RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/steve-witkoff-and-those-iranian-nukes/

My guess is, we will know soon enough whether the firing of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz heralds a shift in Trump policy, or was merely a personnel decision.

Trump hinted it was the latter just days after Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, invited a journalist to an encrypted Signal chat.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on April 3, the President applauded his national security team for their “big success with the Houthis,” but added this: “Always, we’re going to let go of people we don’t like, or people we don’t think can do the job, or people who may have loyalties to somebody else.”

And the fact that Waltz was not exiled to Outer Slobbovia but sent instead to New York as our United Nations representative, argues that the President continues to respect Waltz and his bold advocacy of America First positions.

That is not the case with Steve Witkoff, one of several people whose names have been floated as Waltz’s successor. Remember that during his first negotiating session with the Iranians Witkoff said it was just fine and dandy for them to retain their uranium enrichment capabilities, just as long as they limited it to 3.67%.

That is like handing them the keys to a dual-motor Tesla and expecting them to keep it below 30 mpH.

Witkoff was summoned back to Washington after he made that statement and was given a very public dressing down by the entire national security cabinet, after which he “remembered” that the President himself had said the Iranians had to totally “dismantle” their nuclear programs, just like Qaddafi did in Libya.

Witkoff is one of many Trump supporters who, while well-meaning, have zero experience or understanding of foreign policy. Just recently, for example, you had Charlie Kirk opining on X that Trump cabinet members and think tankers who opposed a Witkoff-negotiated Iran deal were evil “neo-cons” and “anti-MAGA.”

That kind of talk simply ignores the physics of uranium enrichment, as well as the history of Iran’s forty-year slow walk to a robust nuclear weapons capability.

Charlie Kirk was following on the heels of Tucker Carlson’s hour-long interview with Witkoff in which he blasted the “tremendous pressure for a war on Iran” from the Washington establishment, and heaped praise on Witkoff for his “hope” that dialogue with Iran could clear up “misconceptions” and lead to a full return of Iran to the “league of nations.”

http://bit.ly/4jIt8IJ

Is the Ayatollah regime a threat to the US?

*It has been claimed that Iran’s Ayatollah regime does not pose a threat to the US, nor would a nuclear Iran. Moreover, it has been suggested that just like a nuclear India, Pakistan and North Korea, a nuclear Iran may be a regional threat (e.g., North Korea), but not a global threat to the US.

*However, unlike India, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and China, a nuclear Ayatollah regime would be the first ever apocalyptically megalomaniacal regime. 

Unlike the other nuclear powers, the Ayatollah regime is fully committed to a 1,400-year-old vision, which transcends financial and diplomatic considerations, and is underscored in Iran’s school curriculum, mosque sermons and official media, mandating the regime to topple all “apostate” Sunni regimes and bring the Western “infidel” to submission, especially “The Great American Satan.”

Furthermore, dissimilar to the other nuclear powers, the Ayatollah regime is the leading epicenter of global anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced military systems. Currently, the operational footprint of this apocalyptic regime extends from the Persian Gulf and the Middle East through East, North and West Africa to Latin America (the US’ soft underbelly), the US-Mexico border and the US homeland.

Regime-change pro and con

*The attainment of the noble goal of ending wars and terrorism is preconditioned upon eliminating the world’s leading epicenter of wars and terrorism, which is the (currently) non-nuclear Iran’s Ayatollah regime. Refraining from regime-change in Iran, on the one hand, and pursuing the prevention, minimization and ending wars and terrorism, on the other hand, constitutes a self-destructive oxymoron.

https://tomklingenstein.com/hegseths-reforms-are-what-the-army-needs/

On May 1, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth executed what may be remembered as the most significant act of institutional reform in the American military since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. In a single memo, Hegseth initiated a reorganization of the Army that consolidates command structures, dismantles legacy programs, eliminates bureaucratic dead weight, and restores merit-based advancement. More importantly, it repudiates the reigning progressive orthodoxy that has turned the Pentagon into a symbol of regime decadence rather than national defense.

This reformation, co-led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, reflects not only a strategic shift in military doctrine but a philosophical realignment away from managerial liberalism toward a more classical understanding of executive leadership. It is the kind of executive decisiveness that critics of the administrative state, from James Burnham to Angelo Codevilla, have long argued is necessary to break the inertia of our postmodern bureaucracies. This was not reform by committee. It was an assertion of will.

From Bureaucracy to Battlefield

The Army that Hegseth inherited was shaped by the long war on terror — an era of dispersed, low-intensity conflict that encouraged bureaucratic sprawl and doctrinal stagnation. In 2001, there were 871 generals and admirals serving throughout the Armed Forces. Today, there are roughly 950 — nearly a 10% growth, even though the total force has shrunk by roughly the same percentage over the same period. As War on the Rocks noted in a 2022 piece, this top-heavy structure created a glut of careerists more concerned with promotion boards than combat readiness.

The May 1 directive cuts approximately 40 general officer billets and up to 1,000 civilian staff roles at the Pentagon. In their place, Hegseth has emphasized agile command-and-control, streamlined formations, and the integration of unmanned systems. The retirement of legacy equipment like the Humvee and outdated rotary-wing platforms reflects a sober recognition that great power competition — not counterinsurgency — is now the defining strategic reality.

This modernization is long overdue. A 2021 RAND study found that the U.S. military’s acquisition system “incentivizes risk aversion and conformity,” resulting in a procurement timeline that often stretches over decades. The pivot toward off-the-shelf, commercially adaptable unmanned platforms represents not only a technological update, but a repudiation of the failed industrial-consultant complex that has long dominated defense acquisition.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21581/china-ai-fusion-power

There is an old adage many of us heard from our parents, “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.”

So when China creates military equipment that demonstrates a growing skill at an amphibious invasion, it would be best to ignore their rhetoric and concentrate on what they are doing to create the skills, tactics and ability to invade that democratic bastion across the Taiwan Strait.

As students of history, the Communist giant’s rulers knows full well the difficulty of any invasion that comes from the sea. The British Commonwealth is still traumatized over their World War I amphibious assault on the Turkish Dardanelles Straits, which history records as Gallipoli Campaign. Bogged down on the beach, with Ottoman troops and artillery firing down on them, after months of stalemate, and over a half million casualties combined suffered by both sides, the Allies withdrew. Many New Zealand and Australian soldiers suffered, and memorials abound to their sacrifice.

The harsh lessons of Gallipoli were well understood during World War II, when the Allies faced the Nazi forces across the English Channel. It would be more than a year of planning, the creation of specialized equipment, the training of troops, and months of air strikes before any GI stepped ashore at Normandy on D-Day. Even then, on Omaha Beach, the sands ran red with the blood of Americans killed as they came ashore.

It is apparent the Chinese know full well the challenge of making good on their threat to take Taiwan by military force. The latest reports reveal their creation of sea-going barges with enormous crane-like bridges that can be lowered across mine strewn beaches. Satellite imagery suggests those barges could put ashore tanks as well as soldiers.

While President Donald Trump confronts China’s intent to master the 21st Century through their economic weapons and theft of intellectual property, it is important to recognize Beijing’s ongoing investment in their military capability. Combine this example of amphibious innovation with their construction of aircraft carriers, next-generation fighter jets, Pacific island military bases, and their intent to master artificial intelligence (AI) and nuclear fusion power, and it becomes obvious to all that it matters not what China says. It is what they are doing.

America needs to take notice and appreciate the challenge that faces all of us.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/18/dni-gabbard-must-reverse-stupid-us-intelligence-on-irans-nuclear-weapons-program/

Iran’s nuclear weapons program made tremendous advances over the past four years and can now enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb in less than a week. Despite this fact, America’s intelligence agencies are sticking to their longtime position that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.

This line of reasoning is so ridiculous that a former CIA director once called it “stupid intelligence.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard should do away with this “stupid intelligence” immediately because the evidence for an active Iranian nuclear weapons program is overwhelming and undeniable.

Iran claims it is enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes to produce fuel for its one operational nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, two or three small research reactors, and to make radiopharmaceuticals. This claim is farcical. Iran imports fuel rods for its Bushehr nuclear power reactor because it cannot produce them domestically. Iran could also obtain radiopharmaceuticals and fuel for its research reactors at a much lower cost on the international market.

More importantly, the huge amount of near-weapons-grade uranium Iran is enriching is clearly part of a nuclear weapons program because enrichment at this level can be used for only one purpose: nuclear bomb fuel. Iran can now enrich enough uranium to fuel one nuclear weapon in less than a week and 14 in about four months, according to a February 2025 report by the Institute for Science and International Security.

This is a significant increase from late 2020, when Iran could only enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for two bombs in about 5.5 months.

In addition, Iran has spent billions of dollars to develop a covert nuclear weapons infrastructure and to conduct research on producing nuclear warheads. The Iran Nuclear Archive—secret documents on Iran’s nuclear weapons program stolen from Iran by Israel in 2018—also revealed that Iran has acquired several nuclear bomb plans.

The Iran Nuclear Archive also confirmed that although Iranian officials scaled back their nuclear weapons effort following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the program quietly continued as a classified operation with a sophisticated deception effort to conceal its existence from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and the world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/tulsi-gabbard-digs-the-deep-state/

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has established the Director’s Initiative’s Group (DIG), a task force to investigate weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community, including the CIA and National Security Agency. Gabbard’s best ally for that task passed away in 2021 but left behind strategic guidance for the nation moving forward.

The Italian-born Angelo Codevilla, a Rutgers and Notre Dame alum, served in the US Navy as an intelligence officer both at sea and in the Fleet Intelligence Center, with continued service in the Naval Reserve. Codevilla also served as intelligence analyst at the Bureau for Intelligence and Research in the U.S. Foreign Service, and joined the staff of Sen. Malcolm Wallop on the Senate Intelligence Committee. In 1992 Codevilla authored Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century. Two decades into that new century, the author showed his grasp of the problem America now faces:

America’s Intelligence agencies are the deep state’s deepest part, and the most immediate threat to representative government. They are also not very good at what they are supposed to be doing. Protecting the Republic from them requires refocusing them on their proper jobs.

Intelligence officials abuse their positions to discredit opposition to the Democratic Party, of which they are part. Complicit with the media, they leverage the public’s mistaken faith in their superior knowledge, competence, and patriotism to vilify their domestic enemies from behind secrecy’s shield. (emphases added)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21550/china-cyber-war-against-america

For decades, Communist China’s spies, hackers and businessmen have feasted on the forced transfer of technology from vulnerable US corporate enterprises drawn to the vast Chinese market. Little has been accomplished to reduce this massive theft of intellectual property. US businesses seem to have resigned themselves to such unfair practices as the price of doing business in China.

In the last two years, however, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cyber-attacks against America have undergone a deadly shift that seriously threatens the US’s capability to prevail in any open conflict with China.

The second revolutionary advance in China’s offensive cyber-warfare capabilities that target US interests is more deadly. It threatens a Pearl Harbor-magnitude attack on America. “Volt Typhoon,” aka “Vanguard Panda,” involves the stealthy insertion of potentially debilitating malware into the computer systems that control critical nodes of US infrastructure.

“[W]e have been, over the years, trying to play better and better defense when it comes to cyber. We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us, and that even worse, with the Volt Typhoon penetration, that are literally putting cyber time bombs on our infrastructure, our water systems, our grids, even our ports.” — Mike Waltz, shortly before he was appointed National Security Adviser, CBS News, December 15, 2024.

Trump might also convene a cabinet meeting to assure that all aspects of American public and private capabilities should be mobilized to build resiliency in critical national infrastructure, while simultaneously examining US cyberspace vulnerabilities.

The US also might also go on the offense and target China’s critical national infrastructure, perhaps starting with the Cyberspace Administration of China?

China’s multidimensional war against US interests is already underway and well-documented. One underappreciated dimension of its attack on American primacy, however, is the arena of cybersecurity.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/14/china-would-lose-a-trade-war-with-the-us-gradually-then-suddenly/

No one wants a “trade war” with China, or for that matter with any nation. Nonetheless, China has been waging one for years and is now locked in a tariff recalibration with the Trump administration.

In this American effort to find trade parity and equity, China can do some short-term damage to the U.S., especially in terms of ceasing exports of some pharmaceuticals, phones, and computers. But ultimately, it cannot win—and will eventually lose catastrophically. It will likely accept that reality sooner rather than later.

We are only in the first week of the escalating rhetoric and tariffs. But already China is appealing to its Asian rivals, Australia, and the EU to join in fighting the supposed American bully.

But so far, there are understandably few takers.

An exasperated China is now also running vintage Korean War-era propaganda videos of Mao Zedong bragging about how he was standing up to then-President Dwight Eisenhower.

Does Beijing really believe that airing ossified threats from decades ago—issued by the greatest mass killer in human history to the one U.S. president who warned of the military-industrial complex—is going to win over neutral nations?

Or maybe China thinks calls to Western nations to stop American trade “bullying” will resonate—this, from the greatest trade bully, cheat, and rogue commercial nation in history.

China is running a nearly $1-trillion trade surplus with the world. Its mercantilism is the result of market manipulations, product dumping, asymmetrical tariffs, patent, copyright and technology theft, a corrupt Chinese judicial system, and Western laxity—or what might be mildly called “bullying.” The U.S. accounts for about a third of China’s trade surplus, with most of the EU and Asian nations accounting for the other two-thirds.