RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/republicans-and-democrats-see-the-iran-deal-for-what-it-is/

“But perhaps the greatest sign of the deal’s weakness is that its own authors have walked away.”

Though President Biden promised a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal that currently sits on the table is weaker and more dangerous.

Republicans, who fought against Obama’s JCPOA, are predictably calling for an end to negotiations.

Earlier today, Republicans from the House Foreign Affairs Committee hosted a press conference to denounce Biden’s Iran deal. Congressman Andy Barr (R., Ky.) said Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy was working, and Biden’s current attempt amounts to a “flawed deal” that cannot go forward. To Barr and his colleagues, the JCPOA-minus is “flawed in process, flawed in substance, and flawed in verification protocols,” according to Barr.

As I wrote yesterday, Obama’s (already weak) Iran deal has always been a partisan issue — that is, until Biden botched it even further. Now even Democrats are speaking out.

Earlier today, Democratic Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Elaine Luria of Virginia led a press conference representing a group of 18 House Democrats in opposing the deal. Luria started off saying, “As a group, we have a variety of concerns; everywhere from concern about the negotiations all the way to . . . outright opposition.”

Congressman Juan Vargas (D., Calif.) criticized Biden for keeping Congress “in the dark” despite “fatal flaws.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/robert-malley-appeaser-extraordinaire-john-perazzo/

During his first few days as President, Joe Biden named Robert Malley as his U.S. Special Envoy for Iran. Malley has a long history of antipathy toward Israel, as well as a profoundly deep reserve of patience with Iran and other enemies of the Jewish state. Most notably, he helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 — known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — and he subsequently opposed the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions against Tehran. From the start of his tenure with the Biden Administration, Malley called for the U.S. to return to the JCPOA as swiftly as possible, and to fully dismantle the sanctions that Trump had reimposed on Iran.   

Talks between the Biden Administration and Iran began formally in Vienna in April 2021, but were paused shortly before Iran’s presidential elections in June. Then, in late November, Tehran dispatched to Vienna a new negotiating team whose diplomats made more demands and offered fewer concessions than had their predecessors. By December 3, the talks had stalled. Six days later, Malley, conveying the Biden Administration’s desperate desire to strike some sort of agreement, stated that U.S. negotiators would be willing to sit down with their Iranian counterparts “at any time and any place” – preferably “face-to-face.” America, said Malley, was “prepared to get back into the deal as soon as possible – as soon as Iran is.” “Then,” he added, “we would lift all of the sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA.”

But as of today, no deal with Iran seems to be on the horizon. As recently as March 27, Malley admitted to having little faith that the JCPOA could be revived anytime soon. “I can’t be confident it is imminent,” he lamented, noting how hard it is to bridge the gap.”

Americans can only hope and pray that Malley and his cohorts are not successful at reviving the JCPOA – or anything even remotely resembling it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18400/biden-afghanistan-aid

After Biden’s retreat, the Taliban have consolidated control over Afghanistan. And over all the hungry children, the girls deprived of an education, and all the other sob stories that kept a river of private charity and taxpayer money flowing into a hellhole in which nothing ever got better.

That’s on top of the $782 million in “humanitarian aid” allocated to Afghanistan last year since the Taliban took over. This year, Biden signed an executive order allocating $3.5 billion of the Afghan assets held in the Federal Reserve for the same purpose. But even not counting those funds, Biden has dedicated $986 million to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over.

That’s nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money and nearly $4.5 billion in total funds.

The Biden administration keeps insisting that the money won’t go to the Taliban. That’s as plausible as its previous claims that the Afghan government wouldn’t collapse, that if it did we would be ready, and that all Americans would be evacuated before Kabul fell to the enemy.

There’s no one with less credibility on Afghanistan than a member of the Biden administration.

The Taliban have been hungry to get their hands on foreign aid, but, likely guided by their Qatari backers, they’ve also been clever about it. They proposed a joint body with the international community to dispense aid. When that didn’t work, they went back to their usual strategy of pressuring NGOs to hire Taliban members to determine where the aid should go and who should distribute it. But that’s just a matter of cutting out the middleman for more direct control.

Since the NGOs rely heavily on local labor, all the Taliban have to do is intimidate Afghan employees into following their orders. And for a terror group that practices mutilation and beheading, that’s not hard. Does anyone really believe that an Afghan with a wife and children living under Taliban rule is going to follow our aid guidelines rather than those of the gunmen

The Taliban, like the Houthis in Yemen and other Islamic terror groups who both cause and profit from famines, have already been distributing and taking credit for humanitarian aid.

Portions of the nearly $1 billion in foreign aid stolen from the paychecks of American workers and the mouths of their children will be used to finance a new Jihad against Western nations.

A generation after 9/11, Americans are once again funding the terrorists who are out to kill them.

Over two decades, the United States and its international partners poured billions in humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. Much of that aid went into the pockets of the Taliban.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18398/us-lead-lose-ground

Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored.

The US must — in the best interests of the United States — immediately deliver the weapons Ukraine needs to forestall future predators such as China, Iran and North Korea. What happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine.

The longer the US shilly-shallies, the longer urgently needed weapons fail to reach Ukraine, the more it invites other predators.

Ukraine must have — now – not only the weapons it needs to combat Russia’s carnage, weapons to “close the skies,” …such as S-300s and S-400s and Migs that the Ukrainians could pull over the border; it must also have heavy weapons — planes, tanks and long-range anti-ship munitions — that Zelenskyy is requesting to repel Russia’s assault to sever Ukraine from the Black Sea, and landlocking the country to suffocate all means of commerce.

One wonders, as Kasparov suggests, if the Biden administration secretly wants Putin, “the devil you know,” to win.

“Everything I hear from other NATO members is that the U.S. has become the obstacle, and an explanation is required. Allowing Mr. Putin to keep an inch of Ukrainian soil after bombing civilians should be unimaginable. Conceding large areas of eastern Ukraine to the invader in exchange for a cease-fire would only give Mr. Putin time to consolidate and rearm for next time—and there will always be a next time.” – Garry Kasparov, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2022

Kazakhstan, too, had an inspirational leader, Serikzhan Bilash, willing to fight for freedom. Many in the media and the Biden administration have completely ignored him and the struggle of the people of Kazakstan.

Another rising voice of freedom is that of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the opposition in Belarus, who is fighting to keep her country on the side of freedom. She, along with Zelenskyy, and Bilash represent the dreams and aspirations of thousands, likely millions, of people within their homelands. They are risking everything for the ideals that America and the West claim to hold dear.

[S]upporting those leaders who are out front should be easy. Why is America not supporting them further? Why are Russia’s generals and military leaders not being threatened? Why are America’s attempts at sanctioning Russian energy and all of Russia’s oligarchs, their families and their businesses so incomplete and half-hearted?

There is no diplomatic way out of this war.

The U.S. not only needs to recognize the power of these defiant leaders, but do more—much, much more — to help them. That is what is in the strategic interests of the United States.

The world is seeing Vladimir Putin’s clear plan to reestablish the Russian Empire. It also is hearing rumblings from Asia about restoration of a Chinese dynasty, and in the Middle East, a return to when Persia — now an extremely different Iran — dominated the region.

For any of these empires to expand, they need to take control of other states or groups of people. Those states can either be overrun and annexed, or they can be controlled and remain smaller, more manageable political units. Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/04/03/putin-wont-go-russia-wont-collapse-so-what-will-biden-do-about-ukraine-n1586600

Another seance with the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu explains Putin’s objectives in Ukraine: Russia will ruin and depopulate Ukraine, the way Richelieu reduced large parts of Germany to cannibalism during the Thirty Years War. Shortly after I conjured the spirit of Europe’s greatest (and nastiest) strategist, the Telegram channel of Russia’s most fanatic nationalist, Aleksandr Dugin, featured the item below:

NATO says the military phase of the conflict in Ukraine is far from over. Of course, no one will let Zelensky make peace.

Ukraine is not a subject, but an object, where the Zelensky regime is not an actor, but a tool.
“Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the intentions of the enemy and use the period of the military phase of the operation to continue the methodical destruction of the military infrastructure of Ukraine, and taking into account NATO’s course of prolonging the conflict, it is advisable to consider moving on to the destruction of industrial facilities in the territories of Ukraine that lie outside our interests, especially paying attention to those objects that Ukraine, for obvious reasons, will not be able to restore. Later, such a convenient opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine may not present itself.

An “opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine.” Putin isn’t defeated or baffled or confused. He’s turning the crank on the meatgrinder. One doesn’t have to read too far into these lines to conclude that Putin hoped that Zelensky would cut a deal on his terms once Russia invaded, but when Zelensky refused to cut a deal, Putin moved to Option B, which is to erase most of Ukraine from the face of the earth. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Putin will keep the bits he wants in the Southeast (Donetsk and Luhansk), leave the West to factory farming, and pound the rest to rubble with artillery and air power.

Kamala Harris in Jamaica”

“We also recognize just as it’s been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue, that is economic in the way of its impact, has been the pandemic,” Harris said. “So to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to what, I believe, is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”

HUH???

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/29/emboldened-enemies-and-disappointed-allies-americas-decaying-status-in-the-middle-east/

On March 12, Iran launched 12 missiles, targeting Erbil in northern Iraq. The missiles landed near the U.S. consulate there and most reports indicated that the strike’s impact was restricted to material damages, with only one civilian injured by the attack. According to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, their target was an Israeli Mossad operational center, which they described as “the Zionists’ strategic center of plotting and evil.”

This brazen and aggressive action on behalf of Iran against neighboring Iraq is far from a rare occurrence. This was the first time in recent years, however, that Iran openly acknowledged its responsibility for such an attack. The wording of the IRGC’s statement, along with the timing of this dangerous escalation in the region can only be understood in light of global developments, particularly given the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin also framed as a military action against evil, neo-Nazism in this case.

Simply put, as Iran’s current hawkish leadership witnessed the feckless Western response to Putin’s military adventurism, it felt emboldened to test the waters and target the American consulate or an Israeli operational center in Erbil. Either possible target was probably good enough to make the point that Iran is capable of inflicting enough hurt on Western interests in the Middle East and that it anticipated no serious retaliation, another parallel with Russian expectations when they invaded Ukraine. In fact, no retaliation followed and Iran’s aggression against its neighbor went unpunished.

As it happens, I was on a trip to Lebanon when the events in question took place. Wanting to hear people’s opinions on Iran’s actions, I was not very surprised to witness a general consensus concerning rationalizations of Iran’s deed.