RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://worldisraelnews.com/
Why would Biden go back to the Iran deal? Frankly, we’re baffled.

It didn’t make sense in 2015 when Obama did it. It makes even less sense in 2021. The agreement is a proven disaster, its failings exposed, its critics vindicated.

As Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi write in the January Atlantic: “The agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or destroy a single centrifuge.

The ease and speed with which Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly enriched uranium – doing so at a time of its own choosing – illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with these capabilities.”

Nor did the deal stop Iran from developing advanced centrifuges and ballistic missiles. Nor did it address the Koran-infused ayatollahs’ malignant designs. (Iran’s parliament even debated a bill to set a time limit of 20 years for wiping out Israel.)

All the deal did was limit Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and that for 10 or so years. That’s not a prohibition, that’s a countdown.

As John Bolton summed it up in The Room Where It Happened: “The deal was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope. Although purportedly resolving the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the deal did no such thing.”

If nuclear bombs were skyscrapers, it would be like OK’ing the foundation, superstructure and interior, including the paint – and then telling the builder to hold off on flipping on the electricity until 2026. And here’s $150 million in cash to help you pass the time.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/23/afghanistan-biden-embraces-the-forever-war/

On 7 October this year, it will be 20 years since the US and the UK launched Operation Enduring Freedom. This was the start of what we now know of as the War in Afghanistan.

The operation may not have done much for freedom, but it has certainly endured, despite President Obama giving the operation a name change in 2014. In fact, it is the longest war that the US has ever been involved in. Longer than Vietnam. Longer even than the two world wars combined. It has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, and hundreds of American and British soldiers. The Watson Institute at Brown University puts the overall death toll at over 157,000 and counting.

And for what? The continued impoverishment of one of the poorest nations on the planet? A territory which is held by roughly the same antagonists in the same proportions as it was held 20 years ago? Rarely have so many given so much for so little.

That grim 20th anniversary approaching in October was never meant to be reached, however. Under the conditions of the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, struck between the Trump administration and the Taliban on 29 February last year, the 2,500 US and the 6,500 NATO troops still based in Afghanistan were slated to be fully withdrawn by 1 May this year.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/biden-rationalizes-chinas-human-rights-abuses-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden is so much in the tank for the Chinese regime that he is making excuses for the regime’s horrendous treatment of the Uyghurs, the mostly Muslim ethnic minority living in northwestern China. When asked about the human rights abuses against the Uyghurs during his townhall meeting hosted by CNN on February 17th, Biden chalked the problem up to Chinese history and cultural norms.

Biden said that when China “has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.” Biden went on to explain that “the central principle of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.” And then, in a nod to cultural relativism, Biden declared, “Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”

In other words, forget about universal inalienable human rights, which no government can take away. Biden has opted instead for the notion that each government gets to define human rights for its people that correspond with its country’s own cultural “norms.”

China has detained over 1 million Uyghurs in what amounts to concentration camps, where they have been subjected to gang rape, sterilization, and torture. Xi called the Uyghurs “criminals” who must be remolded and transformed. The purpose of China’s “re-education” of ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs, Xi said, was to guide “all ethnic groups on establishing a correct perspective on the country, history and nationality.”

Biden said during his town hall meeting that he told Xi he would speak out against what Xi is “doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China.” However, when given the opportunity to condemn China’s ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, Biden took a pass. He could have stood by his own Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s affirmation that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. But Biden did not do so.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/21/biden-is-set-to-repeat-obamas-mideast-failures/

Every now and then, America mislays one of its Mideast allies. “Who lost Iran?” they asked in 1979, as the shah’s regime went sideways, the answer being Jimmy Carter and the State Department. “Who lost Egypt?” they asked in 2012, as the Muslim Brotherhood took power, the answer being Barack Obama and the State Department.

“Who lost Israel?” will soon be added to this perplexed ­refrain. The answer will be President Biden and the State Department.

But this time, America will be losing the region as a whole — to its historic rival, Russia. Iranian mischief will wax again, and Washington’s Arab and ­Israeli allies will move on without anyone losing much sleep over what the White House thinks about anything. This is a deliberate strategic choice, and it will lead to the collapse of American ­influence in western Asia.

Team Biden appears bent on reviving the Iran deal at all costs. The costs include completing the Democrats’ turn away from the Jewish state and thoroughly alienating America’s Sunni-Arab clients. In reviving the nuclear deal, moreover, Washington will repeat a failed experiment in the hope of different results.

The Iranian regime won’t ­accept a tougher deal than the 2015 accord, and the Biden ­administration is Obama 3.0: The same team looks to rehabilitate its reputation, not to secure the ­national interest. The Obama-Bidenites will accept any humiliation from Tehran and call it a diplomatic breakthrough.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17090/iran-biden-weak-president

The Arabs say they are worried because Iran sees Biden as a “weak” president, and that is why the mullahs in Tehran and their proxies in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon have increased their terrorist attacks in the Middle East.

Arabs are turning to the Biden administration with the frank plea: Your weak approach to the Iranian regime is already threatening whatever precarious stability exists in the Middle East. It is already emboldening terrorist groups. We are begging you: do not back down to Iranian threats.

Such messages show that many Arabs share Israel’s concern over US and European efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. It is, frankly, the last thing the Arabs want. It will only lead to war and set back the region more years than one would care to count.

It is only one month into his term in office, and US President Joe Biden is already facing criticism from Arabs over his administration’s soft policy toward Iran.

The Arabs say they are worried because Iran sees Biden as a “weak” president, and that is why the mullahs in Tehran and their proxies in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon have increased their terrorist attacks in the Middle East.

“In Tehran’s eyes, Biden is a pushover,” wrote Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper Ashraq Al-Awsat.

“It has only been eight weeks since President Joe Biden was sworn into office, but Iran has already tested him on several fronts. First, thousands of the Iran-backed Houthi militia rushed to threaten the densely populated city of Marib in Yemen. Afterwards, Iranian militias targeted Basra and Baghdad, and more recently, Erbil and Iraqi Kurdistan, with dozens of missiles, killing and wounding several individuals in a US facility. Then Lokman Slim, Iran’s most prominent and vocal opponent in Beirut, was murdered and his body was found on the sidewalk.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/21/is-the-biden-administration-stumbling-into-war/

What causes wars?

Innately aggressive cultures and governments, megalomania, the desire for power, resources, and empire prompt nations to bully or attack others. Less rational Thucydidean motives such as fear and honor and perceptions of self-interest are not to be discounted either. 

But what allows these preemptive or aggressive agendas to reify, to take shape, and to leave tens of thousands dead?

The less culpable target (and wars are rarely a matter of 50/50 culpability) also has a say in what causes wars. The invaded and assaulted sometimes overlooked or contextualized serial and mounting aggression. They displayed real military weakness or simple political ineptness that eroded deterrence. They failed to make defensive alliances with stronger nations or slashed defense investments that made the use of deterrent force impossible. 

In sum, without deterrence and the clear potential in extremis to do an aggressor damage, there can be no meaningful peace negotiations, no “conflict resolution”—unless one believes a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Kim Il-sung can become a reasonable interlocutor across the peace table.

Weakness as Strength, Strength as Weakness

But there are also other more subtle follies that can turn tensions into outright fighting. And they are relevant in the current global landscape as we go not just from one president to the next, but from a realist and tragic view of foreign policy to an idealist and therapeutic one. 

One catalyst for war is a lack of transparency about the relative strengths and will of potential enemies. 

If, even unwittingly, President Biden projects the image that the Pentagon is more concerned about ferreting out wayward internal enemies than in seeking unity by deterring aggressors, then belligerents such as China, North Korea, and Iran and others will likely—even if falsely and unwisely—wager that the United States will not or cannot react to provocations, as it has done in the past. And accordingly, they will be emboldened to provoke their neighbors with less worry about consequences. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-beijing-loves-biden-and-paris-11613937344?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris climate accord on Friday to much media and European applause. Our guess is that China is the most pleased because it knows the accord will restrict American energy while Beijing gets a decade-long free ride.

Paris is a voluntary agreement, and nations submit their own commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The Obama Administration vowed to slash emissions 26% or more from 2005 levels by 2025, but the Trump Administration withdrew from the accord. President Biden has now pledged to reach “net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”

Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden is committing the U.S. without submitting the Paris agreement to the Senate as a treaty. They know it would never get a two-thirds vote for approval, and probably not even a simple majority. Yet the Administration will cite Paris to justify sweeping environmental regulations to raise the cost of fossil fuels and subsidize renewable energy and electric vehicles. It will bypass Congress for much of this.

The economic damage will be real. A 2017 analysis of the Obama Paris commitments, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, predicted a $250 billion reduction in GDP and some 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.