RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-north-korea-nuclear-temptation-kim-jong-un-joe-biden-missile-tests-11631548034?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

A pattern has emerged in President Biden’s dealings with weaker adversaries: He opens with tough talk but fails to follow through. This has been most conspicuous with Iran, Russia and the Taliban, but North Korea could be next.

Pyongyang fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan Wednesday, its second major set of tests in a week and third this year. The country launched new long-range cruise missiles over the weekend and short-range ballistic missiles in March. More provocations will follow as Kim Jong Un tests President Biden’s resolve.

South Korea tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile Wednesday. And last month the U.S. and South Korea held joint military drills despite a North Korean official calling them an “act of self-destruction for which a dear price should be paid as they threaten the safety of our people and further imperil the situation on the Korean peninsula.” The State Department also approved a $258 million sale of precision-guided weapons to the South in August.

Expect more histrionics as Pyongyang continues to use military provocations to coax the U.S. into new negotiations. The North’s patron, China, is already calling for resuming talks with the North, as Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said on a visit to Seoul this week.

North Korea has pursued a predictable negotiating strategy for decades. First, misbehave and issue exaggerated threats. Second, tone down the rhetoric and agree to talks. Finally, pocket concessions before returning to the status quo ante. This happened under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Barack Obama simply rebranded “do nothing” as “strategic patience.” Mr. Trump’s “grand bargain” summits were a diplomatic embarrassment but didn’t provide many concrete benefits to Pyongyang.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17734/why-arabs-do-not-trust-the-biden-administration

The main concern for the Arabs is that the “humiliating” manner in which the US ended its presence in Afghanistan has sent a message to Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — that the Americans are not only weak, but that they cannot be trusted to support or defend their allies.

The Iran-backed Houthis appear to be be telling themselves: If the US is so weak and has no problem betraying its allies and friends, perhaps this is the right time to step up the attacks on Saudi Arabia.

The past few days have witnessed a significant escalation in the attacks of the Houthi militia in Yemen against civilian areas in Saudi Arabia.

[T]he Biden administration had already sent another message to Iran and its proxies when it removed the Houthi militia from the list of terrorist organizations.

“[T]here is no indication that the Houthis will stop their aggressive policy aimed at imposing a fait accompli [Iranian control] on the Arab Peninsula,” which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan.” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, veteran Lebanese journalist and political analyst, Al-Araby.co.uk, September 3, 2021.

“Iran… is working to perpetuate a reality in Yemen that resembles the reality of Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip since 2007.” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, Al-Araby.co.uk, September 3, 2021.

Yemeni journalist Zakaria Al-Kamali expressed fear of what he called “the Afghanization of Yemen.” — Al-Araby.co.uk, September 7, 2021.

What the Arabs find most disturbing is that the Biden administration has failed to take a tough stance against the increased Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. So far, the Biden administration has responded to the attacks by issuing laconic statements describing the drone and missile attacks on civilian targets in Saudi Arabia as “unacceptable.”

Iran… is leveraging the weakness and confusion in the Biden administration to extend its control more widely.

Is there a connection between the hasty and disorganized US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the increased attacks on Saudi Arabia by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen?

Many Arabs political analysts and writers are convinced that the Biden administration’s flawed handling of the crisis in Afghanistan, which resulted in the Taliban takeover of the whole country, has emboldened various extremist Islamic groups, including the Houthis, who are now threatening Washington’s Arab friends and allies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iranian-guards-physically-harassed-female-u-n-nuclear-inspectors-diplomats-say-11631626649

Iranian security guards have physically harassed several female United Nations atomic agency inspectors at a nuclear facility over the past few months, diplomats say, and the U.S. has demanded that Iran stop the behavior immediately.

The previously unreported incidents at Iran’s main nuclear facility, Natanz, allegedly included inappropriate touching of female inspectors by male security guards and orders to remove some clothing, the diplomats said.

One of the diplomats said there had been at least four separate incidents of harassment. A second diplomat said there had been five to seven.

A paper circulated by the U.S. among International Atomic Energy Agency members ahead of its member states’ board meeting this week, seen by The Wall Street Journal, demanded an end to such conduct.

“Harassment of IAEA inspectors is absolutely unacceptable, and we strongly urge you to make clear in your national statement at the Board meeting that such conduct is deplorable and must end immediately, and that the Board should take appropriate action if further incidents are reported,” the U.S. paper says.

The first incident was in early June and the most recent was in the past few weeks, the diplomats said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-korea-fires-ballistic-missiles-into-waters-between-japan-and-korean-peninsula_3998321.html

North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into waters off its eastern coast on Wednesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) has confirmed.

JCS said the missiles were launched from central North Korea and that South Korea, along with U.S. intelligence authorities, is currently analyzing more details about the launches.

Japan’s coast guard said it believes the two missiles were launched five minutes apart, at 12:38 p.m. and 12:43 p.m. local time (11:38 p.m. and 11:43 p.m. ET) and that they landed outside its exclusive economic zone in the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, CNN reports.

Coast guards confirmed that no ships or aircraft were damaged by the missiles.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called the firings “absolutely outrageous” and said they “threaten the peace and safety of Japan and the region.”

“The government of Japan is determined to further step up our vigilance and surveillance to be prepared for any contingencies,” Suga said.

The firings come just two days after North Korea claimed to have tested a newly developed missile, the first time it has resumed weapons tests in six months. In a multi-day operation, North Korea tested a long-range cruise missile capable of hitting targets 930 miles away, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Officials and scientists of the Academy of National Defense Science, who took part in the testing of the cruise missiles launched Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, declared the operation a “success,” reported KCNA.

The missile, dubbed “a strategic weapon of great significance,” had been in development for two years.

U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions have barred North Korea from testing ballistic missiles, and the country has been heavily sanctioned over its missile and nuclear weapons programs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-taliban-cut-off-the-heads-of-two-boys-who-were-nine-and-ten/

A veteran desperately trying to get Afghan allies out of the country shares hellacious accounts.

I n normal times, Jean Marie Thrower would be running Supplier Development Systems, her Birmingham, Ala.–based automotive consulting firm. But since the fall of Kabul, and the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan, Thrower, who served in the U.S. Army’s 82 Airborne Division as a transportation officer with support of operations in Haiti and Bosnia, has put the rest of her life on hold, working with the Afghan Rescue Crew. The ARC describes itself as a private group of U.S. veterans and civilians volunteering to save as many vetted at-risk Americans and Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan as possible.

ARC is one of several private groups attempting to get Americans, green-card holders, and Afghan allies out of the country; others include No One Left Behind, Digital Dunkirk, Allied Airlift 21, Hearts and Homes for Refugees, Samaritan’s Purse, the “Pineapple Express,” and more.

The good news for ARC is that they have so far rescued “hundreds” and transported them to third countries safely. The bad news is that the organization says that it has a list of thousands of at-risk Afghan allies still in its system. Thrower disputes the U.S. State Department’s characterization of about 100 Americans being left on the ground; she said that as of a few days ago, the figure her group had was closer to 1,000 — although she noted that every group making a rescue effort has its own list, potentially leading to overlap with one another in certain cases. The 1,000 figure may include U.S. green-card holders, too, which the State Department is putting in a separate category.

Thrower describes herself as immensely frustrated and angered by the U.S. government’s actions, or lack thereof, so far — but said that ARC remains open to working with any U.S. government efforts to get desperate Americans and Afghans out. She said that she doesn’t care who gets the credit, as long as those at risk figure out a way to escape Afghanistan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-dangerous-nuclear-dance-international-atomic-energy-agency-biden-deal-11631555612?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

We’re not sure Iran could do anything to make President Biden give up his pursuit of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, and Iran is acting as if it agrees. This could explain Tehran’s escalations in response to U.S. concessions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced Sunday that Iran would allow its inspectors to service surveillance cameras monitoring Iranian nuclear sites. This is no great breakthrough. In February the regime began blocking the agency from inspecting several nuclear facilities in person, though it cut a deal to keep some monitoring equipment. The latest agreement won’t guarantee access to this data, which could be deleted at any time, but a joint Iran-IAEA statement still noted their “spirit of cooperation and mutual trust.”

The 2015 deal’s apologists will say that this is proof Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi may be ready to return to the negotiating table, but this move is really about keeping his options open. Iran offered the token concession over the weekend to avoid an IAEA board censure, which theoretically could lead to United Nations sanctions. The U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. had been considering a rebuke over the inspection intransigence, but don’t hold your breath.

The Islamic Republic has already done plenty to earn a censure. Much of the media attention has focused on Iran’s expanding its nuclear deal violations such as activating advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium at higher concentrations.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17761/taliban-international-legitimacy

European plans to forge closer ties with Kabul are, though, being severely undermined by the conduct of the new Taliban regime which, rather than living up to its promise to mend its ways, instead appears to be reverting to its old, uncompromising approach.

Recent reports claim that at least four elite Afghan counterterrorism agents have been hunted down and killed by the Taliban during the past three weeks, in one case pulling out all the victim’s fingernails before shooting him.

“We have to stop pretending that the Taliban have changed,” warned Mr McMaster . “Our self-delusion has led many to embrace an Orwellian reversal of morality in which they view jihadist terrorists as a partner…. The Taliban are determined to impose a brutal form of sharia on the Afghan people and are intertwined with terrorists determined to continue their jihad…” — HR McMaster, former US National Security Advisor, The Sunday Times, September 12, 2021.

Naïve attempts by a number of leading Western powers to foster relations with the newly-installed Taliban regime in Kabul are being undermined by the uncompromising attitude the new Islamist regime.

Following the Taliban’s dramatic seizure of control of Afghanistan last month, a number of prominent Western leaders have indicated their willingness to work with the new Afghan regime, following claims by some Taliban leaders that they want to establish a more moderate form of government than the former Taliban regime that terrorised the country in the late 1990s.

In the aftermath of the Islamist movement’s takeover of the country, Taliban leaders were at pains to stress their plans to establish a more moderate approach. In their first press conference after seizing control of the country, the movement’s leaders promised to protect women’s rights, guarantee media freedom, and offered a nationwide amnesty for government officials and military personnel in the former government of President Ashraf Ghani, which collapsed in disarray following US President Joe Biden’s decision to end US military support.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the armed group’s spokesman, also said the Taliban wished for peaceful relations with other countries, and that no group will be allowed to use Afghan territory for attacks against any nation.

“I would like to assure the international community, including the United States, that nobody will be harmed,” Mujahid said. “We don’t want any internal or external enemies.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17760/gifting-afghanistan-to-fundamentalists

The Taliban, by trying to introduce themselves as “moderate,” also appear to be playing “good cop, bad cop” regarding the IS, presumably to get international support and recognition. The West should be skeptical. As long as the Taliban and other terror groups, whether Shi’ite or Sunni, have not changed ideologically, they will remain a significant threat to the US and the Free World.

Although the Taliban pledged to protect future US economic interests on Afghan soil by vowing that it would not allow other groups to form and organize terrorist attacks against the US and its allies, this promise will probably last only as long as the US keeps complying with the Taliban’s blackmail demands regarding the US hostages and co-workers Biden abandoned.

The newly formed government consists of acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has a $10 million bounty on his head , is on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and whose family are longtime supporters of al-Qaeda; and four of the senior commanders are terrorists whom former President Barack Obama released from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for US Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl.

Reports have also begun questioning if Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan with not a trace of resistance – including the great Bagram airbase and nearly as much military aid as the US has provided to Israel since 1948 — might have been deliberate in view of China’s “investment” of $1.5 billion in Biden’s son, Hunter, when Biden was vice-president, as well as for possible future returns.

A few key questions remain unanswered: Has America, in seeking coordination with a terror group against which it fought for years, ended its own supremacy? Is America about to cap the horror by officially recognizing a state run by known terrorists, armed to the teeth with America’s finest military equipment, and who seem to have every intention of establishing a terrorist state?

Another question is the geostrategic factor, if any, of the West’s position in the future of Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Free World?

So far, the main losers in Afghanistan disaster, apart from the US and the Free World, are the people of Afghanistan, especially those who helped the US and found themselves betrayed, and the women who for 20 years, thanks to the US and its allies, had for the first time known freedom.

The team that assisted former President Barack Obama to destabilize the Middle East in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the instability of Egypt, the surrender of Iraq to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the annexation of Crimea to Russia, apparently wishes to go the same route in Central Asia by gifting this strategic region to Shi’ite and Sunni Islamic fundamentalists.

The election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris may be giving onlookers around the world a sinking feeling that we could see the same collapse happen again in Afghanistan and, as the Kabul airport suicide attack signalled, that Afghanistan has again become a center for narcotics, violence, terror and hostage-taking

https://pjmedia.com/columns/janice-fiamengo/2021/09/12/why-justin-trudeau-does-not-deserve-to-lead-canada-n1477885

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been a preening, spendthrift, and fundamentally unserious leader throughout his time in office. Recently, however, his calculated vilification of the unvaccinated and his divisive stoking of fear and rage reveal a profound malice that threatens us all.

For most of his political career, the Bollywood-jiving, “Because it’s 2015” feminist was too busy burnishing his progressive image to worry about such dull political matters as ethical conduct (two ethics violations and a major charity scandal); energy policy (plans to “phase out” the western petroleum industry); or the federal debt (with highest debt to GDP ratio in Canadian history). Trudeau has never shown much interest in those who do not qualify for, or desire, the largesse-with-strings his government has doled out to academics, journalists, Quebec francophones, feminist organizations, labor unions, and a multitude of other special interest groups.

But his inadequacy might not have been deadly if his “sunny ways” mask had not slipped so decisively in recent weeks. True, some observers were alarmed when, even before being elected PM, he expressed admiration for Communist China’s ability to “turn their economy around on a dime,” but the statement seemed to express less a dictatorial yearning than a youthfully idealistic zeal (Trudeau has always seemed younger than his actual age, an advantage he has assiduously cultivated). When he paraded his family around India in traditional dress, hands clasped in the Hindu Namaste tradition, the burlesque performance was written off as forgivable over-enthusiasm, and drew attention away from the presence at Liberal events of a convicted Sikh terrorist. Even multitudinous gaffes don’t necessarily signal a politician’s end—at least, not immediately—if their purveyor can maintain public good will.

Recently, though, Trudeau hasn’t even tried to seem to care for all Canadians, and his expressed contempt (or worse) for the minority who object to his policy of mandated Covid injections has at last revealed his true bullying, authoritarian nature. During the election campaign, Trudeau has been unabashedly coercive, threatening “consequences” for federal workers who choose not to be injected and characterizing opponents as rabidly unhinged. After a campaign stop in London, Ontario, where he faced one of many angry crowds, Trudeau described the protesters as “a mob” who were “practically foaming at the mouth.” On other occasions, he referred to the “far right, anti-vaxx fringe” and said, with almost laughable predictability, that they were “lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks.”