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The US State Department has rejected the regime-change option (which would gratify most Iranians) since 1978/79, when Iran’s Ayatollahs seized power, assisted by the State Department, which had stabbed the back of the Shah, who had been America’s Policeman in the Gulf.

Instead, the State Department has embraced the diplomatic option, which has generated hundreds of billions of dollars to the Ayatollahs – notwithstanding their systematically anti-US policies – facilitating their surge from a non-leadership regional stature in 1979 to global prominence, militarily and diplomatically in 2024. Furthermore, the diplomatic option has substantially upgraded the Ayatollahs’ support of terror entities such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

*In 2024, independent of potential nuclear capabilities, the conventional military capabilities of Iran’s Ayatollahs constitute the most critical epicenter of anti-US global terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced missiles and predator unmanned aerial vehicles. 

The Ayatollahs’ conventional capabilities are a clear and present danger to the US homeland (e.g. proliferation of sleeper cells on US soil and the tight collaboration with Mexico’s drug cartels) and national security. Since the early 1980s, the Ayatollahs have severely eroded the US’ strategic posture in Latin America. In addition, the Ayatollahs pose an imminent lethal threat to every pro-US Arab regime, especially the oil-producing regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain), aiming to seize control of 48% of the global oil reserves.

*In 1978/79, the State Department deluded itself that Ayatollah Khomeini would be controlled by moderate advisors, distancing himself from Moscow, focusing on introducing liberty to the Iranian people, refraining from the exportation of the Islamic Revolution, evolving into an Iranian edition of Ghandi.

In 1978/79, the State Department policy doomed the pro-US Iran, transforming it into a venomous anti-US octopus with its tentacles stretched from the Persian Gulf, through the Middle East and Africa to Latin America and the US homeland.

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/north-korea-and-iran-the-evil-axis-of-missiles/

New ‘Partnership’ Of Evil: North Korea and Iran – It should not surprise us that Iran is acquiring technology and ballistic missiles from North Korea. The newly resurgent “Axis of Evil” is alive and well in 2024.

North Korea has always needed hard currency, and providing the missiles and technical know-how to Iran in exchange for monetary funding and goodwill is irresistible to diabolical North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Sadly, the DPRK has been working with Tehran on missile tech for years, and the results of that partnership could have wide-ranging impacts all over the Middle East and, specifically for Israel.

North Korea Aids Iran in Missile Development

Iran, for example, has a ballistic missile it calls the Emad. This model is actually a Shahab-3, which itself is a copy of the North Korean ballistic missile called NoDong. The Emad has a more extended range than the NoDong that enables it to strike Israel, and it is essential to note that the North Koreans have their fingerprints all over the Emad.

History of Iranian and North Korean Partnership

The North Korean and Iranian missile partnership has been active since the 1980s when Tehran acquired the Hwasong-5 missile from the DPRK for use in the Iran-Iraq War.

This led to the development and transfer of the improved Hwasong-6 from North Korea to Iran. In the 1990s, the North Korean Hwasong-7, with five times the range of the Hwasong-5, proliferated in Iran. This put American military installations in the Middle East, including the entirety of Israel, within range. The Hwasong-7 could hold more fuel and a bigger payload.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/24/israeli-innovation-exposes-ineffective-american-defense-sector/

Israel’s recent attack using beepers containing remotely triggered explosives stands out as an incredibly innovative and daring operation. Nothing like it has previously taken place, and it has undoubtedly disrupted the security of its enemies in Hezbollah.

Israel has long been at war with its neighbors, including both nation-states and terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Whether the current war in Gaza, earlier wars in Lebanon and the Sinai, or the long-simmering war with extreme elements among the Palestinians, it is unclear whether their recent operations will have much long-term impact. In other words, these conflicts seem fated to continue indefinitely.

The operation may even backfire slightly. Recall that Osama bin Laden stopped using satellite phones after revelations of American tracking. The now-apparent risk from the simplest cellular technology likely means that Hezbollah’s fighters will be even less able to use modern technology, whether email, phones, texting, or otherwise. This will reduce Israel’s ability to use signals intelligence to determine their actions in the future, but will also reduce operational efficiencies for Hezbollah. Like everything in life, there are tradeoffs.

Our Country is Falling Behind

As an American who contributes taxes so that the CIA and Defense Department can consume a trillion dollars or more of our money every year, it is hard not to feel some envy at the imagination behind Israel’s operation, the incredible skill and secrecy required to pull it off, and the true “shock and awe” it delivered to Israel’s enemies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-the-secrecy-around-the-foreign-source-of-the-springfield-hoax-bomb-threats/

The office of Ohio governor Mike DeWine is not disclosing which country is responsible for some of the bomb-threat hoaxes called into Springfield schools. The aim is to “discourage further threats to the schools and other buildings.”

This is more than a little frustrating because the general public already has a short suspect list. The FBI has already publicly discussed the desire of Russia, China, and Iran to influence the 2024 election and how “sowing discord and undermining democracy is consistent across the board.” Earlier this month, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters:

The big three foreign influence actors, Russia, Iran, and China are all trying by some measure to exacerbate divisions in U.S. society for their own benefit, and see election periods as moments of vulnerability. These actors most likely judge that amplifying controversial issues and rhetoric that seeks to divide Americans can serve their interests by making the U.S. and its democratic system look weak, and by keeping the U.S. Government distracted with internal issues instead of pushing back on their hostile behavior globally.

…The IC continues to assess that Russia is the pre-eminent and most active foreign influence threat to this year’s U.S. elections. Russia is looking to amplify divisive rhetoric and influence electoral outcomes, which both speak to Moscow’s broader foreign policy goals of weakening the United States and undermining Washington’s support for Ukraine.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/10/the-coming-world-crisis/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The U.S. faces a choice between courage and cowardice

The 31-year-long apparent peace that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse ended on February 24, 2022, when territorial conquest once again became an instrument of the revisionist powers. Yet history, particularly that of the globe-spanning violence that preceded World War II, reminds us that once crises begin to cluster, they tend to worsen and become a worldwide eruption of violence.

In this respect, democracies today are in a situation similar to that of the 1930s. The folly of the century preceding the ’30s was not precisely appeasement — the strategy that grants an aggressive adversary limited, albeit significant, gains to satiate its appetite for expansion — but rather a lack of recognition of the systemic inevitability of contestation and conflict. The threat today, similarly, is not appeasement but the avoidance by democratic political leaders of strategic reality. War is coming, sooner or later. Democracies must prepare for a long-term struggle. And much as in the 1930s, we do not have the luxury of time or a head start.

It is more helpful to speak of a world crisis than of a world war, given the linguistic vagaries of “warfare,” a word that has a legal as well as a moral-political definition. The idea of world war is restrictive. What we term the First World War saw combat in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia. But the conflict’s focal point was Europe, with relevant but limited skirmishing in the Middle East and Africa and almost no military activity in Asia after early 1915 because of the limited resources Germany could deploy beyond Europe. Was the First World War, then, not properly a world war? It involved every major power at the time. It was, moreover, the first modern conflict in which two major-power participants — the U.S. and Japan — were not European. Thus we might term the conflict a world war despite its focus in Europe.

This, however, raises a more important question of definition — that of time. The First World War stemmed from what may be termed the First World Crisis. Prior to the mid 19th century, international politics was nearly synonymous with European politics for the simple reason that technological, political, and military advances in Europe made the European powers incontestably dominant over any major actor elsewhere. The European wars that occurred between the 15th and 19th centuries, culminating in Napoleon’s bid for continental dominance, had global implications. The grand strategy of Napoleonic France included, at minimum, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia: France’s objective was to stress Britain’s link with its invaluable imperial possession, India, an end that it never achieved. Yet the central issue of the Napoleonic Wars — the structure of European and, by implication at the time, world order — was settled on European battlefields, in the European littoral, and at negotiating tables with dozens of European diplomats hashing out the details after the fighting was done. By the early 20th century, changes in the international power distribution could transform a European crisis into a world crisis.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-9-11-anniversary-and-we-have-still-learned-nothing/

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks which turned the World Trade Center into a hellscape, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, where the Taliban government had protected the 9/11 mastermind, Saudi cleric Osama Bin Laden. Two years later, we invaded Iraq at least partly on the premise that Saddam Hussein was connected to Bin Laden.

Saddam was deposed and captured quickly enough, being executed in 2006. Bin Laden survived in hiding until Navy SEALs killed him in May 2011. In December of that year, the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. The U.S. military stayed in Afghanistan until a debacle of a withdrawal in August 2021.  As of this writing 30 detainees are still in Guantanamo Bay on 9/11-related charges.

The Watson Institute reported that the Afghanistan war took 70,000 civilian lives and that between 186,000 and 316,000 civilians were killed in Iraq.  Over 7,000 Americans died in these two conflicts. Harvard University estimates that the American taxpayer paid between $4 and $6 trillion for our Afghanistan and Iraq ventures. With such an astronomical price in blood and treasure for 9/11 and its aftermath, we need to ask some questions as we reach another anniversary of that evil day.

Do we truly understand why 9/11 happened?

Have we assessed our response to determine if it has been effective?

Did the pain of 9/11 cause us to increase our determination to cherish and protect our civilization all the more from hostile enemies?

Forgive my cynicism, but the answer to these questions is no, no, and no.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/beijings-spy-games

A former high-level New York State employee has been charged with acting as an undisclosed agent for Communist China. This incident, along with other similar ones, presents a significant challenge to the United States: How do we effectively address the national security threat from spies within our borders without descending into destructive witch hunts?

Linda Sun, who held several prominent positions in New York State government, including serving as deputy chief diversity officer under former governor Andrew Cuomo and deputy chief of staff under Governor Kathy Hochul, was arrested along with her husband Chris Hu early this week. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has charged Sun, who never registered as a foreign agent, with “violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act” and having been involved in numerous political activities to advance the interests of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, including “blocking representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to high-level New York State officers.” The couple allegedly collected considerable financial benefits for Sun’s actions, and their families in China received special treatment from the government.

This case is the latest of several incidents involving high-level Democratic politicians and alleged Chinese spies. Former California senator Dianne Feinstein, who served as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a Chinese spy on her staff for an astonishing 20 years. In 2020, Americans learned that Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese spy, had been building relationships with up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country, including California representative Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

These cases are only the tip of the iceberg. In the ongoing and escalating strategic competition between China and the United States, Beijing will undoubtedly recruit and deploy more spies. Notably, Beijing sees spies as more than just tools to collect critical information. The United Front Work Department (UFWD), a secretive Chinese government agency, is a crucial player in this competition. Its primary function is to conduct overseas influence campaigns by cultivating prominent people in the West and, through them, to influence policies and public opinion and silence or discredit critics.