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Iran Deal Has Become Stuck in Limbo — a Worst-Case Scenario An unfinalized deal that Washington would nevertheless decline to admit is dead could help Iran advance its nuclear aspirations. By Benny Avni

Posted By on April 27th, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/article/iran-deal-has-become-stuck-in-limbo-a-worst-case-scenario?utm_content=

Israelis believe that the American attempt at renewing the Iran deal is now on its deathbed. Americans say reviving it remains their goal. The most likely — and worst — scenario is that the Iran deal will forever be stuck in limbo.

An unfinalized deal that Washington would nevertheless decline to admit is dead could help Iran advance its nuclear aspirations. And that is likely the reason Tehran has upped the diplomatic ante by making demands that even President Biden could not accept.  

During a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relation Committee today, Secretary of State Blinken said the administration remains convinced that “getting back into compliance” with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action “would be the best way to address the nuclear challenge imposed by Iran.”

In Israel, however, officials are rethinking their previous conclusion that a JCPOA revival is all but inevitable.  According to reports by two major Israeli publications, Prime Minister Bennett’s aides now assess that Washington is “closer than ever” to admitting defeat.

Mr. Biden’s hopes of reviving the 2015 pact are “dwindling at an exponential rate,” according to one of the reports, which was based on conversations with senior Israeli officials. That new assessment, reversing past thinking in Jerusalem, was leaked after Messrs. Bennett and Biden spoke on the phone Sunday.

During their talk, Mr. Biden has reportedly agreed to visit Israel as early as June. The Israeli national security adviser, Eyal Hulata, arrived in Washington yesterday for talks with his counterpart, Jacob Sullivan. The two advisers reportedly discussed ideas for a “plan B,” in case diplomacy with Iran fails. 

America is “attuned to Israel’s concerns about threats to its security, including first and foremost from Iran and Iranian-backed proxies,” according to a White House readout of the meeting. 

Talks in Vienna to renew the JCPOA were suspended in March after Iran demanded the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. A strong bipartisan pushback in Congress convinced Mr. Biden, at least so far, to reject Tehran’s demand.

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Demographics push China-India-Russia triple entente China at some point may dump its Pakistan investment and emphasize India ties, upending strategic calculations David Goldman

Posted By on April 27th, 2022

https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/demographics-push-china-india-russia-triple-entente/

There are numerous examples of the bitterest of enemies turning into unlikely allies, precisely because they present too great a danger to each other.

Britain and Russia spent most of the 19th century contending in the “Great Game” over India. Britain built the navy with which Japan beat Russia in the 1905 war. But Britain and Russiafought on the same side in the world wars of the 20th century.

Russia and China fought one war in 1929 and an undeclared border war in 1969, but share common interests against the United States and its allies.

The next strategic alignment among past enemies may bring together two of today’s strategic antagonists, namely India and China. At first glance, this seems improbable in the extreme. India and China have a longstanding border dispute that caused several hundred casualties in a clash in 1967 and claimed the lives of several dozen soldiers in another last year.

But there are three reasons why a diplomatic revolution may occur sometime in the next several years, and two of them are evident from the chart below.

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Biden Administration Ignores What the Palestinians Are Really Saying by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18471/what-palestinians-are-saying

Hamas “will remain committed to its charter until the goals of our people are achieved, including the liberation [of all Palestine].” — Hazem Qassem, Hamas spokesperson, palinfo.com, April 22, 2022.

The Biden administration’s representatives who are talking about “the need for all parties to work for calm, especially in Jerusalem,” appear to be overlooking that the latest tensions are, at best, only partially related to the city or the al-Aqsa Mosque.

For Hamas, the riots at the al-Aqsa Mosque are simply part of a long-term strategy to destroy all of Israel.

“The battle [with Israel] is open. What is happening at the mosque will shorten the life of the occupation until it is expelled from Palestine. We are still at the beginning of the battle.” — Ismail Haniyeh, senior political leader of Hamas, panet.co.il, April 21, 2022.

So, while the Biden administration is reaffirming its commitment to a “two-state solution,” which means establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas and its supporters are openly expressing their intention to continue their jihad until they exterminate Israel.

Haniyeh remains more popular than Abbas and in a presidential election, would easily defeat him. The poll also showed that if parliamentary elections were held today, Hamas would defeat Abbas’s faction, the Fatah.

The results of the polls clearly telegraph that any future Palestinian state will unquestionably be controlled by Hamas and used as a launching pad to continue the fight until Israel is obliterated.

The Palestinians, for their part, have been, as always, refreshingly clear about what they want — and a mosque is not it.

The recent riots at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem provide further proof of the widespread support among Palestinians for Hamas, the Islamist group controlling the Gaza Strip that is designated as a terrorist organization not only by Israel, but also by the US, Canada, the EU, Japan, Australia and Britain.

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TOM GROSS: THE MEDIA’S TAKE ON ELON MUSK AND TWITTER

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

The takeover of Twitter yesterday by free speech advocate Elon Musk may herald a significant change in global political debate, and provide a major platform for views challenging “woke” opinion.

Predictably many in the liberal establishment – who has enjoyed a near monopoly on mainstream media opinion – are outraged.

The Washington Post – owned by the super-rich Jeff Bezos – was so alarmed that Twitter now may become more balanced that the paper called for Biden to move against Musk in order “to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.”

Below are four articles on Musk’s buyout, from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and two from The New York Times.

As the Wall Street Journal notes:

Current management is correct that most regular social-media users don’t want a daily bath of Russian bots, jihadist propaganda, noxious harassment and so forth. Ditto for advertisers, who represent about 90% of the company’s revenue. Yet Silicon Valley’s tech lords have decided they want to be arbiters of speech on political topics like climate change and the origins of Covid.

Kyle Smith writes in The New York Post:

This whole thing apparently got started because Musk was willing to spend $44 billion to keep reading the Babylon Bee. It was five days after the right-leaning Bee got suspended from twitter for making a joke about the transgender (male-to-female) individual Rachel Levine, who is the assistant secretary for health and human services, that Musk sent his famous tweet asking, “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to” the principle that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy?” In a followup post, he noted, with uncharacteristic earnestness, “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”

You could argue the Bee’s joke about Levine was nasty. So freaking what? The best comedy is nasty. Jokes are supposed to say the unsayable. If your idea of comedy is people saying the sayable, watch Stephen Colbert. Neither Colbert nor anyone else ever gets banned from anything for calling Republicans Nazis, by the way. Would you rather be called a Nazi, or . . . a man?

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Did a Key FBI Agent in Whitmer Plot Attempt to Surveil Steven Crowder? It appears Jayson Chambers, one of the key FBI Agents involved in the entrapment effort, did just that. Why? By Julie Kelly

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/25/did-a-key-fbi-agent-in-whitmer-plot-attempt-to-surveil-steven-crowder/

In 2017, Steven Crowder, a conservative activist and host of a popular YouTube channel, infiltrated Antifa with his producer.

Weeks before a speaking engagement by Ben Shapiro at the University of Utah—an event Antifa planned to disrupt violently—Crowder worked his way into the group through the use of burner phones and encrypted chats. Crowder secretly recorded discussions between Antifa thugs promising to use “plain clothes and hard tactics” to shut down Shapiro’s speech on September 28, 2017. This included distributing weapons such as ice picks, combat knives, and guns.

Despite a heavy law enforcement presence for Shapiro’s speech, pockets of violence did erupt as Antifa confronted police and Shapiro supporters outside the venue, resulting in the arrest of a handful of rabble-rousers. Crowder then posted a video account of his undercover operation and noted a collective lack of interest by major news organizations in Antifa’s violent pre-planning efforts.

An FBI agent, however, appeared to want more information from Crowder about Antifa’s behind-the-scenes work. It’s unclear how Crowder contacted this particular FBI agent shortly after the Shapiro protest but he described the encounter on Megyn Kelly’s podcast last week: “We got on the phone with a guy at the FBI and he asked ‘how did you get involved, how did you get on this Antifa app?’” Crowder told Kelly about the initial call, wondering aloud why the FBI didn’t know how to access the encrypted chat. The FBI, Crowder said, didn’t express any interest in capturing the perpetrators, which Crowder found “odd.”

The correspondence with this FBI agent, working out of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit in Michigan, continued for some time then tapered off. It wasn’t until recently that Crowder heard the name of his one-time FBI contact: Jayson Chambers.

Chambers was one of the key agents involved in the FBI-concocted plot to “kidnap” and “assassinate” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. He was primarily responsible for handling Dan Chappel, the informant hired by the FBI in the spring of 2020 and compensated at least $60,000 to execute the scheme. “This was the guy on a fishing expedition with my office!” Crowder told Kelly about Chambers. 

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Biden Unilaterally Surrenders to Russia and China in Satellite Wars Our enemies will have a clear field for destroying our satellites. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/biden-unilaterally-surrenders-russia-and-china-daniel-greenfield/

Kamala Harris arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base where Discoverer-1, the first satellite to enter a polar orbit and America’s bold response to Russia’s Sputnik, was launched to announce that we would be unilaterally surrendering to Russia and China in the growing satellite wars.

Last November, Russia had conducted a DA-ASAT or direct-ascent anti-satellite test which demonstrated its ability to take out satellites. The Russians had used their A-235 anti-ballistic missile system to destroy their own Kosmos 1408 satellite. The message was clear: Moscow had the ability to clear out enemy satellites in the event of any conflict. Including ours.

“I don’t want to get ahead of specific measures that we may pursue,” Biden apparatchik Ned Price fumed, but had vowed that “we won’t tolerate this kind of activity.”

At Vandenberg, Kamala announced that the response would be absolute and total surrender.

Responding to Russia’s anti-satellite weapons test and Communist China’s earlier 2007 ASAT test, the Biden administration vows that it will surrender and refuse to deploy ASAT weapons.

“I think everyone here recognizes how extraordinary space is,” Kamala Harris rambled. “Space — it affects us all, and it connects us all.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Fauci Lets His Megalomania Show

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/26/anthony-fauci-is-unhealthy-for-america/

The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser made last year what C.S. Lewis might have called a “lunatic, liar, or lord” statement when he essentially claimed to be the embodiment of science. (Hint: he’s a bit of the first, all of the second, but wants to be the third.) Five days ago, this man went even further, declaring that the executive branch should be free to act outside of boundaries put in place to prevent an all-powerful presidency.

He’s a menace. We’d all be better off if he were a Washington Nationals batboy rather than a powerful government functionary and influential media darling.

Anthony Fauci – we won’t grant him the honor of the title of “Dr.” because he’s far more bureaucrat than healer – who heads the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases is not science, even though in June 2021 he said his critics, of whom there are many but not enough, are “really criticizing science because I represent science.”

But he does have the mindset of an authoritarian.

During a CNN interview Thursday, Fauci expressed surprise and disappointment over federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s ruling that overturned Washington’s planes, trains, and public transportation mask mandate.

“Those types of things really are the purview of the” Centers for Disease Control, he said. “This is a public health issue.

“We are concerned” – said the man who also issued a “now is the time to do what you’re told” threat – “about courts getting involved in things that are unequivocally public health decisions. I mean, this is a CDC issue; it should not be a court issue.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Biden Leaves Americans Vulnerable by Shortchanging Missile Defense With Iron Dome, Israel will have a better missile defense than the continental United States. Israel’s leaders, unlike America’s, have placed a priority on deploying systems to protect its population. By Ira Stoll

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-leaves-americans-vulnerable-by-shortchanging-missile-defense?utm_content=

With Iron Dome, Israel will have a better missile defense than the continental United States. Israel’s leaders, unlike America’s, have placed a priority on deploying systems to protect its population.

The Pentagon recently sent Congress the 2022 National Defense Strategy, including a Missile Defense Review.

The document is classified and therefore not available to the public. The Defense Department promises an unclassified version will be “forthcoming,” but we’re still waiting. 

In the meantime, it is no wonder the Biden administration is trying to keep the information away from the voters. Once the electorate starts to understand how little the president and Vice President Harris are doing to protect the country, the political consequences could be devastating.

What is public is the president’s budget request: It seeks $9.6 billion for missile defense. That may seem like a lot — until you consider the context. 

In 2020, the final year of the Trump administration, the Missile Defense Agency requested $9.2 billion. In 2021, Biden’s first budget included an $8.9 billion request. Given inflation running at 8 percent a year, the $9.6 billion is effectively a cut from what Mr. Trump asked for. 

The sum for the Missile Defense Agency is a mere 1.2 percent of Mr. Biden’s $773 billion discretionary budget request for the Department of Defense. Most of the money would be for research and development, not deployment.

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The here and now of Holocaust remembrance By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on April 26th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-here-and-now-of-holocaust-remembrance/

 It is of tragic relevance that anti-Jewish Arab riots, rocket fire and hate-filled solidarity protests around the world have upstaged the lead-up to Yom Hashoah, which begins on Wednesday evening.

Normally at this time, Israel’s preparations for Holocaust Remembrance Day are highlighted in news broadcasts and discussed at length by the punditocracy. Even during the more than 25-month pandemic period, when the customary somber memorials around the country were canceled altogether or replaced by Zoom ceremonies, the day marked by Israel for the anniversary of the Nazi genocide of the Jews—purposely slated for the week before Israel Independence Day—was treated with deference.

This year, however, one would be hard-pressed even to realize that the date is fast approaching. If anything, Israelis have been invoking the Holocaust mainly to decry the events in Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, played on this very heartstring last month when he addressed Israel’s Knesset via video.

The desire to universalize the particular plight of the Jews is nothing new. Nor is it surprising that many Jews are at the forefront of the effort to turn “never again” into a slogan that applies to any and all forms of death, destruction and discrimination.

For the past few years, even a number of prominent Israelis have joined the endeavor with gusto, not only through false analogies but by using the occasion of Holocaust remembrance to warn the Jewish state about its own dangerous extremists. Though some purveyors of this pernicious “cautionary tale” happen to be members of parties in Israel’s governing coalition, including in ministerial positions, their narrative has difficulty permeating the national membrane.

For one thing, most Israelis are too concerned with their personal safety in the face of shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and Molotov cocktails to worry about the purity of their souls and adherence to an unrealistic “rules of engagement” doctrine.

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Arrest of ‘Mossad Agents’ to Justify Tehran’s Anti-Semite, Anti-Western Strategies Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on April 25th, 2022

https://townhall.com/columnists/majidrafizadeh/2022/04/25/arrest-of-mossad-agents-to-justify-tehrans-antisemite-antiwestern-strategies-n2606282

On Wednesday, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) announced that it had arrested three individuals on charges of spying for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. The identity of the persons in question or the evidence that led to allegations against them were not revealed.

Vulnerable political parties or authoritarian regimes that lack an agenda for prosperity and development have always invoked foreign boogeymen, in that they are useful to blame for one’s failures. For example, In 1980, the mullahs provoked their western neighbor into war and used the “the divine blessing”— as former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini put it — to wipe out domestic opposition. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (PMOI), the People’s Fedayeen Organization, or any progressive movement that would have dared to speak out for democracy or women’s rights faced brutal crackdown, as a fifth columnist.

The Iranian regime has also a long history of using charges such as espionage and “collaborating with hostile states” to justify harsh sentences for political detainees. This impulse has accelerated in recent weeks as Tehran has been trying to expand its regional meddling as a hedge against the likely collapse of its 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and five other world powers.

Opposition to Israel’s very existence has always been a central focus of the clerical regime’s appeals for “Muslim unity,” but this has faced newfound challenges since 2019 when a number of regional countries including Iran’s chief rival Saudi Arabia moved to normalize relations with Israel. Tehran has repeatedly condemned such efforts and has sought to leverage them against pre-existing relationships among other Arab and Muslim nations.