RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-tells-the-truth-about-inspections-ebrahim-raisi-nuclear-deal-biden-administration-11661799125?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Give Tehran credit for candor, of a sort. The Biden Administration and European allies are desperate to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran to replace the 2015 Obama-era pact, and the Iranian regime is being honest that it won’t abide by whatever inspections come with that deal.

The latest evidence comes from a rare press conference held Monday by President Ebrahim Raisi. Speaking about the prospects for a new deal and a meeting with President Biden, the Iranian said, “Without settlement of safeguard issues, speaking about an agreement has no meaning.” By “safeguard issues,” he means the International Atomic Energy Agency’s attempts to investigate likely breaches of Iran’s nuclear commitments dating to the early 2000s.

The IAEA is following up on traces of man-made uranium found in 2019 and 2020 at three sites that had not been declared to inspectors, and it has suspended its investigation of a fourth site. Tehran has yet to say what became of the equipment used to refine the uranium, let alone where the uranium itself has gone. This appears to be a violation of Iran’s obligations under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which long predated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Mr. Raisi wants the U.S. and Europe to lean on the IAEA to stop investigating Iran’s violations of a decades-old nuclear treaty in order to entice Tehran to sign a new, and weaker, antinuclear agreement. Oh, and Tehran expects the West to pay for the privilege by lifting economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18821/iran-dangerous-concessions

Newly leaked information from inside Iran, obtained by Iran International, reveals that the Biden administration has made even more concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which have not been revealed to the public. According to the report, “the US guarantees that its sanctions against IRGC would not affect other sectors and firms: e.g. a petrochemical company shouldn’t be sanctioned by US because of doing business with IRGC.”

The Biden administration seems to have been bragging that Iran’s leaders have dropped a key demand: removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US foreign organizations terrorist list. But if other sectors that are linked to the IRGC can freely do business under the nuclear deal, then the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, as well as the sanctions against the IRGC, are merely cosmetic.

The IRGC has a large stake in almost every industrial sector in Iran, which includes the energy sector, mining, telecommunications, gold, shipping and construction. Private sector competitors are not permitted in these sectors because the more closed the economy, the more easily the IRGC can monopolize it.

As a result, any economic growth in these sectors will directly benefit Iran’s military, the IRGC and its elite Quds Force branch, and Iran’s militia and terror groups across the Middle East. Since Iran’s economy is predominantly controlled by the IRGC or the state, additional revenues will likely be funneled into the treasury of the IRGC and the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The other critical concession being reportedly made is that “the participants note the firm commitment of the US President [without mentioning Joe Biden by name] for returning to JCPOA compliance as long as Iran remains committed to the deal.” This probably means that future US presidents are obliged to continue with the implementation of the nuclear deal. But why should the US guarantee the implementation of the nuclear deal if it is not even a legally binding treaty, approved by two-thirds of the Senate, in accordance with Article II, section 2 of the US Constitution? In addition, it is illegal for any president to commit future presidents to anything that has not been approved as a formal treaty by two-thirds of the Senate.

This is a much worse deal than the 2015 nuclear deal. Because, first, the US or EU3 (France, the United Kingdom and Germany) cannot call for reinstating sanctions on Iran unilaterally even if they believe that the Iranian regime is violating the nuclear deal. In the previous nuclear deal, at least, any single party to the deal could unilaterally trigger the snap-back sanctions clause. In addition, with the new deal, restrictions on the regime’s nuclear program could be lifted only two years after the agreement is signed; and the Iranian regime will not be obliged to reveal its past nuclear activities, which had military dimensions; and Russia will be trusted to store Iran’s enriched uranium, a task for which Moscow will be paid.

Reportedly, another concession that the Biden administration has made to Iran is that the IAEA is expected to halt its investigation into the regime’s past nuclear activities.

“This shift to appeasement was never going to solve any of the world’s issues with the Islamic Republic. The regime’s problem with the West is the West’s very existence, which obstructs its path to a global caliphate.” — Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and an advocate of secular democracy for Iran, Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2022.

Since assuming office, the Biden administration’s policy towards the Iranian regime has been one of capitulation and giving concessions to the ruling Islamist mullahs of Iran. So far, they include suspending some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on Iran-backed Houthis, then revoking the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group; disregarding Iran’s oil sales to China; shipping oil to Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Venezuela in direct violation of US sanctions; ignoring the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protesters, smuggling weapons to the Houthis and Venezuela; attempting to murder US former officials and citizens on American soil, and taking more foreign hostages.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18818/biden-demands-iran-deal

“First, Biden decided to waive the demand to include the role of Iran’s terrorists in the region in the talks [in Vienna]… Biden decided not to address this issue at all, nor the role of terrorist militias affiliated with Iran in the Arab countries.” — Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of the Gulf’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 20, 2022.

The second demand Biden gave up, according to Zahra, includes the issue of Iran’s ballistic missile program and the threat it poses to the security and stability of the region, the US itself and its interests.

“The issue is not whether the agreement is signed or not…. [T]here is something more dangerous than this: Biden has completely abandoned the Arabs, allies and non-allies alike.” — Sayed Zahra, August 20, 2022.

The Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen, [Kheirallah] added, is continuing to recruit hundreds of fighters.

“What will the Houthis do with these fighters? Are they preparing for new rounds of fighting, or is their goal limited to threatening neighboring countries, primarily the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, veteran Lebanese journalist, Alraimedia, August 17, 2022.

The Iranian regime, [Kheirallah] wrote, cannot survive without its expansionist project. “The collapse of this project means the collapse of the regime, similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Lebanon, Iran is flexing its muscles through Hezbollah, which asserts daily that it is the ruling party. In Iraq, Iran refuses to admit that it is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people…. Unfortunately, there is no American administration capable of understanding the meaning and repercussions of the presence of an Iranian entity in the Arabian Peninsula. Iran escalates everywhere it considers itself present through its militias. There is a question that will arise soon: Will the US administration facilitate this escalation through a deal it concludes with the Islamic Republic that provides it with large financial resources? To put it more clearly, does America consider itself concerned with the security of its allies in the region, or should these people manage their own affairs in the way they see fit?” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, Annahar, August 17, 2022.

“Iran still considers interference in the affairs of other countries in the region as one of its top priorities…. for the sake of regional hegemony.” — Hamid Al-Kaifaey, Iraqi author, Sky News Arabia, August 14, 2022.

“The most striking thing about the ongoing international negotiations with the Iranian regime regarding its suspicious nuclear program is that the international community has become confident and certain that this regime is lying and engaged in all forms of deception to achieve its goals without meeting international demands…. Anyone who relies on the Iranian regime is engaged in self-deception. Western countries have completed more than three decades of practicing the policy of appeasement and alignment with the Iranian regime and provided it with many privileges without getting anything in return.” — Alladdin Touran, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Elaph, August 15, 2022.

US President Joe Biden, it seems, has effectively decided to sacrifice the Arabs, their interests, demands and fears in order to appease Iran.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/defense-diversity-and-china-threat-william-kilpatrick/

The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s estate has temporarily pushed the China threat out of the headlines.  But, of course, the threat is still there and so is the question of how to respond to it.

Teddy Roosevelt said that when dealing with hostile foreign powers one should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”  In other words, don’t provoke your enemies, but let them know that you possess sufficient fire power and personnel to handle any situation that may arise.

Roosevelt decidedly did not say, “shout loudly and carry a small twig.”  But there is a danger that some people, both in and out of government, may fall into the trap of thinking that tough talk by itself is a sufficient response.

Of course, I exaggerate when I use the term “a small twig.”  The U.S. still possesses a formidable military.  But there is evidence that, in comparison to China, it is no longer as formidable as it once was.

An article on missile defense systems in the March issue of National Defense outlines the problem.  It points out that in 2020, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) began fielding hypersonic weapon systems “with a high level of maneuverability” that makes it difficult for traditional missiles to defend against them.

Moreover, the PLA strategy “focuses on using offensive strikes to gain a military advantage at the beginning of a conflict.”  According to Timothy Walton, a fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, “they [the PLA] talk about conducting preventative attacks…and preemptive attacks of various kinds.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-satanic-stabbing-of-salman-rushdie-and-the-dangerous-iran-deal/
 The attempted murder on Friday of Salman Rushdie is the latest in a string of appalling incidents that ought to put the United States and its P5+1 partners to shame for their efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with the evil regime in Tehran.

Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses“—the 1988 book that earned him critical acclaim in the West and a fatwa for his annihilation from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—was about to address a large audience at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York when he was tackled and stabbed multiple times by a radical Muslim enamored of Iran.

Despite ridiculous reports of an unclear motive for the attack, the 24-year-old perpetrator, Lebanese-American Hadi Matar of New Jersey, made no bones on social media about his support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The only question is whether he plotted the killing purely for ideological reasons or also had his eye on the $3.3 million bounty on Rushdie’s head. Perhaps both, as they are not mutually exclusive.

His affinity for the IRGC and proxies was also apparent in his choice of name on the phony driver’s license he used as an ID to enter the premises: Hassan Mughniyah. The alias was a tribute to two arch-terrorists, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyah, the former head of the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based organization’s international operations, whose assassination in Damascus in 2008 has been attributed to the Mossad.

Though Matar appears to have acted alone, Iran’s state-run media and hardline pundits have been praising him to the skies for knifing the “apostate.”

The significance of the bloody assault, from which the 75-year-old Rushdie may not recover, is in its timing. Two days earlier, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) filed criminal charges against 45-year-old Iranian national and IRGC member Shahram Poursafi for trying late last year to hire individuals in Washington D.C. and Maryland to kill former American officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

According to the DOJ, the foiled plot was “likely in retaliation” for the U.S. air strike that killed IRGC Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Since that time, the IRGC has been vowing to take revenge on America.

As the Rushdie fatwa illustrates, Iranians have a long memory; in this sense, Soleimani’s death is not only fresh in their minds, but will remain so for decades. Indeed, even Tehran’s denial of the targeting of Bolton and Pompeo includes a reference to Soleimani.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18788/america-strategic-oil-reserves

The Biden administration in April sanctioned the sale of our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the highest bidder. They have done so under the logic that putting more oil on the global market at a time when Russia has an energy stranglehold on Europe could force down the pump price of gasoline.

One could ask, as Congressional mid-term elections loom, and the price of gas soared to five dollars a gallon, has the White House made a strategic energy decision based on politics rather than on what is in the best security interests of our nation — because the country that is among the high bidders for our oil reserves is China.

This is the China that has obliterated Tibet.

This is the China that practices slavery, torture in internment camps, forced labor, child labor and organ-harvesting on live detainees.

This is the China that has choked democracy in Hong Kong.

This is the China that threatens the freedom of 23 million Taiwanese.

This is the China that has sought to cripple an Australian military plane flying over international waters.

This is the China that has fired missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone and tried to blind US pilots with laser beams.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/07/nancy-pelosis-childlike-diplomacy-mirrors-americas-childlike-posture-toward-china/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sin was not in going to Taiwan per se. Rather, after announcing her destination, the California Democrat then sorta kinda hesitated in deer-in-the-headlights fashion under threat from the Chinese.  

So, by her back-and-forth media announcements, she added to the endemic strategic confusion at the White House and Pentagon that opposed her visit. Pelosi never gave a reason why she was going to Taiwan, except to note after the fact that as a child, she used to like China and at the beach would dig in the sand to reach Beijing.

In other words, in her eight decades since infancy, Pelosi has not yet learned the difference between Chinese Taiwan and the Chinese Communist mainland and has come up with no greater affinity with the Chinese than remembering as a child vainly digging in the sand to reach them.

The internal administration discord reminded the Chinese that the Biden Administration can still become even more inept than it has been since its inaugural humiliation in Anchorage, Alaska. 

And lastly, Pelosi showboated with loud freedom rhetoric while carrying a mere twig.

So, yes, ostensibly, it was silly for Nancy Pelosi to freelance in foreign policy by going to Taiwan. She has no record of any foreign policy accomplishment.

Ever since her first speakership 15 years ago, Pelosi has always seen foreign policy as an arena to embarrass her political opponents. We remember her dishonest post-9/11 public reversals about enhanced interrogations, and her all-but-rooting-for the surge in Iraq to fail.