RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/bidens-putin-appeasement-has-been-years-in-the-making/

As VP, he mocked Russia hawks, treated Putin as a partner, and helped Russia join the WTO. Then came his presidency.

O ne small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He’d side with Russia,” tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man. The headline on Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column reads, “With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where’s Trump when I need him?” You could find similar sentiment from foreign-policy experts strewn across social media.

Surely, even Trump’s most passionate antagonists must be slightly curious as to why Putin didn’t move on eastern Ukraine after successfully installing the orange man as an alleged infiltrator in the White House. What better time could there have been for an invasion or annexation? Why now, and not then?

Then again, the notion that Biden has shown firmness or deftness on foreign policy is at odds with not only recent events — most notably the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan — but also 50 years of his history. On the issue of Putin, Biden has been relentlessly wrong.

In 2009, Biden went to Munich and delivered the Obama administration’s first major foreign-policy speech, arguing that it was “time to press the reset button” after eight years of purported American antagonism toward Russia. The speech was framed as a return to diplomatic normalcy after the tumultuous Bush years. “The leaders of Germany and France as well as the deputy prime minister of Russia — all countries that clashed with Mr Bush — were all in the audience for Mr Biden’s speech,” reported The Financial Times. It was Biden who then spearheaded the effort to reward Moscow by giving Russia access to the World Trade Organization: He told nominal Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s access to the WTO was “the most important item on our agenda.” At the time, a Reuters headline announced, “Biden backs Russia WTO bid, praises Medvedev.”

https://bit.ly/3hdmQ57

In 1979, US policy toward Iran crashed against the rocks of reality, when Ayatollah Khomeini assumed power with the help of the US, but – contrary to US expectations – transformed Iran, “The American policeman of the Gulf” into the world’s leading epicenter of anti-US subversion, terrorism and drug-trafficking.

In 2015, US policy toward Iran crashed, again, against the rocks of reality, when – contrary to US expectations – Iran’s Ayatollahs did not harness the mega-billion-dollar bonanza, yielded by the nuclear accord (JCPOA), to upgrade domestic standards of living. Instead – as expected – this bonanza bolstered Iran’s preoccupation with anti-US subversion, terrorism and the development, manufacturing and proliferation of non-conventional military systems.

In 2022, once again, US policy-makers seem to stick to the 1979 and 2015  practice of basing their Iran policy on assessments of the future behavior of Iran’s Ayatollahs, rather than on the Ayatollahs’ rogue, systematic track record since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
US policy-makers base their policy on the hope that a mega-generous Western gesture could induce Iran’s Ayatollahs to depart from their 1979-2022 systematic and rogue anti-US policy, which is driven by a 1,400-year-old religious, cultural, historical and imperialistic vision.

The hope (rather than reality)-driven policy toward Iran has led to a display of eagerness to conclude an agreement with Iran’s Ayatollahs, downplaying the Ayatollahs’ non-good-faith conduct, and waving the military option and the regime-change option.

However, on February 1, 2022, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, the powerful Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a strident warning to President Biden on the Senate floor: “Hope is not a national security strategy!”

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

In one of his first official acts, President Joe Biden canceled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which had been expected to carry upwards of 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude per day to the U.S. In the same month, Biden banned new oil and gas leases on public lands. One year later, the U.S. pulled support from a pipeline designed to bring natural gas from Israel and Cyprus across Greece to Italy and Bulgaria. Amos Hochstein, now Biden’s senior advisor for energy security, was reported by The Jerusalem Post to have previously said he would be “extremely uncomfortable with the U.S. supporting” EastMed. “Why would we build a fossil fuel pipeline between the EastMed and Europe when our entire policy is to support new technology…and new investments in going green and in going clean?”

Clean, green and more expensive, with security implications for European allies who will be increasingly reliant on unreliable Russian gas. But hey, it’s for the environment. Unless…

Hochstein was recently in Lebanon and Israel, trying to resolve a long-standing maritime border dispute to enable Lebanon to take part in the natural gas drilling and exploration revolution in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Yes, that would be the same Lebanon that is occupied by U.S.-designated terror organization and Iranian proxy Hezbollah, and which has built an enormous and increasingly powerful military force aimed expressly at Israel. Yes, that Lebanon.

In an interview with Lebanese media released by the U.S. State Department, Hochstein never mentions Hezbollah.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-weakness-chaos-us-world-liz-peek

How have so many things gone south so quickly? Is it fair to blame Joe Biden?

I believe it is.

Joe Biden ran for president as an enfeebled 78-year-old. There are plenty of vigorous and brilliant septuagenarians; Biden is not one of them.

Joe knew, his wife knew, our current White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain knew and the press must have known, that Biden was not up to the rigors of four years in the White House. And yet they pushed him forward, a candidate with few convictions and even fewer capabilities.

But here’s who also knew: China’s President Xi and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The worlds’ despots saw what clear-eyed Americans saw: weakness. They saw a president whom they could bully, whose convictions were shallow. Now, in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is testing Joe Biden.

Biden assures us that Putin is about to invade its neighbor. Others speculate that Russia’s leader will simply annex Russian-leaning parts of Ukraine, and indeed it appears the Moscow is set to start that process imminently by declaring two regions as independent republics. In effect, Putin is grabbing what he wants, while we stand by and watch.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18261/arabs-biden-administration

Prominent Arab political analysts, commentators and journalists are continuing to express fear about Iran’s “expansionist” schemes in the Arab countries, especially Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They say that they are worried that a return to the JCPOA would further embolden the mullahs in Tehran and the Iranian-backed terrorist groups.

To many, the hesitation of the Biden administration is incomprehensible. The White House and the National Security Council are apparently open to redesignating the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” while the State Department supports targeting specific Houthi leaders with sanctions. The question is why? One could do both.

Another question is: Has the Yemen crisis become a political issue rather than a humanitarian one?

Moreover, why are aid organizations insisting on aid coming through Hodeidah port when there are six ports… plus aerial deliveries via Marib?

Isn’t this a “humanitarian” political position in favor of the terrorists, the Houthis?

Judging from the Houthis’ recent heightened aggression, many in the Arab world are asking: why are the Houthis not immediately being designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” again?

The Arabs are also warning that Biden’s decision last year to delist the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” has only encouraged the militia to pursue its aggression against the Yemeni people — the very people about whom the Biden administration is claiming to have “humanitarian” concerns – as well as the neighboring countries.

[T]he failure of the Biden administration to designate the Houthi militia as a terrorist organization poses “a threat to regional peace and security and harms international peace and security.” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Emirati political analyst, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“The Biden administration has forgotten that militias are an arm of external forces that use them to achieve their own agendas, and they are not concerned with the interests of the Yemeni people….” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“This move [reclassifying the Houthis as a terrorist organization] will not harm efforts for reaching a peaceful settlement in Yemen. On the contrary, it will be a decisive and firm message from the international community that it will not accept this terrorist behavior from the Houthis.” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“Tehran views the negotiations only through a unilateral perspective — to lift the economic sanctions imposed on it without making any serious concessions.” — Professor Mohammed Mufti, Saudi communist, Okaz, February 10, 2022.

“Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has come to consider himself the president of Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries, and this is because he relies on 90,000 [members of] forces affiliated with Tehran.” — Former Jordanian Minister of Culture Saleh Al-Kallab, Asharq Al-Awsat, February 10, 2022.

If and when the Biden administration signs a new deal with Iran, the sense of betrayal in the Arab world is extremely likely to broaden.

The US may then find out that it is the Americans who have been delisted as untrustworthy friends and allies by the people of the Middle East.

As the Biden administration and other world powers continue to negotiate with the Iranians about reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there is growing concern in the Arab world about the destructive actions and policies of Iran and its proxies, especially the Houthi militia in Yemen.