RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20319/confronting-iranian-regime

Any evaluation of the Biden administration’s policy towards the Iranian regime (and towards the Palestinians) reveals a failure: the deadly Western miscalculation that “being nice” will be reciprocated. In the culture of the Middle East, that simply does not work. Instead, one is looked on as a gullible sucker or juicy “mark,” like a jolly drunk at a strip club.

As Osama bin Laden pointed out, especially for his region, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

Former U.S. Army General Jack Keane recently noted that many possible targets are already on “the list” and suggested taking out the military installations that have been launching such attacks. Other possible responses floated include sinking Iran’s spy ship currently in the Red Sea and taking out Iran’s military communications systems.

If Iran itself is not made to pay a price, it will simply continue using its proxies to escalate aggression and take the hits. After all, that is why Iran has proxies in the first place.

The Biden administration’s reluctance to robustly respond to the rogue Islamist regime of Iran apparently only reinforces the inclination of Iran’s political and military leadership to inflict more harm.

When US responses lack decisiveness, the Islamic Republic interprets this “restraint” as a failure of nerve on the part of the US and the international community. Such leniency, it seems, simply invigorates the regime to persist in disrupting regional and global stability, and escalate its assertive military maneuvers and support for terrorist activities.

As Osama bin Laden pointed out, especially for his region, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/19/trying-to-explain-bidens-bumbling-policy-on-the-houthi-rebels-and-iran/

During recent interviews with two Arab-language TV networks, I was asked to comment on the Biden administration’s announcement that it has re-designated Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization. The programs’ hosts asked me to explain why this decision took so long and whether it indicates a significant change in the Biden administration’s policy.

My explanation puzzled the Arab TV hosts.

I started out by explaining that, despite press reports that the Biden administration reversed its 2021 decision to take the Houthis off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, this is not exactly correct.

At the beginning of the Biden administration, the president rescinded decisions by President Trump to place the Houthis on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and to name the group a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization (SDGT).

The FTO designation represents the generally known U.S. terrorist group list; the SGDT is a little-known, weaker designation. The Biden administration only restored the SGDT designation and postponed enacting it for 30 days. Under this designation, Houthi members can apply for a U.S. visa; it is not a crime to support them; and U.S. banks are not required to seize Houthi funds.

Moreover, tough sanctions against the Houthis imposed as part of the Trump administration’s FTO designation will not be reimposed.

The Arab TV hosts were incredulous about my explanation and asked why the Biden administration would reimpose a weak terrorist designation against the Houthis and why, after three months of Houthi missile and drone attacks against Israel and Red Sea shipping, it took Biden administration officials three months to make this decision.

I answered that this decision was made for domestic political reasons in response to growing criticism in the U.S. of how President Biden is handling increased instability in the Middle East after the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel. This was a symbolic move that allowed the White House to inform the press that the president was doing something in response to this instability. It was not a serious response to the Houthi missile and drone attacks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-and-bob-casey-fail-the-israel-test-gaza-hamas-pennsylvania-senate-ca1056bb?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Mr. McCormick, a combat veteran and former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.

You could hear the demented joy through the phone. A young man standing in the Mefalsim kibbutz called his parents back in Gaza to brag about murdering 10 Jews on Oct. 7. They were elated.

That was but one episode in a gut-wrenching 47-minute compilation of recordings and videos from that horrific day that I watched in a Tel Aviv hospital during a recent trip with my wife, Dina, to Israel. A father executed in cold blood in front of his children. Entire families burned alive in their homes. Women staggering and bleeding through their clothes after being raped. Beheadings. Baby after baby, slaughtered. It isn’t possible to watch this footage without concluding Hamas must be wiped off the face of the planet.

The footage should be a wake-up call for those in power and mandatory viewing for every member of Congress, Biden administration official, and delegate to the United Nations. It’s a window into the evil underlying Hamas, and jihadism more broadly, that will shake any leader with a conscience.

Some of America’s leaders need to be shaken. Thus far, Israel has counted on bipartisan U.S. support, but the chorus of Democratic dissenters is growing louder, influenced by pro-Hamas activists in our streets. Sen. Bernie Sanders has called to cut off all military aid to Israel, while other Democrats are insisting on a cease-fire that would leave Hamas in charge in Gaza.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/05/irans-nuclear-weapons-program-is-accelerating-because-of-joe-biden/

According to a new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, Iran increased the rate of its production of near weapons-grade uranium (60% uranium-235) in late November 2023. This increase ended a slowdown of Iran’s 60% uranium enrichment that began in mid-2023 and increased the number of nuclear weapons it could theoretically make and the amount of time to construct them.

Iran’s recent ramp-up of uranium enrichment followed warnings last year that the number of nuclear weapons Iran could construct has become dangerously high.

A March 2023 assessment report by the Institute for Science and International Security indicated that Iran could enrich enough weapons-grade uranium (90% uranium-235) for one nuclear weapon in 12 days. In mid-November, the Institute assessed Iran was capable of making enough weapons-grade uranium “for six nuclear weapons in one month, eight in two months, ten in three months, eleven in four months, and twelve in five months.”

Iran enriching uranium beyond the 60% level is reportedly a red line for Israel and could trigger Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Although it is not clear whether or when Iran will make the jump to weapons-grade enrichment, alarms were raised in mid-November that Iran has taken steps to prevent the IAEA from detecting just such a move when it barred the agency’s most experienced and expert inspectors from entering the country. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi called this “a serious blow” to his agency’s capability to conduct meaningful inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities.

This means Iran could start enriching uranium to weapons-grade at any time without being detected.

If Iran took this step, any weapons-grade uranium it enriched would be in the form of a gaseous uranium compound that would need to be processed into uranium metal to fuel a nuclear weapon. This would take about a year. Iran would probably conduct one or two underground nuclear tests before adding a nuclear weapon to its arsenal. Any one of these moves could trigger Israeli airstrikes.

An Enormous Biden National Security Failure

The most damning element of this story is that Iran did not begin enriching uranium to near-weapons grade until Joe Biden became president.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20273/us-lack-of-resolve

Bluntly put, the nations of the Free World have allowed global commerce to be held hostage by the revolutionary group of theocrat terrorists in Iran and their tribal terrorist tool in Yemen.

The primary problem seems to be that so far at least, there has been no attempt to hold the ringleader, Iran, accountable economically, militarily, hold-on-power or any way. This, incidentally, is the same Iranian regime that has lately escalated its enrichment of uranium to near-nuclear weapons capability, and has now moved a warship to the Red Sea.

That is why the Iranian regime has proxies: so that they will do the dirty work and take the hits — while the Iranians tuck into dinner.

You can be sure that Communist China’s leaders are closely evaluating the inadequate US responses to more than 100 attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq — just since October.

America’s role as guarantor of global freedom of navigation and defender of “Law of the Sea” treaties is taking a hit. The Biden administration continues to dither rather than to act decisively in liquidating the capability of Iran’s proxy, the Yemeni Houthis, who have been effectively blocking passage of commercial ships in and out of the Red Sea, decimating traffic through the Suez Canal. The December 31 counterattack by US naval helicopter gunships, which sank three Houthi attack boats, was a good start but did not solve the problem.

The US military’s Central Command reported that, since November 19, the Houthis have attacked 23 ships. This Iran-backed assault has caused several of the world’s largest shipping companies to suspend voyages through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, a route that normally enables the passage of 30% of the world’s container traffic, 9.2 billion barrels of oil a day, and 4% of the shipping of natural gas.

The shipping giants that are pausing normal operations as a result of Houthi attacks may also be illustrating serious failing confidence in US pledges to protect freedom of navigation in the region. Ships are being forced to haul cargo in a detour around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, a route that lengthens their voyage by about 6,000 nautical miles.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Houthis’ patron, closed out 2023 by launching its seventh drone attack on December 24 on a Japanese-owned freighter in the Indian Ocean.

Bluntly put, the nations of the Free World have allowed global commerce to be held hostage by the revolutionary group of theocrat terrorists in Iran and their tribal terrorist tool in Yemen.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/29/upcoming-u-s-presidential-election-could-fuel-global-instability-in-2024/

A failed, last-minute visit to Mexico by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week perfectly reflected the Biden Administration’s dismal foreign policy record in 2023 and what may lie ahead in 2024.

Blinken and Mayorkas traveled to Mexico City to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss how to stem the surge in illegal migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico. But instead of offering constructive proposals to address this crisis, López Obrador mocked Blinken and Mayorkas by dismissing the border crisis as a U.S. problem, called for opening border crossings, and urged the U.S. to strengthen its ties with Cuba and Venezuela.

This latest Biden Administration foreign policy debacle reflected how world leaders increasingly view Joe Biden as a weak and indecisive leader with an incompetent foreign policy. This debacle also reflected the incompetence of Biden’s foreign policy team because López Obrador was allowed to ambush Blinken and Mayorkas. A competent state department would have ensured this visit was a scripted affair, with differences between each country resolved privately and in advance during lower-level meetings.

Blinken and Mayorkas traveling to Mexico without knowing what López Obrador would offer was a rookie mistake one would expect during the first few months of a new U.S. administration, not from one that has been in office for almost three years.

The outcome of the Blinken/Mayorkas Mexico trip and Biden’s refusal to implement serious measures to stem the flow of illegal migrants crossing the U.S. southern border will have major security implications for the United States in 2024. Given a growing perception that Biden may be a one-term president who will be succeeded in January 2025 by a new president who will take aggressive action to close the border, the United States will likely see the largest surge of illegal immigration in history in 2024 as migrants from around the world rush to Mexico to take advantage of Biden’s weak border security policies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20241/stop-irans-mullahs

If the Biden administration thought that by rescuing Iran’s economy, which had hit bottom, and removing the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terror Organizations would make both Iran into an ally, the generosity appears to have backfired.

If the Iranian regime is allowed to advance to nuclear weapons capability, it will be on course finally to drive the US out of the region; threaten its oil-rich neighbors; destabilize Europe; deploy military assets in Venezuela and Cuba, and, at last, come for the “Great Satan,” the United States.

It must be made unmistakably clear to Iran that the United States will not allow Iran’s current regime, a designated state sponsor of terrorism, to arm itself with nuclear weapons and emerge as yet another global nuclear threat in the Middle East, Europe and South America.

The Biden administration’s policies of placating the ruling mullahs of Iran and their proxy, Yemen’s Houthis, have clearly failed. If the Biden administration thought that by rescuing Iran’s economy, which had hit bottom, and removing the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terror Organizations would make both Iran into an ally, the generosity appears to have backfired. Iran’s regime financed and helped plan the invasion of the invasion of Israel by Hamas, which is another Iranian proxy. Iran has been arming the Houthis to target US and its allies in the region, and disrupt the shipping in the Red Sea, and Iran’s militias in Syria and Iraq have fired on US troops more than 100 times just since October 17.

It is only the warships that the Biden administration helpfully placed in the Eastern Mediterranean that have most likely deterred yet another Iranian proxy, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, from further escalating their attacks on Israel’s north. The Iranian regime has become disruptive to the highest level since the Iran-Iraq war, and unfortunately, due to what seems a hugely misguided security paralysis in Washington D.C, shows no signs of letting up.