RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19944/iran-pocketing-billions

The Biden administration continues to ratchet up its appeasement policies with the ruling mullahs probably to revive the disastrous nuclear deal which would pave the way for the Islamist regime of Iran legally to have as many nuclear weapons as it likes; lift sanctions against the theocratic regime; strengthen the ruling mullahs with additional billions of dollars — for terrorism, nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them, “exporting the Revolution”, and suppressing their own people — and allow them to rejoin the global financial system and enhance their legitimacy on the global stage.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last month that America “will continue to enforce all of our sanctions” and “will continue to push back on Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region and beyond.”

That just is not accurate. Sanctions are not being enforced: Iran’s oil export is booming and has surged above two million barrels a day. The ruling mullahs are now producing ever more oil and selling it at levels close to the pre-sanctions era to countries such as China, which desperately needs it, while the Biden administration has effectively cut off US oil exploration.

“Although we have some other incomes,” former President Hassan Rouhani previously acknowledged, “the only revenue that can keep the country going is the oil money.” – en.radiofarda.com, November 19, 2019.

Instead of enforcing sanctions, the Biden administration has been issuing waivers, making the sanctions appear to be simply cosmetic.

“At least $16 billion has now been made available to Iran without any congressional input—and more might be on the way. Another $6.7 billion is reportedly moving to Iran via the International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights… and reportedly … another $3 billion of regime assets frozen in Tokyo. India and China….” – Richard Goldberg, former White House security official, thedispatch.com, August 15, 2023.

The regime will most likely use the funds to further arm and assist Russia in its invasion of Ukraine; brutalize its own citizens; undermine US national security interests; fund its terrorist and militia groups across the Middle East and expand more deeply into Latin America.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19918/afghanistan-withdrawal-haunts-west

Putin is nothing if not an opportunist, and the images of American forces and their British allies struggling to contain the surging crowds at Kabul airport who were desperately trying to flee the country will have confirmed the Russian leader’s view that, so long as Biden remained in power, he had nothing to fear from the US.

By ordering US forces to withdraw from Afghanistan, Biden effectively gave Putin the green light to press ahead with his invasion plans.

In every sense, the invasion of Ukraine started in Kabul, so much so that the Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine prior to the invasion only got seriously underway after the August 2021 withdrawal.

Now, thanks to the utter incompetence of the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghan crisis, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and most urgently Taiwan all find themselves struggling to deal with the disastrous consequences of the Biden administration’s ineffectual leadership.

Had the warplanes been provided when President Volodymyr Zekensky first requested them at the end of last year, they may have arrived in time to make a calculable difference to the Ukrainian ground offensive, where a lack of effective air cover has slowed the Ukrainian advance.

Biden’s dithering over the issue, with the White House initially ruling out approving the transfer of the jets before eventually changing its mind, now means that it is highly unlikely the warplanes will be in action this year, by which time the Ukrainian offensive will have ended.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has told his army to “prepare for war”, appears to have reached the same conclusion as Putin.

In such circumstances, the Ukrainian people and the Taiwanese could be forgiven for believing that, just as happened in Afghanistan, Biden’s inability to provide effective leadership on the world stage will simply result in them being abandoned to their fates.

It is not just the beleaguered people of Afghanistan who are suffering as a result of US President Joe Biden’s catastrophic decision to arbitrarily end America’s military involvement in the country two years ago.

It is now abundantly clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch his brutal invasion of Ukraine was taken as a direct consequence of the weak leadership Biden displayed over his handling of the Afghan issue.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/25/debate-fireworks-reflect-growing-divide-over-bidens-failed-ukraine-policy/

With the apparent failure of Ukraine’s spring/summer offensive and the Biden Administration’s refusal to offer a peace plan, President Biden’s latest request for $24 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine landed with a thud on Capitol Hill. If approved, total U.S. aid to Ukraine since the war began in 2022 would reach $135 billion.

Sharp divisions over the Ukraine War at this week’s Republican primary debate reflect similar differences in Congress, with the two leading candidates critical of continuing U.S. military support. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opposed more funding unless European states stepped up to “pull their weight.” Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said he would immediately cut off U.S. military aid.

Former President Trump has taken a slightly different approach, calling on Congress to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with congressional investigations into his son Hunter’s business dealings. The former President also has said that if elected, he would negotiate a quick end to the war.

Several debaters strongly disagreed with cutting off U.S. support for Ukraine, with former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Governor Chris Christie arguing that U.S. aid to Ukraine is crucial to the security of the United States, and NATO.

Although Congress is likely to approve the Biden Administration’s new Ukraine spending request, there is growing opposition by lawmakers and the American people over continuing to spend huge amounts of tax dollars on a war they view as an endless conflict in which no vital U.S. interests are at stake.

Biden Administration officials in the spring were optimistic that billions of dollars of additional military aid from the U.S. and European states would lead to a successful counteroffensive, enabling the Ukrainian army to retake a significant amount of territory and force Russia to the bargaining table. It didn’t happen. Russian forces had ample time to prepare a dense network of defensive structures to hold their ground, and Ukraine did not receive the type and quantity of weapons it needed—especially airpower.

President Biden finally agreed to Ukraine’s request to provide it with F-16 fighters in May. But the aircraft did not arrive in time for the counteroffensive and likely will be unavailable until next spring due to delays in training Ukrainian pilots.

The Washington Post reported on August 19 that a new intelligence community assessment does not anticipate Ukraine’s counteroffensive to make significant gains on the ground before the fighting season ends in early November. Although this conclusion tracks with other accounts, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said this week, “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate. We are seeing [Ukraine] continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/08/iran-russia-collaboration-makes-a-mess-of-bidens-foreign-policy/

The administration’s diplomatic engagement with Tehran undermines its support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Since President Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. foreign policy has been directionless and increasingly contradictory. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the rudderless response to Chinese surveillance balloons flying over the contiguous United States, and the erratic approach to support for Ukraine reveal a White House that is more comfortable reacting to world events than shaping them.

This past week, the Washington Post published a report detailing Russia’s progress toward building an army of drones — with Iran’s help. Russia’s goal is “to domestically build 6,000 drones by the summer of 2025” as Iran “covertly provid[es] technical assistance.”

On the one hand, the Biden administration has pledged support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russian aggression: At every turn, the president has affirmed that the U.S. will do everything within its power to help Ukraine maintain its territorial integrity and independence from Russia. On the other hand, this is the same Biden administration that seeks to restore some form of nuclear deal with Iran and just made a lopsided prisoner exchange granting the Islamic Republic access to $6 billion in frozen assets.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19906/biden-iran-nuclear-weapons

The Biden Administration has destabilized the Middle East, launched a potential international nuclear arms race, incentivized global terrorism, increased American taxpayers’ funding both sides of the Ukraine war, crushed even further a people fighting for their freedom and appeased yet another rogue regime — after Afghanistan, China and Venezuela – this time one that the US State Department itself has called the “top state sponsor of terrorism,” Iran, all in one week.

The Biden Administration reached a deal with the Iranian regime behind closed doors on August 10, in which the United States agreed to pay $6 billion dollars and release a handful of Iranian nationals who are serving prison sentences in the US, in exchange for the release of five Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Iran – more than a billion dollars per head.

Worse, more billions apparently, is waiting in the wings.

More importantly, “That [the deal] will encourage hostage diplomacy among our foes is the least of the problems.” — Richard Goldberg, former White House Security Official, thedispatch.com, August 15, 2023.

For a start, the Biden Administration, seemingly to avoid congressional oversight and a potential veto, essentially nullified the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 that requires Congressional approval of any Iran deal, and got away with it.

Moreover, as Goldberg notes, the price for Russia releasing Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich probably just went up, not to mention the extremely real danger of what China, based on its new laws that say might well be tempted to do to visiting American business leaders, or just any American outside wandering around outside the US. According to Voice of America, the new “anti-espionage” law, “relying on espionage organizations and their agents,” as well as the unauthorized obtaining of “documents, data, materials, and items related to national security and interests” can constitute a spying offense.

China’s new law also states that it has the right to “to take corresponding countermeasures and restrictive measures” against acts that violate international law and norms and that “endanger China’s sovereignty, security and development” – apparently meaning that a crime is anything the Communist Chinese government says it is.

The Obama administration shipped $400 million in an unmarked plane to Iran for the release of four Iranian-American prisoners. “Predictably,” Goldberg noted, “Iran took more hostages in the months and years thereafter, believing it could get an even better price from a future U.S. president.”

All this just so the Biden Administration will not have Iran introducing its nuclear weapons breakout while Biden is still in office, especially before an election. After that, thanks to the Biden Administration, unlimited nuclear weapons will presumably be a global free-for-all.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/18/smoke-and-mirrors-middle-east-diplomacy/

Despite recent media stories about two supposed Biden Administration foreign policy “wins” in the Middle East, a closer look indicates these wins are not what they seem and may harm U.S. national security.

One of the alleged wins concerns the Biden Administration’s effort to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. On August 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. and Saudi officials agreed to a framework for a deal under which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli, Saudi, and American concessions. Although Biden Administration officials said this agreement would take nine months to a year to finalize and faced long odds, they also described it as potentially “the most momentous Middle East peace deal in a generation.”

Another alleged Biden foreign policy win, announced on August 10, is a tentative deal to swap American and Iranian prisoners in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian assets held by a South Korean bank. Biden officials said these funds would go through a Qatari bank to ensure they are used only for humanitarian purposes. Five Americans have been released from an Iranian prison under the deal but are under house arrest in Iran until an agreement allowing them to leave the country is finalized.

On the surface, both initiatives appear to be diplomatic breakthroughs. But a closer look indicates the Biden Administration is trying to claim credit for dubious, unfinished agreements and hide some dangerous details from the American public and Congress.

The alleged Saudi/Israel normalization agreement is years away if it ever occurs because it is based on many conditions that will be impossible to meet. Although Congress might agree to the enhanced security assurances that would be part of the agreement, it is very unlikely to approve Saudi Arabia’s demand that the U.S. help it develop a nuclear power program that includes uranium enrichment.

There are other major obstacles to a normalization agreement. For example, the Saudis want concessions from Israel to advance an eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians. Israeli officials say they are open to this but will not agree to a Saudi demand for Palestinian statehood. It is improbable that Palestinian leaders will agree to a new deal without this concession and probably will not agree to any agreement because of their long history of rejecting Israeli peace offers.

The Biden Administration also wants Saudi Arabia to substantially cut back its growing relationship with China as part of a normalization agreement, including not permitting China to establish military bases in the country, not using sensitive technology from Chinese companies like Huawei, and not allowing China to purchase oil with Chinese currency.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/17/the-great-china-american-abyss/

Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us?

What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents, and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property, as they pleased and with impunity?

What if the American government targeted Chinese industries by dumping competing American export products at below the cost of production—to bankrupt Chinese competitors and corner their markets?

What would the communist Chinese government do if a huge American spy balloon lazily traversed continental China—sending back to the United States photographic surveillance of Chinese military bases and installations?

How would China react to American stonewalling any explanation, much less refusing to apologize for such an American attack on Chinese sovereignty?

Envision a U.S. high-security virology lab in the Midwest, run by the Pentagon, allowing the escape of an engineered, gain-of-function deadly virus.

Instead of enlisting world cooperation to stop the spread of the virus, the American government would lie that it sprung up from a local bat or wild possum.

Washington would then make all its relevant military scientists disappear who were assigned to the lab, while ordering a complete media blackout.

America would forbid Chinese scientists from contacting their American counterparts involved in the lab, despite the deaths of more than 1 million Chinese from the American-manufactured disease.

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/08/why-us-sending-3000-navy-marines-force-persian-gulf

A contingent of more than 3,000 US Navy personnel and Marines sailed into the Suez Canal on Sunday as the Biden administration weighs options to deter Iran from seizing commercial tanker ships in the Persian Gulf region.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, along with sailors and Marines of an Amphibious Ready Group led by the USS Bataan and accompanied by the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall, will provide “greater flexibility and maritime capability” to the United States’ Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, the Navy announced today.

What that means: The Pentagon has remained mum on specifically how it intends to employ the Marines, but their arrival is part of a wider buildup of US forces in the region which defense officials described as a response to Iran’s renewed attempts to seize commercial tankers.

The deployment brings additional aircraft, helicopters and amphibious landing craft to join a dozen US F-35s, as well as F-16 and A-10 aircraft and Navy guided-missile destroyers that have already arrived in the region in recent weeks and months to ramp up joint patrols in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has escalated its attempts to seize commercial ships in Gulf waterways in recent months following the US Justice Department’s confiscation of a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, the Suez Rajan, carrying Iranian fuel to China in April. An Iranian navy vessel opened fire on a Chevron-chartered tanker in international waters off the coast of Oman last month after the civilian ship refused orders to stop.

Iran’s navy and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have harassed or seized control of at least 20 commercial shipping tankers in the region over the past two years, according to the US 5th Fleet’s numbers.

Iran’s moves have further driven a wedge into the United States’ strategic ties with Gulf states, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates look to reduce their dependency on Washington for defense.

“It’s drawn Gulf states closer to Iran,” one American official told Al-Monitor last week. “It sends a signal to regional partners that in the absence of US forces, the US is not serious about security.”

Al-Monitor reported last week that senior Defense Department officials have been putting the finishing touches on proposals for wider legal authorities in coordination with the White House to enable the military to intervene more directly to prevent Iran’s seizures of commercial tankers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19867/iran-russia-evade-sanctions

The Biden Administration also tried to deny that it had issued another waiver to Iraq to pay $500 million to the Iranian regime. According to a report by the Free Beacon, the waiver was issued “a day after Biden administration officials denied Iran’s claims that the United States had paved the way for Tehran to receive the $500 million.”

The regime will most likely use the funds to further arm and assist Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, to brutalize its own citizens, to undermine US national security interests, to fund its terrorist and militia groups across the Middle East and to expand more deeply into Latin America.

“Of course the Biden administration lied that they wouldn’t waive sanctions on Iran just days before they did so. They know that by allowing money to pour into Iran, they are not only endangering the safety and security of Americans but also undermining everything they claim to believe about defeating Putin. They say that Iran is a terror sponsor and Russia’s top military backer, but appeasing Iran and getting back into a nuclear deal with the Ayatollah is more important to them. They are funding both sides of the Ukraine war.” — Senator Ted Cruz, Free Beacon, March 24, 2023.

Russia is learning from Iran on how to evade sanctions as well…. Examples include: “the switching of ownership of companies and properties to family members or affiliates, the use of trading companies to source foreign exchange….”

Russia and Iran have signed an agreement to build a sanction-proof $1.7 billion intercontinental rail system for global trade in an apparent effort to compete with the Suez Canal. To bypass sanctions, Iran and Russia in February 2023 also signed an agreement to integrate their banking systems.

Iran recently joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), headed up by Russia and China. The SCO will allow the mullahs to further increase their trade and revenues in spite of sanctions.

Last year, the Biden Administration issued a waiver that had been rescinded by the Trump Administration, permitting companies from Europe, Russia and China to advance work in Iran’s nuclear sites. This was most likely done in the hope of reviving the nuclear deal…

Only because of the Biden administration’s weak leadership, policies of appeasement and reluctance to seriously enforce sanctions have Russia and Iran been able to create so much devastation at such an unprecedented level.