RUTHFULLY YOURS

 https://bit.ly/37RszKK

Will the next US Administration sustain the realization that the clear and present threat of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood to every moderate Arab regime in the Middle East and North Africa (second only to the threat posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs) has been a key incentive for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to conclude the US-backed peace accords with Israel?

Will the next US Administration acknowledge the role played by Muslim Brotherhood subversion and terrorism in Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand security and commercial cooperation with Israel?

According to Prof. Albert Hourani, a leading Middle East historian, Oxford University’s St. Anthony’s College (A History of the Arab Peoples, pp. 445-446), the following are the tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood: “A total rejection of all forms of society except the wholly Islamic one…. The true Islamic society…was the one which accepted the sovereign authority of God [Allah]…which regarded the Quran as the source of all guidance for human life…. All other societies were societies of jahiliyya (ignorance of religious truth), whether they were communist, capitalist, nationalist, [followers of] false religions, or claimed to be Muslim but did not obey the Sharia…. The leadership of Western man in the human world is coming to an end…because the Western order has played its part, and no longer possesses that stock of values which gave it its predominance…. The turn of Islam has come….”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest Islamic terror organization in the world – supported mostly by Turkey’s Erdogan, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Qatar – with political branches throughout the globe (including in the USA), aiming to rid the Arab world of Western “infidel” influence (which drew the current map of the Middle East), topple existing Arab regimes in a subversive and revolutionary manner, Islamize Arab societies, establish a “divinely-ordained” pan-Islamic regime and spread Islam through violence/terrorism, as well as via political and organizational involvement (e.g., the Freedom and Justice Party in Libya, the ruling Ennahdha Party in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, the recently dissolved Islamic Action Front in Jordan, the Islamic Constitutional Movement in Kuwait, Jamaat-e-Islami in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Welfare Party of India).

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-middle-east-and-the-next-administration/

Threats and opportunities, old and new.

A   highly unusual development has thrust itself into the Middle East: some good news. As usual, the Middle East is beset by turmoil and is likely to remain so for the next four years. But new and positive responses to these threats have changed the Middle Eastern landscape. A crucial question for the next four years is whether the U.S. will build successfully on these positive developments or risk their withering away.

These positive developments include, most notably, two new alliances of America’s regional friends. These may be capable of giving America serious assistance in the pursuit of its national interests in the region, not to mention their own. If so, they would fulfill a longstanding American hope of a reduction in the burdens it has borne.

The first and most obvious change is the new alliance between Israel and two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, members of what is called the pragmatic Sunni Arab bloc. This alliance is understood to have at least the implicit support of others, including notably Saudi Arabia, and has the prospect of growing wider and even more capable with the potential inclusion of additional states.

The second, somewhat less noted, positive development is the formation of an alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean designed to protect the region’s waters and their energy resources. Somewhat ad hoc in nature, it now consists of the following countries: Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, France, and the United States, with a possible role for Italy.

Of course, these alliances are the flip side of the threats to peace and stability that the region faces, forces that threaten American interests as well. These are threefold. Two are internal to the region: the revolutionary Shiite regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ambitious and increasingly Islamist orientation of the regime of the Republic of Turkey under its leader, Tayyip Erdogan. To them may be added their respective non-state radical-Islamist allies. But they are now augmented by a third hostile force of external powers and American adversaries: Russia and China, which increasingly seek a powerful role in the region.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/19-billion-in-u-s-taxpayer-money-lost-to-waste-fraud-and-abuse-in-afghanistan-watchdog-finds/

$19 billion in U.S. taxpayer money was wasted or lost in government-funded projects in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2019, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Since 2009, SIGAR has reported on U.S. government funds that have been wasted in the course of rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan. Government and military officials have repeatedly told SIGAR that the U.S. military strategy in the country, and the effort to turn Afghanistan into a “modern” nation, was failing, according to the Washington Post‘s “Afghanistan Papers” report in 2019.

Congress has appropriated $134 billion since 2002 towards reconstruction and nation-building efforts, of which SIGAR has reviewed $63 billion, the agency stated in its new report. Of the amount reviewed, $19 billion—approximately 30 percent—has gone to waste.

SIGAR has identified $3.4 billion lost to “waste, fraud, and abuse” from January 2018 through December 2019 alone. Almost half of that sum spent on anti-narcotics operations, while various U.S.-supported reconstruction efforts were also found to lacking.

“For example, during our review of the Afghan Children Read program, which is…designed to support education service delivery by delivering books to schools, we discovered that principals and teachers at a quarter of the inspected schools found the books provided to the schools were not in usable condition,” the report stated. “In another example, during our review of the Department of State’s Good Performer’s Initiative projects in Kunduz province, we found that a sports stadium, which was built for community use, was not being used.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-middle-east-metamorphosis-11603148243?mod=opinion_major_pos7

George W. Bush and Barack Obama both tried to transform the Middle East. Neither found the kind of success he sought.

But as the U.S. has reduced its regional footprint and ambitions, the Middle East has begun to change on its own. One of the most recent signs of its metamorphosis was Saudi Prince Bandar’s blistering criticism of Palestinian leaders for their decades of poor decision-making. His words are underscored by his kingdom’s decision to open its airspace to commercial flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai. Taken with the United Arab Emirates shifting from not recognizing the Jewish state to building a warm peace and economic partnerships with Israel, it’s clear the region is moving away from the predictable sterility of the past toward something genuinely new.

In the new Middle East, the younger generation is turning its back on religious radicalism, and Arab public opinion is moving to accept the presence of a Jewish state. The Palestinians have lost their position at the center of Middle East politics, and it is Turkey and Iran, not Israel, that Arab rulers are most concerned to oppose.

Last week I asked U.A.E. Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba to explain what was happening, and the first thing he did was point me to recent polls by the Zogby organization and 12th annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, which interviewed 4,000 young Arabs (18 to 24) in 17 countries.

President Trump’s peace plan, which many longtime Middle East experts dismissed as a ghastly blunder that would destroy the American role in Middle East peace negotiations, has turned out to be relatively popular on the Arab street. The Zogby survey found majorities in favor of the “Deal of the Century” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16619/hold-iran-mullahs-accountable

Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”

Holding the Iranian leaders accountable only for human rights violation is not enough. Pressure must be imposed on the regime to stop its military adventurism.

Iran has also, since the beginning of the JCPOA, brought terror and assassination plots to the EU. If the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, they will not even need to use them; just the threat to European cities should be enough to produce instantaneous acquiescence. German intelligence has acknowledged that more than 1,000 members of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, use the country to recruit, raise money and buy arms.

The EU needs to stop its appeasement policies with Iran’s mullahs. It needs to join the US in holding the Iranian leaders accountable.

The only Western government taking concrete steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its human rights violations, destabilizing behavior and aggressive policies in the Middle East is the Trump administration. On September 24, the United States blacklisted and slapped sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities over gross violations of human rights. Sanctions were also imposed on the judge who was involved in issuing the death sentence for the Iranian wrestling champion, Navid Afkari.

The EU, the UN and human rights organization have not taken any tangible action, even after Amnesty International released its report on Iran’s shocking human rights violations. Amnesty International warned that the Iranian regime has committed unacceptable atrocities, including victims being frequently “hooded or blindfolded; punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives, batons and cables; suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months; and denied medical care for injuries sustained during the protests or as a result of torture.”

The United States also imposed sanctions on Judge Seyyed Mahmoud Sadati, Judge Mohammad Soltani, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, and Adel Abad, Orumiyeh for being responsible for gross human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detentions and unjustified executions. Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

“The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”