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February 2025

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Iranian Regime: Playing the Same Old Game Again by Majid Rafizadeh

By on February 22nd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21418/iran-same-nuclear-game

Adding to the regime’s apprehensions, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently repeated the need to enhance Iran’s military capabilities. His statement exposes the real intentions behind Iran’s diplomatic overtures…. The regime has absolutely no interest in abandoning its nuclear ambitions or curbing its support for terrorist groups; rather, it seeks to buy time and resources precisely to maintain its long-term strategic goals.

The only way to curb Iran’s aggressive ambitions is through sustained economic sanctions, military deterrence, dismantling its nuclear program, and especially regime change. No one must ever again receive 74 lashes or prolonged imprisonment for a song protesting women’s mandatory head coverings. Girls must be able to go to school again without fear of being gassed. People must be able to practice the religion of their choice without being flogged or imprisoned. And no woman or girl must ever again be murdered or flogged for declining to wear a headscarf…. In 2024 alone, 975 Iranians were executed – a “horrifying escalation.”

The world must not make the same mistake — leaving a fanatic regime in power to wield its fanaticisms — ever again.

In 2015, the Iranian regime successfully manipulated the West into believing that it was ready to embrace moderation and diplomacy. Under the so-called “moderate” president, Hassan Rouhani, Iran engaged in negotiations that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the “Iran nuclear deal.” This agreement provided Iran’s ruling mullahs with significant sanctions relief, unfreezing billions of dollars in assets, allowing it to resume selling oil on global markets, and the ability legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as they liked in just a few years – well after the deal’s father, President Barack “not on my watch” Obama was safely out of office — which just so happens to be this coming October 2025.

While Western governments portrayed the JCPOA as a diplomatic victory, the Iranian regime saw it as a lifeline. Iran’s economy had been severely weakened by sanctions imposed during the George W. Bush administration, but the Obama administration’s eagerness to secure a deal gave Tehran exactly what it wanted: money, legitimacy, time and a path to nuclear weapons.

The primary beneficiaries of the JCPOA were not the Iranian people. Instead, the biggest winners were the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regime’s network of proxy militias and terrorist organizations across the Middle East and beyond. With the influx of cash, Iran expanded the IRGC’s operations, funneled weapons and cash to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, bolstered Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and raced ahead with its nuclear weapons program.

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Kemi Badenoch: ‘I Don’t Think DOGE Is Radical Enough’The Tory leader on J.D. Vance’s ‘truth bomb,’ backdoor blasphemy laws, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Israel, Ukraine, and more. Bari Weiss

By on February 22nd, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/kemi-badenoch-i-dont-think-doge-is

On Monday at the ARC Conference in London I sat down with Kemi Badenoch, who has been in charge of the Conservative Party for a little more than 100 days. When I last spoke to her—in December, on Honestly—Trump had just become the president and she had just become opposition leader. I asked her if she could turn her party—and ultimately, her country—around? And if so, how? This week, we sat for a follow-up conversation on immigration, the economy, whether the vibe shift has made it to the UK, and more.

Bari: One of the things that everyone has been talking about over the past few days is the blistering speech that J.D. Vance gave in Munich in front of a stunned group of European bureaucrats. And I want to read just one line back to you. “The threat that I worry about most vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. What I worry about most is the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” What did you think of the speech?

Kemi: I thought he was dropping some truth bombs, quite frankly. The Munich Security Conference clearly was not expecting what he had to say. And I found it fascinating that the chair of the conference burst into tears at the end of it and needed a hug because of how tough J.D.’s speech had been.

This is what I was talking about when I gave my speech this morning. It’s not liberal values that are the problem. It’s weakness. And that’s what J.D. was trying to tell that conference, too, that we need to get tougher. There’s this belief that tolerance is the core fundamental European value. To the extent that we are tolerating things that are actually destroying everything else, it’s this extreme view of tolerance that is undermining our security.

BW: What are some of the things that Europe and specifically the UK have tolerated that you think are no longer going to be tolerated in our new political moment?

KB: Well, the UK is not having a new political moment just yet. That’s what I want to bring about.

BW: Do you agree there’s been a global vibe shift?

KB: No, I don’t think so. I think that that is premature. I think there has been a big shift in the U.S. There has not been a global shift. Because of the dominance of U.S. media it can sometimes mean that people think that’s everything that’s going on—but it is absolutely not.

Nothing has changed in the rest of the world, as far as I can see. It looks like something may be about to change in Ukraine. But what Europe needs to look at and what we need to fix right now is our understanding of what it is that we are protecting. And it’s not just protecting tolerance of things that will destroy us. One example is what’s happening in the courts. We are having novel and expansive interpretations of law used in a way that was never the intention of Parliament. Parliamentary sovereignty is being eroded. We need to fix all of that.

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Hannah E. Meyers Why Won’t Cities Like New York Punish Anti-Semitic Rioters? Spineless institutions must fight back against criminals who target Jews.

By on February 22nd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/anti-semitic-hate-riot-new-york-borough-park

Seared into the minds of Jewish Americans are the innocent faces and bright red hair of the youngest Hamas hostages, Ariel and Kfir Bibas. The brothers, four and nine-months old, respectively, were kidnapped along with their mother, Shiri, by masked gunmen on October 7, 2023. Their father, Yarden, was also taken hostage but was released last week. Imagining Yarden’s anguish as he awaited news of his family’s fate only deepened the anxiety of millions who, like me, prayed for their safe return.

This week, the Israeli government confirmed that the boys were murdered while in captivity. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a group of “protesters,” their faces wrapped in keffiyeh scarves to mimic Hamas militants, descended on New York’s predominantly Jewish Borough Park neighborhood to scream at Jews. “How many kids did you kill today?,” they chanted—with no sense of irony.

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This outrage—culminating in a brawl that police had to break up—reflects the growing normalization of masked rioters invading predominantly Jewish spaces to intimidate residents. Like Biblical villains, these agitators thirst for power. Like Hamas, they don’t care if they hurt the innocent, so long as they hurt Jews. The pro-Hamas mob pushed past police barricades and officers and approached nearby Jews, where fighting ensued.

It’s time for American cities and institutions to stand up to this targeted misbehavior. Simply complaining about “hate” won’t solve the problem. New York and other cities need to show some spine.

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The End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution : Holier-Than-Thou Federal Prosecutors Francis Menton

By on February 22nd, 2025

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-2-20-the-end-of-the-eric-adams-prosecution-and-hoiier-than-thou-federal-prosecutors

Since my post a few days ago about the demise of the Eric Adams prosecution, controversy has continued to swirl around the matter. On the side supporting the action of the Trump/Bondi Justice Department, several new voices have emerged to join what were previously the lonely cries of a handful of people like myself and Josh Blackman. These new voices include James Copland and Rafael Mangual (of the Manhattan Institute), writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 18; and Alan Dershowitz in a column in the New York Post on February 19.

On the other side of the argument, an ex-colleague of mine sends me a copy of an “open letter” dated February 17, and signed by a gigantic list of well over 1000 former federal prosecutors. This letter essentially adopts the arguments set forth in the resignation letter of ex-SDNY US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, including echoing some of her language. A fair description is that these guys adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, claiming to be wholly pure and above politics and devoted only to the “facts and law.” Here are some excerpts:

As prosecutors, we were rightly prohibited from making criminal charging decisions based on someone’s political association, activities or beliefs, or because of our personal feelings about them. We knew it was impermissible to treat a defendant more leniently just because they were powerful or well-connected, or more harshly because they were not. We were taught to pursue justice without fear or favor, and knew our decisions to investigate and charge should be based only on the facts and the law. . . . Against this backdrop, we have watched with alarm as these values have been tested by recent actions of the Department’s leadership. Some of you have been ordered to make charging decisions based expressly on considerations other than the facts and the law, including to serve solely political purposes. To all of you, we communicate this: We salute and admire the courage many of you have already exhibited, and that will guide all of you as you continue to serve the interests of justice. You have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction, in the finest traditions of the Department of Justice.

The bold is in the original.

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From the Director’s Desk of the Henry Jackson Society Dr. Alan Mendoza

By on February 22nd, 2025

The moment we were all expecting has come to the fore, bringing with it more horror, heartbreak, and deceit than anyone could have imagined. For Hamas has, once again, proven itself to be a barbaric entity, violating a ceasefire agreement with Israel it had already played fast and loose with on several occasions.

Yesterday was always going to be a sombre day, as Israel prepared to receive the first of its deceased hostages – those who had entered Gaza in life and were leaving it in death. However, Hamas has not only stuck the knife in further – they’ve twisted it for us too. At the transition to the Red Cross, Hamas orchestrated a grotesque ceremony to hand over the dead, a macabre spectacle clearly designed to insult Israel and grandstand before the world. This was not an exchange; it was a calculated act of psychological warfare.

The most despicable betrayal, however, came with the absence of Shiri Bibas. The mother of two young sons and wife to Yarden Bibas – who was recently released after an excruciating 484 days in captivity – was not returned alongside the bodies of her children, as previously agreed. Instead, Hamas substituted her body with that of an imposter who, as of this morning, remains unidentified by forensic experts but is presumed to be a Gazan woman. This flagrant deception has rightly ignited outrage, not just in Israel but across the international community.

This deceitful and malicious act has pushed what was already a tenuous ceasefire deal to the brink of collapse. If Hamas thought it could manipulate this moment without consequence, it has gravely miscalculated. Israel cannot afford to respond with half-measures. This is a violation that calls for decisive action and Israel would do well to take a lesson from the Donald Trump playbook: when a deal is broken, the response must be immediate and severe. In this way Israel should go straight for the jugular, eliminating what remains of Hamas leadership. The locations of these figures are known – now is the time to act, regardless of which countries they might be skulking in.

Israel must assert its control, send a message of unequivocal strength, and ensure that Hamas pays the ultimate price for its barbarism. The world is watching, and there should be no doubt left in the minds of those who threaten Israel’s sovereignty: breaking a deal with Israel, particularly one with terms as hideous as have been imposed by the terrorists, should mean signing one’s own death warrant.

Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society. Follow Alan on X: @AlanMendoza

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The Roots of the Palestinian Sickness The West’s embrace of Hamas’s brutality is no accident—it was carefully cultivated over decades by intellectuals who legitimized atrocities under the guise of “resistance.” By Stephen Soukup

By on February 22nd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/22/the-roots-of-the-palestinian-sickness/

This week, as the civilized peoples of the West once again recoil in horror at the grotesque and violent spectacle that is Hamas, it is worth remembering that the bloody, brutal, and depraved character of the Palestinian animosity toward Israel and the Jewish people did not arise from natural circumstances. The blind and merciless hatred the radical Palestinians feel toward Israel is neither normal nor accidental. It was carefully and purposefully cultivated over the course of nearly a century and has been intentionally intensified and amplified by the intellectual discourse in Europe and the United States.

The monstrous treatment of the Bibas family—the kidnapping and murder of an innocent woman and her two small children, the parading of the corpses through a celebratory rally, the apparent attempts to hide the real causes of the children’s death, and the utter refusal to return the remains of their mother, Shiri—is not the behavior one would ever expect from a conventional regime, even one that bills itself as the “resistance” to an “occupying” force. Rather, it is behavior consistent with the ugliest, vilest, most brutal sects man has ever known—the Nazis, Lenin and Stalin’s Soviets, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and so on. This is no mere coincidence. The Palestinian/Hamas-nik consciousness springs from many of the same sources as the most horrific regimes of the twentieth century.

Nowhere in the world have the anti-realist philosophies of cultural Marxism been more ingrained and more destructive than in the discourse around and the practical politics of the Middle East. Arab nationalism was an early 20th-century identity movement that surfaced amidst the dying of the Ottoman Empire and which was patterned in many ways on the German nationalist undertaking. The early thinkers and founders of Arab nationalism looked to define themselves and their people and to build an independent pan-Arab state that stretched, essentially, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. The identity the Arab nationalists created for themselves and the Arab people was defined principally in terms of who the Arabs were not, rather than who they were. And who they were not is European colonialists.

In this sense, the Arab Nationalist movement was quintessentially postmodern. It arose in opposition to the “truth” of Western cultural hegemony and obsessed over the sins and perceived slights of the colonial powers—including the Zionists. It fashioned for itself a majestic yet “lost” past of the Arab people. And it sought to restore that past through opposition to the prevalent ideas of Western liberalism.

Additionally, and more to the point, the Middle East as it exists in the mind of the Western intellectual or wannabe intellectual today is largely the creation of a narrative that was fashioned more than five decades ago, in the fevered imagination of a literary theorist named Edward Said. Said was ostensibly a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. But he was also the man most responsible for the current Western-liberal view of the Middle East and especially of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

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