RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-ballistic-missiles-and-the-folly-of-appeasement-biden-classical-deterrence-defense-system-uae-saudi-arabia-houthis-khamenei-nuclear-deal-11668006270?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The news that Iran’s contribution to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine will soon include ballistic missiles as well as kamikaze drones has alerted the world to the surprising advances the Islamic Republic has made in disruptive weapons technologies. To the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, these technologies are as important as its nuclear-weapons program.

One man who understands this better than most is Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, who retired in April as commander of U.S. Central Command, the military command responsible for the Middle East. Gen. McKenzie recently warned about the impact of Iran’s advances in ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. “Over the past five to seven years, Iranian capabilities . . . have risen to such a degree that now they possess what I would call effective ‘overmatch’ against their neighbors,” he said on Oct. 6 at Policy Exchange, a London think tank. “Overmatch,” he continued, “is a military term that means you have the ability to attack, and the defender won’t be able to mount a successful defense.”

The Iranians essentially have established a balance of power that favors offensive action by Iran. Lopsided defense economics partially explain this: America and its allies spend more money—tens or hundreds of times more—to intercept Iranian missiles and drones than it costs Iran to build and launch those weapons.

More important, when combined in a large strike package, some of Iran’s missiles and drones will inevitably break through America’s defensive shield guarding its allies and military bases in the Middle East. The IRGC combines ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones in strike packages. Each of these systems have different flight characteristics, radar signatures and homing angles. When launched simultaneously they tax the sensors of missile-defense systems. Even the most sophisticated systems operating at peak performance can’t prevent at least some of Iran’s weapons, when launched in significant quantities, from hitting their targets.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/10/qatar-is-the-ally-we-need-to-counter-putins-growing-influence/

Russia’s reprehensible invasion of Ukraine has made one thing clear: The global order is changing. An axis of repressive, authoritarian world powers — all with ties to Vladimir Putin — is growing bolder and more confident, and wants to see America’s influence decline.

It’s more important than ever for the United States and all liberty-minded Western nations to have dependable, moderate allies to counter Putin and his cronies. As policymakers look abroad to cultivate relationships, they shouldn’t overlook Qatar, a rising star on the world stage.

While some folks might have trouble locating Qatar on a map, millions of eyes are about to turn to the Arab nation. Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in November and December, having beat out the United States, Australia, Japan, and South Korea for the bid.

Hosting the World Cup will put the modern capital city of Doha in the limelight and further Qatar’s use of “sports diplomacy” to enhance cooperation, respect and tolerance among all nations. It will also elevate Qatar’s profile on the global stage, much as China used the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as its “coming out party.”

And there’s certainly good reason to pay attention to Qatar. Although smaller than Connecticut, it has the fourth-highest gross domestic product per capita in the world, and is the second-highest exporter of liquified natural gas. It is also home to thriving financial and tourism sectors, as well as the highly influential Al Jazeera media group.

Qatar has long cooperated with the United States and NATO in maintaining security in the Persian Gulf. When the West conducts air operations against Islamic State terrorists, Qatar has often provided space for staging zones.

After the United States withdrew from Afghanistan last year, Qatar helped to evacuate more than 40,000 civilians as the Taliban swiftly took over the country. Qatar has been such a reliable partner that the Biden administration recently designated it a major non-NATO ally.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19104/close-china-consulates

Beijing reportedly has… used the station to track Chinese individuals of interest to the regime and, short-circuiting legal procedures, to persuade those Chinese to voluntarily return to China.

“[T]hey are very bold because they know they can do as they like and the State Department won’t do a damn thing.” — Maura Moynihan, author, to Gatestone, October 2022.

Prior to the recent indictments, the U.S. government often let off Chinese agents with only a warning, sometimes because of intervention by the State Department.

Law enforcement is essential, but it is hardly an answer to China’s massive campaigns against the United States.

One solution is to deny Chinese wrongdoers the safe havens they enjoy in America. China’s principal safe heavens are its embassy and consulates.

[T]he U.S. should also be closing China’s non-diplomatic presences — primarily banks and companies — to even out the situation.

China uses every point of contact to try to bring down America, and American institutions are now being overwhelmed by the onslaught. It may sound drastic to some, but the survival of freedom and democracy in America critically depends on getting the Chinese regime out of the U.S.

The best way to do that is to expel the military officers, spies, agents, provocateurs and criminals finding protection in China’s diplomatic presences in the United States. Nothing else would better communicate resolve to Beijing than getting dangerous Chinese actors off American soil.

The Biden administration should of course be shutting down the Chinatown police station, as well.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tehrans-mullahs-throw-biden-a-lifeline-iran-middle-east-russia-ukraine-drones-weapons-oil-sanctions-china-protests-women-11667849350?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Joe Biden is a lucky man. The heroism of the Ukrainian people saved him from a Russian victory. Now the people of Iran, led by their women, are offering him a historic opportunity to weaken Russia, reduce long-term American vulnerabilities in the Middle East, and even return a sense of caution and sobriety to Chinese foreign policy.

Like many great opportunities, it comes unexpectedly. The Middle East has been a dreary place for Team Biden. The failure to enlist the Iranians in a renewed nuclear deal, the shambolic Afghan withdrawal, the embarrassing fist bump with a price-hiking Mohammed bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral victory: Nothing in the Middle East has gone Joe Biden’s way.

This string of embarrassing failures has confirmed the administration’s determination to downgrade the Middle East as a strategic priority. But the Middle East refuses to stay quiet.

Blowing off Biden administration threats dating back to last summer, Iran is selling sophisticated drones to Russia for use in the war on Ukraine. Those drones have enabled Russia’s latest assault on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure, threatening shutdowns of Ukrainian industry and leaving civilians without light or heat as winter nears. As Robin Wright observes in the New Yorker, Russia salvaged Iran’s position in Syria in 2015 by bolstering the criminal Bashar al-Assad regime. Now Iran is returning the favor by helping Russia in its flagrantly illegal attack on Ukraine.

Enter the women of Iran, whose resistance to clerical bigotry opens the door to a new era in Iranian and even world history.

We do not know whether the Iranian protesters can win. The track record of democratic revolutions across the Middle East is anything but inspiring, and the protesters in Iran have yet to coalesce behind a single group of leaders or political program. But using all the diplomatic and economic tools at America’s disposal to help the Iranian people’s fight for freedom is both the right thing to do and the best way to advance U.S. interests at a critical time.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/patriotism-unity/brazil-lula-pose-challenges-us

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s sort-of concession after his reelection loss to former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva should provide a sigh of relief for democracy backers. It paves the way for a peaceful transition of power in the world’s seventh most populous country.

Bolsonaro is vowing to follow the constitution, and his team is reaching out to Lula. With the military simultaneously scoffing at suggestions that it intervene for Bolsonaro, his protesting supporters will likely now return to their homes. This is no small deal: the election was very close. Bolsonaro is the first incumbent president in Brazil’s 34-year modern democracy to lose re-election, and he previously alleged fraud in its voting system.

Nevertheless, Lula’s victory will nourish a growing challenge for the United States. It means that the region’s seven largest countries now all have leftist governments. Washington will not be able to navigate regional politics through its traditional strategy of trying to isolate far-left regimes. This U.S. challenge, moreover, comes as China, Russia, and Iran — a growing axis of anti-American activity — are increasing their economic, military, and diplomatic influence across the region.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19079/iran-sleeping-nuclear-deal

In spite of US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s recently having said that the White House is not going to “waste our time” on the nuclear deal “if nothing’s going to happen,” he nevertheless stressed that the Biden administration is still committed to employing diplomacy, presumably to revive it at a later date.

Pelosi might recall that although a “deal” would professedly “prevent” Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the reality is quite different. Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons — rapidly — with a deal or without one. Any “deal” appears simply a bribe to the Iranian regime please just not to use their nuclear weapons on the Biden administration’s watch.

Pelosi might also recall that the nuclear deal will reward Russia by allowing it to cash in on a $10 billion contract to expand Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Russian President Vladimir Putin will most likely have a stake in the $10 billion contract.

Pelosi might even further recall that it was the nuclear deal that allowed the brutal regime of Iran freely and legally to export weapons to Russia, in the first place.

Any nuclear deal with Iran will not make the world a “safer place”. It will provide the Iranian regime with billions of dollars, help it to send more advanced weaponry to Russia to inflict even more damage on Ukrainians, pave the way for the ruling mullahs to legally obtain nuclear weapons, and strengthen America’s other adversaries, Russia, China and North Korea.

Now, why would the Biden administration want to do that?

The Biden administration is sitting idly by as the Iranian regime ratchets up, and keeps getting away with, both its attacks on its own fed-up populace, and its delivery of weapons to Russia — assisted, it seems, by China and North Korea.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-tale-of-two-islamic-states/

Biden and the woke Democrats have enthralled themselves in a bizarre love affair with the Mullahs in Iran, while repelling energy and capital giant Saudi Arabia.

The strategic imbecility of this position amounts to geopolitical malpractice. It has emboldened the Iranian regime to murder Americans around the world, including threatened attacks against our former president and members of his administration, and to ruthlessly suppress dissent at home.

It also has driven the Saudis into the arms of Russia and Communist China, a consequence so avoidable to be simply idiotic.

Scratch your head all you wish: you will not find a rational explanation for such a policy because there is none.

Such is the World According to Joe.

Where are the feminists and the Woke Left when Iranian women and girls throw off their head-scarves and taunt the Islamo-fascist storm troopers linking elbows in the streets? Where are Joy Reid, Kamala Harris, or Sandy “AOC” Cortez? Instead of supporting the Iranian Revolution of 2022, they are shrieking at “Mega Maga Republicans” as the enemies of –uh– people-kind.

But the Woke Left doesn’t just tacitly support the murdering mullahs of Tehran. Before Elon Musk walked into Twitter headquarters last Thursday with his kitchen sink, the faceless brown-shirted “moderators” at Twitter suspended the account of an Iranian hactivist group called “Black Reward,” while maintaining the anti-Semitic hate-America rants of the Supreme Turban, phony ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19057/congress-support-ukraine

[R]educing American support for Kyiv — as some American politicians are suggesting — will not only constitute an unconscionable betrayal of the Ukrainian cause. It will encourage Putin, and allies such as Iran, to conduct further acts of territorial aggression.

[I]t is, perhaps, inevitable that a degree of conflict fatigue has set in among some politicians. But with Ukraine still managing to inflict significant defeats against its Russian adversary, the Ukrainians require more support, not less, if they are to succeed in their goal of achieving a conclusive victory and liberating their country from Russian occupation.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, caused controversy earlier this month when he said that Republicans would not be prepared to write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win control of the House at next month’s midterm elections.

McCarthy’s words provoked a fierce response….

Ukrainian officials also expressed “shock” at his comments as only a few weeks ago, during a visit to Washington, they had received an assurance from McCarthy that “bipartisan support of Ukraine in its war with Russia will remain a top priority even if they win in the elections”, said David Arakhamia, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s party in parliament.

The prospect of a new “axis of evil” being formed between two rogue states such as Russia and Iran is certainly a prospect that should encourage Western leaders to harden their support for Ukraine, not back away from it.

Any attempt by the US and its allies to appease the Kremlin over its unprovoked aggression towards Ukraine will simply encourage Moscow and Tehran in the belief that the Western powers lack the courage and resolve to resist their attempts to spread their malign influence across the globe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin might be suffering a humiliating military defeat in Ukraine, but reducing American support for Kyiv — as some American politicians are suggesting — will not only constitute an unconscionable betrayal of the Ukrainian cause. It will encourage Putin, and allies such as Iran, to conduct further acts of territorial aggression.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19051/russia-iran-evil-emboldened

Despite this escalation [Iran supplying suicide drones to Russia], the European Union would not admit that the Iranian regime was entrenched in the war on Ukraine: EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wanted “proof”….

Iran’s regime, apparently even more emboldened, then began sending troops to Crimea to assist Russia in its attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian population and to increase the effectiveness of the suicide drones.

“Ukraine currently doesn’t have effective air defense systems against ballistic missiles,” Ukraine Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat pleaded. “Iran will likely supply those (to Russia), unless the world finds a way to stop it”.

There is still clearly a need in Ukraine to “close the sky,” a request that Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi rejected.

So, as a result of the Biden administration, the new “Axis of Evil,” Russia and Iran, are becoming more empowered and emboldened than ever. It is now time to abandon the “nuclear deal” with Iran permanently, “close the sky” over Ukraine, and quickly defeat Putin. At least it will show the other aggressors there is no way they can win.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s leadership, or remarkable lack thereof, the ruling mullahs of Iran have become a key player in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Iranian regime and Russia are ratcheting up their military cooperation and adventurism.

On March 2, Iran abstained from the United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 condemning Russia’s invasion and demanding Moscow’s withdrawal from Ukraine. Tehran then voted against UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3, which suspended Russia’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council.