RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20279/houthi-iran-attacks-red-sea

The Biden administration needs to understand that, when it comes to dealing with autocratic states like Russia and Iran, brute force is the only language they understand, whereas the slightest hint of weakness will be gleefully exploited to their benefit.

It would be preferable to have Iran concerned about US action, whether military or addressing the regime’s hold on power.

Rather than worrying about the response US-led military action might provoke from Iran, the US and its allies need to demonstrate that they will decisively confront the terror tactics adopted by Iran and its proxies, and authorise the uncompromising military action that will end the Houthis’ attacks on key shipping routes once and for all.

If the Biden administration is really serious about tackling the threat posed by Iran-backed Houthi rebels to international shipping in the Red Sea, it needs to authorise the type of decisive military action that will deter the Iranian proxy from undertaking further attacks.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20276/iran-will-go-nuclear

If the US fails to remove Iran’s nuclear capability — and not just (literally) buy time to enable it — the catastrophes that follow will surely go down as US President Joe Biden’s legacy, as well as the legacy of those around him.

From the Iranian regime’s perspective, the failure of the Western powers to counter its nuclear program serves as the most explicit endorsement one can provide that it should continue developing its nuclear-weapons without any fear of negative consequences.

Tehran evidently just uses these funds to expand its influence in various regions, including Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and South America.

Should the Biden administration persist in pursuing a leadership approach perceived as lacking in strength, and should the Biden administration continue to pursue a strategy characterized by conciliation and concession towards the Iranian regime, 2024 will mark the year that the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons, heralding a pivotal development in their military capabilities and devastating, far-reaching repercussions for regional and international security. If the US fails to remove Iran’s nuclear capability — and not just (literally) buy time to enable it — the catastrophes that follow will surely go down as US President Joe Biden’s legacy, as well as the legacy of those around him.

Iran has substantially increased its production rate of uranium, which, after tripling its output in the past few weeks, is now nearing weapons-grade levels, according to a recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

https://quillette.com/2024/01/04/why-iran-is-the-key-to-peace-in-the-middle-east/

Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran and Israel had developed strategic and economic ties, driven in part by Israel’s “periphery doctrine”—a policy of seeking alliances with non-Arab states. The relationship between the two countries was mutually beneficial; Iran was a major importer of Israeli arms, and, in return, provided Israel with oil. For the three decades preceding the revolution, these amicable relations persisted. Israel even had a diplomatic mission in Tehran. 

The Iranian Revolution changed all that. Under the new theocratic regime, Iran labeled the United States the “Great Satan” and saw Israel as the “Little Satan.” The mullahs aligned themselves firmly with the Palestinian cause and against Israel. This shift was marked by calls for solidarity with the Palestinian people, the establishment of Quds (Jerusalem) Day, and the creation of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose ultimate goal is one day to capture Jerusalem. 

The Islamic Republic’s apparent commitment to the Palestinian cause was, in reality, a strategic move designed to bolster its revolutionary credentials among Arabs and across the Sunni world and further its efforts to its Islamic Revolution beyond Iran’s borders—a task rendered more difficult by the fact that Iranians are non-Arab and are Shia, rather than Sunni, Muslims.

Iran’s ambitions in this regard were hampered by Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel in 1979 (and later by Jordan’s in 1994.) Tensions between Iran and Israel increased after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, with the aim of attacking Palestinian Liberation Organization targets, following the PLO’s attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/islamic-revolutionary-guards-commander-threatens-to-shut-down-mediterranean/

Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, has recently been crowing about how the Islamic Republic of Iran had managed to disrupt traffic in the Persian Gulf, and now it is doing the same in the Red Sea. Full of braggadocio, he threatens that now the Islamic Republic will close off the entire Mediterranean Sea, and keep it closed until Israel halts its war in Gaza.

The Arabs call the Mediterranean El-Bahr el-Abiadh el-Moutawwassit, “la mer blanche du milieu” in French, and “the white sea in the middle [of the world]” in English. In the time of the Barbary Pirates, Muslim corsairs from North Africa would attack ships of the Christian powers throughout the Mediterranean, seizing the ships and enslaving their Christian seamen. Payment of a large ransom could sometimes, but not always, obtain the freeing both of the sailors and of the ships. Such attacks came to an end when the seamen of the young American Republic made war, successfully, on those they called the Barbary Pirates, and thereby put paid to those attacks on Christian ships by Muslim privateers. The Iranians ought to remember that history; it did not end well for the Muslims.

More on the threats of the Iranian boaster Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi can be found here: “Iran threatens Mediterranean closure over Gaza, without saying how,” i24News, December 23, 2023:

Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen has over the past month attacked merchant vessels sailing through the Red Sea as the group threatens to hit any Israel-linked ship. The series of incidents led some shipping companies to switch routes.

https://compactmag.com/article/china-is-winning-the-global-south

China’s Belt and Road Initiative has transformed the economies of the Middle Kingdom and of the Global South. By 2019, China had relocated a high proportion of labor-intensive industries like textiles, apparel, toys, sporting goods, and footwear, to the benefit of Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and other low-cost venues. By the following year, China had lent $1.5 trillion to developing countries across the world to finance exports and investment. Today, China exports more to the Global South than to all developed markets combined.

What’s less appreciated in the West is the profound impact of what Chinese officials call the Digital Silk Road: Beijing’s effort to penetrate the Global South’s digital ecosystems, especially via artificial intelligence, thus reshaping entire regional political economies to its preferences.

In 2015, as an investment banker working for a Hong Kong boutique, I arranged a tour of the Chinese tech conglomerate Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, with its sprawling exhibit hall, for the Mexican ambassador to Beijing. At the end, we sat in a small amphitheater to hear a Huawei employee lecture the Mexicans on how broadband could transform their economy. It was a well-researched pitch, and afterward, I learned that the firm has developed detailed, customized digital plans for 100 countries.

The combination of mobile broadband and AI portends an economic upheaval in parts of the Global South, starting in developing Asia. AI is a poor substitute for the higher functions of the human brain, but it works wonders in relieving drudgery for some of the world’s poorest people.

Three-fifths of global employment is informal, outside the margins of the world market, insecure, excluded from government services, and miserably poor. A cheap smartphone might cost 30 percent of the monthly income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people, but it connects them to the world economy. Impoverished people trapped in subsistence agriculture and the barter economy become entrepreneurs. In a recent study for American Affairs, I used World Bank data to show that once internet penetration reaches a threshold of 60 percent, business formation in the Global South jumps dramatically.

https://www.aol.com/irans-state-tv-reports-2-122209945.html

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two explosions minutes apart Wednesday in Iran targeted a commemoration for a prominent general slain in a U.S. drone strike in 2020, killing at least 73 people and wounding over 170 others as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for what Iranian state media called a “terroristic” attack shortly after the blasts in Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.

While Israel has carried out attacks in Iran over its nuclear program, it has conducted targeted assassinations, not mass-casualty bombings. Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State group have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran, though not in relatively peaceful Kerman.

Iran also has seen mass protests in recent years, including those over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country also has been targeted by exile groups in attacks dating back to the turmoil surrounding its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The blasts struck an event marking the the fourth anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force. who died in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020. The explosions occurred near his grave site in Kerman,

Iranian state television quoted Babak Yektaparast, a spokesman for the country’s emergency services, for the casualty figure. Authorities said some people were injured while fleeing afterward.

Footage suggested that the second blast occurred some 15 minutes after the first. A delayed second explosion is often used by militants to target emergency personnel responding to the scene and inflict more casualties.

People could be heard screaming in state TV footage.

Kerman’s deputy governor, Rahman Jalali, called the attack “terroristic,” without elaborating. Iran has multiple foes who could be behind the assault, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors. Iran has supported Hamas as well as the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran’s theocracy. He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government after the 2011 Arab Spring protests against him turned into a civil, and later a regional, war that still rages today.

Relatively unknown in Iran until the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Soleimani’s popularity and mystique grew after American officials called for his killing over his help arming militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed U.S. troops.

A decade and a half later, Soleimani had become Iran’s most recognizable battlefield commander, ignoring calls to enter politics but growing as powerful, if not more, than its civilian leadership.

Ultimately, a drone strike launched by the Trump administration killed the general, part of escalating incidents that followed America’s 2018 unilateral withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Soleimani’s death has drawn large processions in the past. At his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out in Kerman and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession. Otherwise, Kerman largely has been untouched in the recent unrest and attacks that have struck Iran. The city and province of the same name sits in Iran’s central desert plateau.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2023/12/none-so-blind-as-those-who-refuse-to-see/

Swerving, deflecting and distracting are symptomatic of our current malaise in the West. No better examples are those which come via commentaries on the plight of Israel and on the persona of Donald Trump. I’ll give a couple of illustrations from The Weekend Australian. It wouldn’t be hard to find a legion more.

Gemma Tognini (“Progressives in lockstep with Hamas ideology”) writes, “This isn’t a conversation about Islam versus Christianity, or Judaism.”

Don’t get me wrong, Tognini is one of the good guys and her article is fine for the most part. But what is this ideology of which she speaks? It isn’t owned by Hamas. It’s called Islam. And while Tognini might not be having a conversation about competing religions. Islamic clerics are, and constantly. They make no bones about it. They want the ummah to predominate in every country. They make no secret of it; apropos.

Hitler made no secret of it. He wanted German hegemony in Eastern Europe. He laid it out clearly in Mein Kampf in 1925-26. Somehow or other, most commentators manage to swerve around the obvious, which would be to take would-be conquerors at face value and instead put issues into a transactional Western Judaeo-Christian framework. It doesn’t work.

Alfred Pennyworth in the movie The Dark Knight (2008) comes to mind: “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical … They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Well, one religion wants to ride roughshod over all others. It can’t be bargained with. You can’t bargain with Allah. And the problem Israel has with its neighbours is Islam. Islam can’t abide Jews and, only to a little less extent, Christians and other non-believers; as I expanded on here. Yet we pretend it isn’t so.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-hamas-terror-network-in-europe/

Hamas have been described as Nazis and recent arrests shows that the Islamic terror group tried to live up to the name by planning to kill Jews in Berlin.

The first warning that Hamas, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, was preparing to deploy its international capabilities came when Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas spokesman, called for “violent acts against American and British interests everywhere, as well as the interests of all the countries that support the occupation.”

The question of whether this was anything more than empty rhetoric was settled when 7 Muslim terrorists were arrested across Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. While Islamic terrorist plots are nothing new in Europe, these arrests reveal that Hamas has built an international terrorist network across a number of nations in preparation for carrying out attacks.

The official release from Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed that four of the Muslim men arrested “have been longstanding members of HAMAS and have participated in HAMAS operations abroad.”

It revealed that Hamas had set up “an underground weapons cache in Europe… created in the past in a conspiratorial manner.” This weapons cache had been set up well before the Oct 7 atrocities committed by the Islamic terror group and the terrorists were activated and told to search for it “no later than spring 2023” making it clear that this was not an attack planned in response to Israel’s bombing of Hamas targets in Gaza, but long before the Oct 7 attacks.