trump’s former National Security Advisor unveils the enemy infiltration of America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/general-flynn-video-how-adversary-comes-inside-our-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features General Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor for President Trump and best-selling author of The Field of Fight.

In this special episode, General Flynn discusses How an Adversary Comes Inside of Our Home, revealing the enemy infiltration of America.

Don’t miss it!

DR. RACHEL LEVINE CONFIRMED

Dr. Rachel Levine, President Biden’s pick to be assistant secretary for health, made history on Wednesday by becoming the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate to a federal position, and immediately vowed to “promote policies that advance the health and well-being of all Americans” and to fight for transgender youth.

The Senate vote, 52 to 48, followed a contentious confirmation hearing that became a flash point in the battle over transgender rights. Dr. Levine, a pediatrician and former health secretary in Pennsylvania, will assume her post at the federal Health and Human Services Department at a challenging time, just as Mr. Biden is trying to lead the country out of the coronavirus crisis.

In a statement shared with The New York Times, Dr. Levine said she was “humbled” by the Senate’s approval and thanked the L.G.B.T.Q. community for its support.

“As Vice President Harris has said, I recognize that I may be the first, but am heartened by the knowledge that I will not be the last,” she wrote. “When I assume this position, I will stand on the shoulders of those who came before — people we know throughout history and those whose names we will never know because they were forced to live and work in the shadows.”

D.C. Drive For Statehood Reminds Us Of What’s Gone Wrong With Our Country

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/25/d-c-drive-for-statehood-reminds-us-of-whats-gone-wrong-with-our-country/

The campaign for Washington, D.C., statehood has come up yet again. If nothing else, this shows how far out of control the federal government has become.

The drive to make D.C. America’s 51st state isn’t new. But, with a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in Congress, the ruling class is in a mood to consolidate its power, and with the Democrat-media industrial complex demanding that everything must be seen through the lens of race, it’s now an overheated topic.

For decades the pro-statehood forces have complained about being subject to taxation without representation. (We’ll have more to say on this later.) Today’s argument is centered on race. It is “a historically black city,” according to the district government, with 47% of residents black, 41% white.

“This is not about politics. It’s about a fundamental voting and civil rights issue,” says House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney, who is of course a Democrat, the party that’s pushing hard for H.R. 51, which “provides for admission into the United States of the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth.” (We’ll have more about the party’s power grab later, too.)

To hear David Litt, a speechwriter for Barack Obama, tell it, “the D.C. statehood fight is part of an ugly effort to disenfranchise black and brown people.” Opposing views, he says, “echo the last gasps of the Jim Crow era.”

Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial His estimate that it’ll take a 70% to 85% vaccination rate ignores those who have already been infected By Marty Makary

https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-faucis-denial-11616624554?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Anthony Fauci has been saying that the country needs to vaccinate 70% to 85% of the population to reach herd immunity from Covid-19. But he inexplicably ignores natural immunity. If you account for previous infections, herd immunity is likely close at hand.

Data from the California Department of Public Health, released earlier this month, show that while only 8.7% of the state’s population has ever tested positive for Covid-19, at least 38.5% of the population has antibodies against the novel coronavirus. Those numbers are from Jan. 30 to Feb. 20. Adjusting for cases between now and then, and accounting for the amount of time it takes for the body to make antibodies, we can estimate that as many as half of Californians have natural immunity today.

The same report found that 45% of people in Los Angeles had Covid-19 antibodies. Again, the number can only be higher today. Between “half and two-thirds of our population has antibodies in it now,” due to Covid exposure or vaccination, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” That would explain why cases in Los Angeles are down 95% in the past 11 weeks and the positivity rate among those tested is now 1.7%.

Undercounting or removing the many Americans with natural immunity from any tally of herd immunity is a scientific error of omission. When people wonder why President Biden talks about limiting Fourth of July gatherings, it’s because his most prominent medical adviser has dismissed the contribution of natural immunity, artificially extending the timeline.