RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271879/can-sanctions-bring-regime-change-iran-ari-lieberman

On November 5, the United States imposed a comprehensive set of sanctions on Iran, which were characterized by United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the “toughest sanctions ever put in place on the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Some 700 Iranian entities and individuals were targeted. Particularly hard hit were the Islamic Republic’s energy, banking, shipping and air transport sectors. The action follows a preliminary set of sanctions imposed on entities affiliated with the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its rogue ballistic missile program. Citing Iranian violations, the Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May.

In response to the U.S. action, Iran tried to put on a brave face. In a letter to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iran’s UN ambassador, Gholamali Khoshroo, termed the measure “illegal.” Iran’s foreign minister and master dissembler, Mohammad Javad Zarif, stated the sanctions “will have no impact on determination of the great Iranian nation and the Americans will be obliged to change their policy.” Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, viewed by some in the West to be a “moderate,” vowed that his nation will continue to sell oil despite the sanctions.

In Iran, real power rests with “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while the president is a mere figurehead who requires the Supreme Leader’s imprimatur before he can even run for the office of the president. Khamenei is a radical Shia Islamist who controls the IRGC as well as its auxiliary Basij militia. Nothing of major import in Iran occurs without the Supreme Leader’s approval

The U.S. has stated that its goal is to modify Iran’s behavior and not to institute regime change. The Trump administration is seeking to thwart Iran’s ballistic missile program and its overseas mischief making. The administration is also seeking to modify certain clauses within the JCPOA, particularly the JCPOA’s sunset clauses which will enable the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium beyond current limitations.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13261/china-american-campuses

The main points of contact for Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) chapters in the U.S. are often intelligence officers in the embassy and consulates. China’s Ministry of State Security uses CSSA students to inform on other Chinese on campus.

Let us get the FBI to round up Ministry of State Security agents who, up to now, have been given free rein to operate in America. Putting these agents behind bars or even just revoking their visas will end many of the activities that endanger American campuses. The Chinese kill CIA agents in China. The least Washington can do is declare China’s agents personae non gratae.

The Chinese feel emboldened to violate American sovereignty and break laws because American administrations have let them do these things — sometimes openly — since at least the early 1990s. This is as much a Washington problem as a Beijing one.

Congress can also change laws to make life inhospitable for Confucius Institutes. Legislation should bar an educational institution from receiving any federal funds if it hosts a CI.

Beijing, in seeking influence on American college and university campuses, has been infringing on academic freedoms, violating American sovereignty, and breaking U.S. law. U.S. officials, neglecting their responsibilities to the American people, have allowed this injurious behavior to continue, in some instances for decades.

As an initial matter, some of this impermissible Chinese conduct is harmless, even amusing. As detailed by Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic in a landmark study for the Wilson Center, Chinese officials in 2004 and 2007 threatened then Columbia University professor Robert Barnett, the prominent Tibet expert, that if he did not adopt a more favorable view of China’s policies they would — heavens! — stop speaking to him.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13073/scholars-terrorism-extremism

“I would like to pay tribute to the sincere scholars of Al-Azhar and the Ministry of Awqaf [Endowments] who are working to correct the misconceptions about the tolerant Islamic religion and its moderate middle approach, to address and counter extremism and deviant ideology and to uphold the human, moral and love values among all human kind.” — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, June 11, 2018.

The Grand Imam conspicuously chose to ignore the fact that many Muslims hate and despise non-Muslims. These Muslims are acting in accordance with what the Quran and the Hadith tell them about the disbelievers.

Prominent Muslim scholars continue to argue that the Quran and Prophet Mohammed do not incite intolerance or killing Christians and Jews. Many scholars, however, seem prepared to do their utmost to hide this “inconvenient truth.”

Take, for example, Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Egypt’s preeminent Sunni university, who recently claimed that “there is no single verse in the Quran that calls for killing Jews or Christians.”

While it is true that the Quran does not specifically call for killing Christians and Jews, the Hadith — a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of Prophet Mohammed — does refer to killing all Jews.

The Quran, however does refer to Christians and Jews as disbelievers, and calls on Muslims to fight and kill disbelievers.

The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar made his claim in a speech delivered in Cairo, Egypt, in the presence of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, senior government officials and Al-Azhar clerics on June 11 during the annual celebration of Laylat al-Qadr (“Night of Decree”).

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/07/brazil-we-wont-yield-to-arab-pressure-embassy-will-move-to-jerusalem/

After Egypt reportedly rescinds invitation of Brazilian foreign minister in protest of Brazil’s plan to relocate its embassy, President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, insists embassy will move • Jewish leader: Israel suffered but held its head high.

The new administration in Brazil has reiterated its position that despite mounting pressure from the Arab world, it will remain true to its word and relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“We’re going to move the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro, wrote on Tuesday to Jane Silva, president of a leading pro-Israel organization in Brazil.

Silva had approached Eduardo Bolsonaro in the wake of reports in the Brazilian press indicating that Egypt had called off the Brazilian foreign minister’s upcoming visit to Cairo in protest of the planned embassy transfer.

In her letter to Bolsonaro, Silva wrote: “Jerusalem was always the capital of Israel. … There was a partition plan; the Arabs rejected it and launched wars against Israel and persecuted Israel. Israel has suffered, but it held its head high. Israel has seized every opportunity and established a nice home for the sole and legitimate owners of the land of Israel – the Jewish people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271855/mosul-and-true-face-islam-kenneth-r-timmerman

I have lived and worked in the Muslim Middle East for the past thirty-five years, and have many dear friends who are Muslims. Most recently, I prayed with a 38-year old Muslim man in the ruins of his house in the old city of Mosul, as he told me his story of surviving the ISIS occupation.

I stumbled upon Azam Nejim Abdallah by accident, while inspecting the devastation wrought upon the magnificent 4th and 5th century churches of West Mosul with an Iraqi police brigadier general and activists from the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, a local group dedicated to protecting Iraqi minorities.

Azam and an older neighbor, Abu Ibrahim Mohsen, were among the hardy few who had returned to the ruins and were attempting to rebuild. Their problem on this particular day was that they had no water, and no electricity. “People just three blocks down the street have water,” they complained to the brigadier general. Why not us?”

To us, the answer was obvious. The fact that Azam and his neighbors were alive was nothing short of miraculous. One neighbor’s house was just a pile of rubble. Bomb squads were still combing through the neighborhood, more than a year after the liberation, for ISIS booby-traps and unexploded ordinance. There was not a single house left standing in the neighborhood. Water? Electricity? Really?

When Azam saw me, he wanted to tell me the story of how his four-year son and father were killed in the final days of the ISIS occupation. He kept pointing to an alleyway, and in the end, I let him take me by the hand to his house a bit further away. He had already started to rebuild the walls, but that wasn’t what he wanted to show me: it was a picture of his four-year old son, Omar, and the jagged hole a coalition bomb had torn through a metal door. “I was crouching, right there,” he pointed. “Omar was crouching here, with my father. They were both killed,” he wept. All I could do as he showed me a photograph of his son was to pray with him.

I am reminded of this story by an encounter with a pastor in an Anglican church in Europe recently, who commented that ISIS and all their barbarity were “such a distortion of true Islam.”