RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18706/biden-administration-friendliy-iran

Even [Iran’s mullahs] probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

Now, in Natanz, the Iranian regime is digging an underground nuclear facility that is reportedly extremely difficult to bomb.

The problem is that Iranian leaders keep testing the Biden administration with violations — such as increasing uranium enrichment to near weapon-grade levels, the transfer of weapons and oil to Venezuela, attempting to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, trying to kidnap a US citizen on American soil, targeting US bases in Iraq with barrages of missiles, harassing US Navy ships, smuggling weapons in violation of UN resolutions, and turning off International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras that monitor the regime’s nuclear activities — and keep witnessing no repercussions.

As a result, the ruling mullahs have become even more emboldened to ramp up their nuclear program.

Iran’s leaders can also see that the Biden administration is not holding accountable those countries that are violating the sanctions on Iran, including China and Venezuela, which continue to buy Iranian oil.

The Biden administration’s appeasement and inaction, sadly, have done nothing but breed terrorism and transgressions. It is to be hoped that the Biden administration will not leave the world an expansionist, terror state, Iran, imminently armed with nuclear weapons.

Prior to the Biden administration, since the ruling mullahs came to power in 1979, two US administrations — the Obama and Carter administrations — appeared soft on the Iranian regime. Now, the Biden administration seems to have perfected the skill of appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran.

Even they probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/15/good-friday-joe-biden/

Here is the president of the United States speaking in East Jerusalem:

BIDEN in East Jerusalem: “…the background of my family is Irish American and we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years.”

My first thought on hearing Biden’s comment was that the women of Easter Rising would have wanted to string him up for abortion heresy. But jokes (and eternal damnation) aside, it’s difficult to understand what the president is saying here.

Is he contending that the “Palestinian people,” like the Irish, have first claim to the land, ignoring the consistent Jewish presence in Israel since — let’s be conservative — a few centuries before the unified Kingdom of Israel, around 1000 BC, or around 1600 years before the Muslims invaded? Is he saying that the British took control of Israel in 1917 so they could settle the land with foreigners and displace Muslims? Does he realize that the British were in “Palestine” — where they often abdicated their responsibility to protect the Jewish minority — only 30 years, as opposed to 850? Doesn’t the Jew who fled Europe to return to the Middle East have more in common with the Catholic who fled England for Ireland in the 1600s or America later on?

https://carolineglick.com/how-biden-ensured-his-trip-to-the-middle-east-would-fail/

Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, the President published an op-ed in the Washington Post, where he placed his trip to into the context of his overall Middle East policy. A few days later, Israel’s opposition leader, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a brief statement on Biden’s then upcoming visit that spoke directly to the claims Biden made in his article. Taken together, the two communications explain why Biden’s visit was a failure before it even began – and what a successful policy looks like.

Biden’s article, “Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia,” was a political communication to his party’s progressive base. It served a twofold purpose. First, it was an apology to progressives, who are hostile to both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Second, Biden assured progressives that he was not changing course. His Middle East policy to date will remain his policy going forward.

That policy had three major pillars: hostility towards Saudi Arabia and particularly Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS); financial, nuclear and strategic appeasement of Iran; and support for the Palestinians, at Israel’s expense. Biden insisted that he remains true to these positions, but as president, he also has Russia and China to keep at bay.

As he put it, “As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to out compete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-poorly-timed-visit-middle-east-cal-thomas/

“The Middle East has been relatively quiet in recent years. Biden’s trip is unlikely to enhance stability and more likely to stir things up again. It has the potential of being a lose-lose for America and for Israel, which would be quite an accomplishment.”

In 1988, five years after calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow where he addressed an audience of students from Moscow State University. At the heart of his speech, Reagan promoted the virtues and success of liberty and his vision that tyranny would ultimately be defeated (recall his other forecast made to the British Parliament in 1982 that the Soviet Union would end up “on the ash heap of history”).

Contrast those remarks with the current president and his trip to the Middle East. A headline in the Connecticut Post asks the right question: “Biden once wanted to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ – so why is he playing nice with the kingdom’s repressive rulers now?”

Biden will meet with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman (affectionately known as MBS), who has been accused by U.S. intelligence of sending a hit squad to murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Apparently feeling the heat of criticism from people opposed to the trip, Biden felt the need to explain himself in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

In it, Biden makes this ludicrous claim: “The Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago.” He must have forgotten the Abraham Accords, which Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner cobbled together. It normalized relations between Israel and five Arab countries, including Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco, something never before achieved. As usual, Biden gives no credit to Trump.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18698/retreat-small-steps

Thanks to a Treasury Department “interpretation,” Americans can still own stock in companies that were placed on a blacklist by the Trump administration because of their direct ties to the Chinese military.

Thanks to the Biden administration, the “China Initiative” at the Department of Justice to crack down on Chinese attempts to acquire or steal American technology has been discontinued.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s “green energy” enthusiasm, tariffs on solar panels made by Asian countries who are assembling or repackaging solar panels made in China were removed.

The Biden administration has also signaled its intention to remove or lift other tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese products. It has also been friendlier toward Chinese companies such as Huawei and ByteDance (owner of TikTok) in recent weeks.

And all of this has been done with zero concessions from the Chinese government on any of the outstanding diplomatic, military, strategic, health or trade issues that so concern most Americans.

Because the Biden family has been so deeply involved and so vehemently denied their involvement with Chinese business, the next question is as inescapable as the first: Does the flow of money to the Biden family from China influence the foreign policy of the United States?

President Joe Biden has been lying about his knowledge and likely his involvement in his son’s business dealings since at least 2018.

That is the inescapable conclusion to draw from a short voicemail recording discovered on the laptop computer that belonged to his son, Hunter and reported by The Daily Mail and The New York Post recently.

It begins innocently enough. “Hey pal, it’s Dad,” Joe Biden begins. “It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance, just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/does-joe-bidens-sojourn-signal-a-return-to-the-old-middle-east/

(July 12, 2022 / JNS) Former Israeli Prime Minister (and current opposition leader) Benjamin Netanyahu prefaced a public statement that he issued on Monday, ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s arrival in the country on Wednesday, with what some beholders might have misconstrued as a Freudian slip.

It’s uncommon for the savvy orator, who is usually as good at winging speeches as he is at reading carefully scripted ones, to make rhetorical gaffes. But in this case, the error was apt.

“The visit to Israel by President [Donald] Trump—or, rather, President Biden—is an important one,” he began. “It’s important not only because, as a friend of Israel’s, he is expressing the strong alliance between Israel and the United States, but also because from here, he is flying to Saudi Arabia.”

He then pointed out that Biden’s direct flight from Tel Aviv to Riyadh, like that of Trump from Saudi Arabia to Israel five years ago, illustrates the “huge change” in what has become an “actual new Middle East.”

Though he didn’t invoke late Israeli statesman Shimon Peres by name, the dig at the author of the above phrase was implicit: that the common “peace camp” wisdom—of the need for Palestinian statehood before progress can possibly be made with Israel’s Muslim-Arab neighbors—had been wrong all along.

The Trump-brokered Abraham Accords, which have seen blossoming warm relations between Israel, the Gulf States, Morocco and Sudan, with the cooperation of the Saudi king, constitute living proof.

The evidence hasn’t put a dent in the fantasies of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s detractors, however. Some consider the above treaties flawed for excluding the Palestinians.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/two_huge_events_shake_americas_top_allies_and_sleepy_joe_botches_the_responses_to_both.html

Joe Biden, the man “elected” to the presidency because of his supposed foreign policy chops, is out to lunch as two huge events shake America’s top allies east and west.

Start with Japan, where the shocking assassination of a former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has occurred in a nation where this kind of activity is not normal.

According to Reuters:

NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) — Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader, died on Friday hours after he was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election, shocking a country in which political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled.

The shooter opened fire on Abe, 67, from behind as the former premier addressed members of the public on a drab traffic island in the western city of Nara. Japanese media reported that the weapon appeared to be a homemade gun.

Something like this, done by some kind of local freak who made his own gun, is bound to shake Japan, which has always been an open society for politicians to reach out to the voters through street campaigning.  It wasn’t just an attack on a former politician who made a big impact on Japan’s economy and global standing in the world, getting Japan’s military out there as an important check on China, it was an attack on Japan’s tranquil way of life.  Yes, Japan will be shaken by this.

Nation after nation poured in with tributes: 

More from Germany, France, U.K., Sri Lanka, India, Australia, Turkey, Netherlands, Ukraine and other nations in this Axios roundup here.

Joe’s reaction? 

Well, nothing.  Nobody home at the White House.

https://bit.ly/3O0lQj7

*A major goal of President Biden’s July, 2022 visit to the Middle East – in addition to increasing the Saudi and Emirati oil production – is the restoration of the US stature as a reliable strategic ally of the pro-US Arab regimes, and stop their drift toward Russia and China.

*At the same time, Biden pursues a JCPOA-like agreement with Iran’s Ayatollahs and embraces the Muslim Brotherhood.

*However, the attempt to restore the US’ strategic reliability, while aiming for a JCPOA-like accord with Iran’s Ayatollahs and embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, constitutes a contradiction in terms, since all pro-US Arab regimes view Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood as lethal threats. Moreover, they are convinced that a JCPOA-like accord would bolster (as did the 2015 JCPOA) the Ayatollahs’ regional and global subversion, terrorism, fueling of civil wars, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced military systems to rogue entities in the Middle East and beyond.

They are also frustrated by the State Department’s underestimation of the fanatic vision of the Muslim Brotherhood, and taking lightly its terror network throughout the Middle East and beyond (e.g., India and Thailand).