RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21207/neutralize-iran-nuclear-threat

The regime’s primary goal is, first, to stay in power; second, to acquire nuclear weapons. No amount of diplomatic engagement will deter it from pursuing these objectives. Any agreement would merely buy more time for Iran to refine its nuclear technologies while easing international pressure. The regime’s strategy is to outlast all sanctions and inspections, while continuing its covert nuclear activities, repressing it citizens, and planning its future expansion.

The international community would do the world a favor by stopping Iran from reaching both goals. If not, there will be no chance of durable stability in the Middle East. It is as simple as that.

The idea of negotiating a “deal” to limit, control or “verify” Iran’s nuclear activities has proven to be both ineffective and dangerous…. Iran has repeatedly violated international agreements and deceived global watchdogs. It seems clear that any new deal would likely meet the same fate. Trusting such a regime to honor its commitments is like trusting the cat to guard the cream.

Only by neutralizing the entire Iranian threat will the world be able to work toward a future of stability, prosperity and peace.

The highest priority in addressing the upheavals in the Middle East is to eliminate — completely — Iran’s nuclear threat.

Iran is reportedly close to being a nuclear-armed state. Such a development would have catastrophic consequences for the region as well as for global stability. Acquiring nuclear weapons would embolden Iran’s regime, re-strengthen its proxies, and enable it to resume escalating its terror campaigns across the region.

Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, it will become virtually impossible to contain or neutralize its aggression – presumably the reason the regime is so eager to have nuclear weapons in the first place. The risk of retaliation by nuclear strikes would deter even the most powerful nations from military intervention. An Iran with nuclear weapons would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East and beyond.

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/syrias-new-prime-minister-makes-clear-no-reconciliation-with-iran?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syrias-new-prime-minister-makes-clear-no-reconciliation-with-iran

A rapprochement with Iran is very far from the thoughts of Syrians. Most of them recognize the vital support Iran gave to keep the mass-torturer and murderer Bashar Assad in power for nearly a quarter of a century. They will neither forget nor forgive. But there is always the possibility that some jihadist group in Syria will want, not in order to do Iran’s bidding but just because, as dutiful Muslims, they believe it their duty, to make war on the “Zionist entity.” It is this group that the IDF has to worry most about it. And since the Syrian military has dissolved into thin air, with many military sites left unguarded, the IDF knew that this was the time to remove the threat of those weapons from falling into the hands of a new, possibly hostile regime ensconced in Damascus, or from non-state actors inside Syria, by destroying as many of those weapons as possible.

Many Syrian refugees will want to return to their country. Some, however, will not want to go back, but must be forced to return, for they are an economic burden to the countries where they have been taken in. Turkey, for example, where three million Syrian refugees now live, is spending billions of dollars to maintain them. In Western Europe, countries have reacted to the overthrow of Assad by halting applications for asylum from Syria. The tyranny has ended, and the new regime promises to respect the rights of minorities, so why should people who want to leave Syria for economic reasons be allowed to claim refugee status? Furthermore, the millions of Syrians who are now in Western Europe — there are one million Syrians in Germany alone — need not be allowed to remain as “refugees,” a status to which they are no longer entitled. They should be repatriated at once. That would save those countries billions of dollars, and also reduce the Muslim presence in their lands that has proven to be so unsettling and dangerous.

When asked by that newspaper’s correspondent at Damascus about speculation that he is open to peace with Israel but not with Hezbollah, Russia, or Iran, Mr. Bashir declined to answer.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21209/iran-threatens-jordan

Iran appears determined to destabilize Jordan, and is thus trying to drag the kingdom into its regional maelstrom by manipulating Jordanian national and terrorist substate entities to do its bidding.

The Islamist threat to the stability of the Kingdom has greatly increased with the fall of its neighbor Syria into the hands of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist group committed to radicalizing the Levant, which includes Jordan.

Iran appears determined to destabilize Jordan, and is thus trying to drag the kingdom into its regional maelstrom by manipulating Jordanian national and terrorist substate entities to do its bidding. Pictured: A shipment of weapons smuggled into Israel from Jordan by a Bedouin Arab in December 2023, which was seized by the Israel Police. (Image source: Israel Police Spokesperson)

The Israeli Air Force (IAF), in a recent airstrike, destroyed three cross-border smuggling routes from Syria to Lebanon, which were being used by Iran to bring ship weapons to still-functioning Hezbollah terrorist cells. The Israeli strike took place just hours before a ceasefire took effect on November 26 between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran’s special forces units, however, will no doubt continue their past efforts to smuggle arms through Jordan to Palestinian terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria (“the West Bank”). These smuggling operations will still enable terrorists there to kill Israelis and further entrench an atmosphere of fear among the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria.

In one publicized incident, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, seized caches of Iranian weapons being smuggled transported across Jordan’s unguarded borders. The arms included anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, as well as Semtex and C-4 plastic explosives. The Shin Bet reported that the Special Operation Unit 4000 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been tasked with that mission. The latest shipment of weapons bound for Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria, intercepted and seized by Israel on November 27, 2004, was initiated from an IRGC camp in Syria.

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-the-vibe-shift-goes-global-assad-putin-trump?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I am a 60-year-old Scotsman with a penchant for red suspenders, oolong tea, and the novels of Walter Scott—so no one will ever accuse me of being an arbiter of cool. But to understand politics and even geopolitics you have to understand culture, which is sometimes—often—upstream of both. And to understand culture you have to understand, well, vibes.

Specifically, vibe shifts.

The pop culture commentator Sean Monahan identified three mini-epochs between 2003 and 2020: Hipster/Indie (ca. 2003–9), Post-Internet/Techno (ca. 2010–16), and Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20). Each was defined by a distinct aesthetic, and the vibe shift from one to the other was swift and palpable. As the pandemic receded, New York magazine’s Allison P. Davis predicted that another vibe shift had to be approaching. (And indeed, Monahan has dubbed the new epoch “Pilled/Scene.”)

I confess none of this meant much to me. I couldn’t tell a hypebeast from a hipster if my life depended on it.

But the term finally clicked—and acquired a powerful significance—when it was imported to the world of tech. In a clever Substack post in February, Santiago Pliego tried to sum up the change that had occurred from the epoch of woke—which began with the cancellation of James Damore by Google in 2017—to the unfiltered era of Elon Musk’s X.

“Fundamentally,” Pliego wrote, “the Vibe Shift is a return to—a championing of—Reality, a rejection of the bureaucratic, the cowardly, the guilt-driven; a return to greatness, courage, and joyous ambition.” To be precise:

The Vibe Shift is spurning the fake and therapeutic and reclaiming the authentic and concrete.

The Vibe Shift is a healthy suspicion of credentialism and a return to human judgment.

The Vibe Shift is living not by lies, and instead speaking the truth—whatever the cost.

The Vibe Shift is directly facing our tumultuous times, refusing to blackpill, and choosing to build instead.

The vibe shift hit American politics on the night of November 5. What no one foresaw was that it would almost immediately go global, too.