RUTHFULLY YOURS

Middle East expert Ilan Berman points out that for Iran, trading with Europe is actually the perfect self-defense, a virtual guarantee that it will not face military attack if it cheats on its obligations under the nuclear deal.

Sanctions will also be lifted on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s $95 billion business empire, as well as on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates a vast network of companies and industries. No wonder European media outlets are referring to Iran as the “new El Dorado,” the “chance of a century,” and the “last untapped market.”

“Conducting business with the Iranian regime means to finance the nuclear program, the annihilation threats against Israel, Holocaust denial, the export of Islamist terror and the oppression of the Iranian population.” — Stop the Bomb, Austria.

“Everyone is looking at Iran with greed.” — Senior French official.

European politicians and business leaders, resembling the running of the bulls in Spain, are falling over themselves in a rush to secure the “first-mover” advantage in Iran’s $400 billion economy.

Under the nuclear deal reached in Vienna on July 14, international sanctions will be removed on Iran’s banking, energy and trade sectors if Tehran agrees to certain curbs on its nuclear program.

The lifting of sanctions on Iran, a market of 80 million consumers (the second-largest market in the Middle East after Turkey in terms of GDP) creates the potential for staggering business opportunities.

Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, maintained in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, has finally been taken by the FBI, five months after it emerged that, as secretary of state, she used it systematically to conduct government business. The seizure of the server, along with electronic copies of its contents maintained by her private lawyer, is in connection with a criminal investigation into the mishandling of classified information. It is being dressed up by a reeling Clinton campaign as Hillary’s “voluntary”​ surrender of the server in connection with a “security inquiry.”

All we can say is, “It’s about time.”

It has been obvious since March both that the server should have been seized by the government and that Clinton’s extra-governmental communications system — designed to undermine record-keeping requirements that enable government to make disclosures in response to congressional, judicial, criminal, and public requests — is a major national-security breakdown.

Clinton held one of the highest offices of the United States, and communications involving high-level intelligence were a routine part of her job. Despite her protestations to the contrary, it was inevitable that classified information would be exchanged in her “private” e-mails and stored on her “private server.”

It was probably inevitable that the woman always at Hillary Clinton’s side would one day be sucked into the vortex of suspicion and scandal surrounding the Democratic presidential frontrunner. For top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, that day seems to have arrived.

Though rumors of impropriety have swirled around Abedin for over two years, in the past two weeks they’ve snowballed into concrete allegations. Last week, the State Department inspector general claimed that the trusted Clinton confidant owes the government nearly $10,000 for violating rules regarding vacation and sick leave. And in court on Monday, Hillary Clinton admitted Abedin had an e-mail account on the now-infamous private server run out of Clinton’s house while she was secretary of state, and that the account “was used at times for government business.” State Department investigators say they’ve now expanded a probe into Clinton’s use of private e-mail to include “top aides,” meaning Abedin is almost certainly under federal investigation for the possible exchange of unsecured, classified data.

Despite a glacial government response time, multiple investigations into Abedin’s simultaneous employment at the State Department and a consulting firm tied to the Clintons are also approaching their peak. Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already accused Abedin of leveraging her dual public and private roles to “deliver favors” for key Clinton Foundation donors.

The coarser and cruder Donald Trump becomes, and the more ill-informed on the issues he sounds, the more he coasts in the polls. Apparently, a few of his targets must be regarded as unsympathetically as their defamer.

Trump is rightly mocked for cynically spreading quid pro quo money around. But he quickly counters that his critics — from Hillary Clinton to his Republican rivals — have all asked him for such cash or for favors.

Trump preps little. He has no real agenda. And he makes stuff up as he goes along. For such a New York brawler, he has thin skin, smearing his critics, often in creepy fashion. How can a former Democrat, once a pro-choice, pro-amnesty liberal and a supporter of single-payer health care, remain the godhead of the conservative base for weeks on end?

The answer is that Trump is a catharsis for 15 percent to 20 percent of the Republican electorate. They apparently like the broken china shop and appreciate the raging bull who runs amok in it. Politicians and the media are seen as corrupt and hypocritical, and the nihilistic Trump is a surrogate way of letting them take some heat for a change.

Hillary Clinton’s spinmeisters are working overtime to deal with the latest developments in her ongoing e-mail scandal. They have an increasingly tough road to hoe as the Clinton cover-up begins to unravel.

The FBI investigation of the handling of classified information on Hillary’s personal e-mail account, which she used for all her government business while serving as Secretary of State, is underway. Her campaign announced on August 11th that she has directed her aides at long last to turn over to federal investigators her private server and a thumb drive containing copies of her e-mails. Hillary’s campaign is trying to portray her decision as evidence of her cooperative spirit. This is utter nonsense, considering that she has refused to turn over her server for months to any independent third party. Last March, during a press conference she held at United Nations headquarters shortly after the e-mail scandal first broke, Hillary declared that “the server will remain private.” Moreover, her lawyer David Kendell, who had possession of the thumb drive, said that the server and its backup located at a technology company in Colorado had been wiped clean. If that is true, and the e-mails she has not already turned over cannot be retrieved through technical means, Hillary could be in hot water on obstruction of justice grounds alone.

For a Party whose obituary has been written, Republican candidates showed themselves to be a lively, diverse and talented group. Among the seventeen on stage Thursday evening were a woman, an African-American, an Indian-American and two Hispanics. They ranged in age from 44 to 69. They included Senators and Governors, both current and past, business people and a brain surgeon. They are more representative of today’s polyglot United States than the bland, old, White folk who comprise those running on the Democrat ticket. Like Mark Twain once wrote about himself, death notices for the GOP are premature.

The debate continued in editorials, columns, on talk shows and in the blogosphere. While a Gallup Poll of likely Republican voters determined Marco Rubio and Scott Walker the winners, Donald Trump became the most discussed participant. While he enjoys belittling others, Mr. Trump has a thin skin. His responses to Megyn Kelly’s questions were incendiary and ungracious. He is not a nice man. Nevertheless, he continues to feed off the discontent that seems pervasive – for some good reasons – in much of the Country. Throughout the debate, Mr. Trump looked like he had bitten into a lemon that was especially sour. He is not my choice and I suspect his fame will fade, but I can understand why so many are fed up with Washington and the cronyism that has become worse over the past six and a half years. The Left, of course, loves the possibility of “the Donald,” as a split among Republicans raises their prospects. In the same manner, Republicans cheer on Bernie Sanders, because he might do the same to Democrats. Both are in the position to become spoilers or king-makers. Which will it be?

When Obama took office, his first phone call to a foreign leader was to the head of a terrorist group.

“This is my first phone call to a foreign leader,” Obama told the PLO’s Abbas. “And I’m making it only hours after I took office.”

Obama repeatedly bent, twisted and mutilated existing laws to keep the money flowing to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority. When Hamas and the PLO temporarily reconciled, Obama sent them money anyway. When Congress froze aid after the PLO defied the peace process by trying to join the UN, he signed a waiver claiming that aiding the terrorist network was “important to the security interests of the United States.” Earlier this year, when the PLO went after Israel at the International Criminal Court, Obama defied a Congressional law and bipartisan demands mandating a cutoff of aid.

If Abbas personally flew a plane into the new World Trade Center, Obama would find some excuse to keep the money coming to his terrorist group anyway. But now his determination to aid terrorists has hit a new low as he sides with terrorists against terror victims.

Eleven years ago, ten families who had suffered at the hands of the Muslim terror network filed a lawsuit against the PLO, Arafat and assorted PLO/PA officials. The American families suing the terrorists included Jamie Sokolow whose eye was damaged by shrapnel in the Jaffa Street bombing that injured 100 people and killed a 81-year-old amateur painter who had been out shopping for painting supplies.

“I’m 12 years old, I’m from New York, and I’m going to die,” she recollected in court thirteen years later.

Shayna Gould was a 19-year-old college student waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop in the rain when a PLO terrorist opened fire. She had no life signs when she arrived at the hospital.

Janis Coulter was killed when a PLO terrorist set off a bomb in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria at Hebrew University. Her family has been fighting for justice for a long time.

Dr. Alan Bauer was walking down the street with his 7-year-old son when a PLO terrorist set off a bomb in the French Hill bus station. “I couldn’t find my son. I then saw him face down. I picked him up and heard him moaning, so I knew he was alive,” he said.

A screw had torn through his son’s brain. “He was put in coma to let fluid drain out and was then left blind and paralyzed on his left side.”

Some of the killers were part of the “police force” armed and trained by the Clinton administration. They were dispatched by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terrorist group even though it’s part of the PLO network whose regime in the West Bank is funded by the United States.

Finally the families won their case in court. A jury found the PLO/PA guilty and ordered the terrorist network to pay $218 million to the families. The Antiterrorism Act tripled that award. The PLO appealed, but the terror group was required to post a bond to show that it was willing to pay the judgment.

Edward B. Murray, the mayor of one of the most politically progressive cities in America — Seattle — wants to make it easier for the 30,000 practicing Muslims in his city to get home mortgages without violating religious Sharia law. It is part of his plan to ease what he says is a “housing crisis.”

A new company in Seattle wants to help that happen, along with allowing Muslims to invest in retirement plans without violating Sharia law.

But conservatives have been warning for years that doing business with Islam is the same as doing business with terrorists, and a Seattle radio talk show host wonders why progressives favor Muslims over Christians.

Seattle’s economy is booming. That is good. What is bad, as Mayor Murray described in a letter to his constituents, is housing prices and rents have skyrocketed.

“As a result, thousands of families and workers — particularly lower-income people and among communities of color — are unable to afford the cost of living in Seattle,” he wrote.

Here’s his fix: Murray announced a multi-pronged approach to get 50,000 new units of housing built or preserved over the next 10 years, with 20,000 of those homes set up as “affordable housing.”

America’s status as the greatest and most influential nation on earth comes with certain inescapable realities. Among these are an abundance of enemies wishing to undermine us, numerous allies dependent on our strength and constancy, and the burden of knowing that every choice we make in exercising our power—even when we choose not to exercise it at all—has tremendous human and geopolitical consequences.

This has been true for at least 70 years, but never more so than today. As the world has grown more interconnected, American leadership has grown more critical to maintaining global order and defending our people’s interests, and as our economy has turned from national to international, domestic policy and foreign policy have become inseparable.

President Barack Obama has failed to recognize this. He entered office believing the United States was too engaged in too many places and that globalization had diminished the need for American power. He set to work peeling back the protective cover of American influence, stranding our allies, and deferring to the whims of nefarious regional powers. He has vacillated between leading recklessly and not leading at all, which has left the world more dangerous and America’s interests less secure.
It will take years for our next president to confront the residual effects of President Obama’s foreign and defense policies. Countering the spread of the self-declared Islamic State, for example, will require a broadened coalition of regional partners, increased U.S. involvement in the fight, and steady action to prevent the group’s expansion to other failed and failing states. Halting Iran’s regional expansionism and preventing its acquisition of a nuclear weapon will demand equal urgency and care.

While the clown car that is the Donald Trump campaign continues to careen around the stage, drawing outsize media attention, the serious candidates for the Republican nomination are putting forward serious proposals that deserve more serious consideration than they are getting. Just in the last few days, Jeb Bush has given a substantive speech on how he would handle Syria and Iraq, and Foreign Affairs published a substantive article by Marco Rubio articulating his broad foreign policy vision. (Full disclosure: I have advised both candidates on foreign policy.)

The attention devoted to Bush’s speech yesterday at the Reagan library has focused mainly on his criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s record on Iraq. I addressed that issue in a separate blog post. But what’s worth stressing is that this was only a short passage in a much meatier speech that laid out concrete proposals for addressing the problems of Iraq and Syria in a way that Clinton has not yet done.

On Iraq, Bush called for doing more to support not only the Iraqi Security Forces but also the Sunni tribes and Kurdish Peshmerga. He also called for sending tactical air controllers to call in air strikes and allowing our advisers to embed with Iraqi military personnel on operations in the way that Canadian Special Forces already do. He did not spell out exactly how much of a troop commitment he would make to Iraq, but he did say “more may well be needed” (beyond the 3,500 already there), even if he also said, “We do not need, and our friends do not ask for, a major commitment of American combat forces.”

On Syria, he called for expanded efforts to train and equip moderate rebels, creating “multiple safe zones,” and a no-fly zone. The last point is especially important. Bush spelled out the importance of a no-fly zone: “Enforce that no-fly zone, and we’ll stop the regime’s bombing raids that kill helpless civilians. It could also keep Iranian flights from resupplying the regime, Hizballah, and other bad actors. A no-fly zone is a critical strategic step to cut off Assad, counter Iranian influence, keep the pressure on for a settlement, and prevent more needless death in a country that has seen so much of it.” Those arguments are strong ones, but even though a no-fly zone has been on the drawing board of years, Obama has never pulled the trigger. Bush said he would. That’s an important commitment.