RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18753/arabs-us-tamper-middle-east

Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.

“The behavior of the Obama and Biden administrations regarding Iran and Afghanistan served as a wake-up call for the countries of the region.” — Ali Hamadeh, Lebanese Journalist, Annahar, July 20, 2022.

“Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya were stable countries until the US president decided to tamper with their security for no reason other than his fascination with the discourse of the left and the extremist [Muslim] Brotherhood….” — Saudi political analyst Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, July 18, 2022.

“I remember a little over a year ago how Biden described his relations with Riyadh when he said that they were partners and not allies, then removed the [Iranian-backed] Houthis from their designation as terrorists and then returned to the Iranian nuclear agreement.” — Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, July 18, 2022.

The Arabs are telling Biden that they do not appreciate or respect weak leaders and remain concerned about his appeasement policy toward the mullahs and their proxies in the Middle East.

Many Arabs believe that US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the Middle East was a failure, mainly because the Arab countries still do not have confidence in his administration’s policies. The Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-should-have-stayed-home-crown-prince-mohammed-jeddah-oil-security-iran-nuclear-deal-pariah-ukraine-putin-opec-11658147469?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Meetings between leaders of important nations are usually worthwhile even if they yield no immediate results. But there are exceptions. One was Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich meeting with Hitler. Another: President Biden’s sit-down with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week.

The president’s 24 hours in Jeddah were dominated by photos of his fist bump with the de facto leader of a kingdom Mr. Biden had labeled a pariah. Things went downhill from there. Mr. Biden insisted that, in front of the entire U.S. and Saudi delegations, he had labeled the crown prince the killer of Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Minister of State Adel al-Jubeir was quick to say he didn’t recall hearing that. When Mr. Biden was asked if the foreign minister was telling the truth, he said no—implying that a key Saudi official was a liar. Even the New York Times questioned if Mr. Biden’s account was accurate, noting that he has a history of describing events other meeting participants don’t recall.

So much for rebuilding U.S.-Saudi cooperation, which was Mr. Biden’s goal. This trip was worse than a missed opportunity. It damaged U.S. security interests in the Middle East by highlighting to the world that neither Saudi Arabia nor other Gulf states trust the U.S. enough to make any sacrifices to renew badly frayed relations. In a speech to Arab leaders, the president proclaimed: “We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.”

https://lawliberty.org/two-kinds-of-detente/

Historian Niall Ferguson, the official biographer and occasional alter ego of Henry Kissinger, proposed to “dust off that dirty word détente and engage China” in a June 5 essay for Bloomberg News. Wrote Ferguson:

Back in the 1970s, that little French duo-syllable was almost synonymous with “Kissinger.” Despite turning 99 last month, the former secretary of state has not lost his ability to infuriate people on both the right and the left—witness the reaction to his suggestion at the World Economic Forum that “the dividing line [between Russia and Ukraine] should return to the status quo ante” because “pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine … but into a war against Russia itself.”

Ferguson distinguished himself earlier this year as a skeptic of Western policy towards Ukraine, writing for example on March 9:

Western media seem over-eager to cover news of Russian reverses, and insufficiently attentive to the harsh fact that the invaders continue to advance on more than one front. Nor is there sufficient recognition that the Russian generals quickly realized their Plan A had failed, switching to a Plan B of massive bombardment of key cities, a playbook familiar from earlier Russian wars in Chechnya and Syria.

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/situation-report-joe-bidens-middle-east-trip/

The final verdict on the trip appears to be that the Saudis, Bahrainis, and UAE trust Israel more than the U.S.

President Biden spent almost a week in the Middle East recently, during a period of critical regional importance, and manages to depart having alienated nearly every major player.

Iran is reaching the breakout point on a nuclear weapon. Israeli leaders were eager to speak face to face with their American counterparts about applying more muscle into forcing Iran to back down.  The Saudis expected a shift in U.S. policy on both Iran and about the criticism of the Saudi government for the Khashoggi affair. Riyadh was signaling a willingness to turn over a new leaf in the U.S.-Saudi relationship by increasing oil production and moving quickly to establish deeper public relations with Israel.

The Palestinians expected the United States to press Israel into allowing the reopening of the formal U.S. consulate to the Palestinians. The consulate, located on Agron Street (in the pre-1967 western half of Jerusalem), was closed during the Trump administration. Reopening it would signal a shift aligned with American and global progressives and more hostile to Israel. Jordan, in addition to backing the Palestinians, expected the United States to reinforce its demand to erode, or even erase, any Israeli sovereignty over any part of eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

Virtually nobody was pleased by the outcome of the trip, however.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nikki-haley-calls-bidens-iran-strategy-slap-in-the-face-to-israel/?utm_source=

As President Biden finishes his diplomatic trip to the Middle East, Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the U.N. under Donald Trump, criticized the administration’s approach to Iran, calling it “dangerous for America.”

“Iran is selling drones to Russia and attacking American troops, and President Biden still wants to make a deal with the Ayatollahs. It’s a slap in the face to Israel and our Arab allies, and dangerous for America,” Haley said in a statement to National Review.

“By refusing to stand up to Iran, he yet again shows weakness when we should be showing strength,” she added.

Iran was a primary subject during Biden’s trip, intended to counter Russia’s growing presence in the Middle East. Biden vowed to stay tough on Iran’s nuclear program during his visit and pledged to use military force “as a last resort,” despite keeping talks open with a country drawing nearer to being able to build nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 on account of Tehran’s work on ballistic missiles and the limited scope of the terms in the agreement, and Biden has worked to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) throughout his presidency.

Recent reports show Iran is coming close to having enough enriched uranium to building a nuclear weapon, is targeting to kill U.S. officials and is holding military negotiations with Russia.

Russian officials visited Iran at least twice in the past month to look at weapons-capable drones, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN along with satellite imagery of the airfields.

“We have information that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs,” Sullivan told CNN in a statement.

The president assured Middle Eastern leaders the U.S. is “committed to ensuring Iran never gets a nuclear weapon” on Saturday following the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18706/biden-administration-friendliy-iran

Even [Iran’s mullahs] probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

Now, in Natanz, the Iranian regime is digging an underground nuclear facility that is reportedly extremely difficult to bomb.

The problem is that Iranian leaders keep testing the Biden administration with violations — such as increasing uranium enrichment to near weapon-grade levels, the transfer of weapons and oil to Venezuela, attempting to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, trying to kidnap a US citizen on American soil, targeting US bases in Iraq with barrages of missiles, harassing US Navy ships, smuggling weapons in violation of UN resolutions, and turning off International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras that monitor the regime’s nuclear activities — and keep witnessing no repercussions.

As a result, the ruling mullahs have become even more emboldened to ramp up their nuclear program.

Iran’s leaders can also see that the Biden administration is not holding accountable those countries that are violating the sanctions on Iran, including China and Venezuela, which continue to buy Iranian oil.

The Biden administration’s appeasement and inaction, sadly, have done nothing but breed terrorism and transgressions. It is to be hoped that the Biden administration will not leave the world an expansionist, terror state, Iran, imminently armed with nuclear weapons.

Prior to the Biden administration, since the ruling mullahs came to power in 1979, two US administrations — the Obama and Carter administrations — appeared soft on the Iranian regime. Now, the Biden administration seems to have perfected the skill of appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran.

Even they probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/15/good-friday-joe-biden/

Here is the president of the United States speaking in East Jerusalem:

BIDEN in East Jerusalem: “…the background of my family is Irish American and we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years.”

My first thought on hearing Biden’s comment was that the women of Easter Rising would have wanted to string him up for abortion heresy. But jokes (and eternal damnation) aside, it’s difficult to understand what the president is saying here.

Is he contending that the “Palestinian people,” like the Irish, have first claim to the land, ignoring the consistent Jewish presence in Israel since — let’s be conservative — a few centuries before the unified Kingdom of Israel, around 1000 BC, or around 1600 years before the Muslims invaded? Is he saying that the British took control of Israel in 1917 so they could settle the land with foreigners and displace Muslims? Does he realize that the British were in “Palestine” — where they often abdicated their responsibility to protect the Jewish minority — only 30 years, as opposed to 850? Doesn’t the Jew who fled Europe to return to the Middle East have more in common with the Catholic who fled England for Ireland in the 1600s or America later on?

https://carolineglick.com/how-biden-ensured-his-trip-to-the-middle-east-would-fail/

Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, the President published an op-ed in the Washington Post, where he placed his trip to into the context of his overall Middle East policy. A few days later, Israel’s opposition leader, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a brief statement on Biden’s then upcoming visit that spoke directly to the claims Biden made in his article. Taken together, the two communications explain why Biden’s visit was a failure before it even began – and what a successful policy looks like.

Biden’s article, “Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia,” was a political communication to his party’s progressive base. It served a twofold purpose. First, it was an apology to progressives, who are hostile to both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Second, Biden assured progressives that he was not changing course. His Middle East policy to date will remain his policy going forward.

That policy had three major pillars: hostility towards Saudi Arabia and particularly Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS); financial, nuclear and strategic appeasement of Iran; and support for the Palestinians, at Israel’s expense. Biden insisted that he remains true to these positions, but as president, he also has Russia and China to keep at bay.

As he put it, “As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to out compete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-poorly-timed-visit-middle-east-cal-thomas/

“The Middle East has been relatively quiet in recent years. Biden’s trip is unlikely to enhance stability and more likely to stir things up again. It has the potential of being a lose-lose for America and for Israel, which would be quite an accomplishment.”

In 1988, five years after calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow where he addressed an audience of students from Moscow State University. At the heart of his speech, Reagan promoted the virtues and success of liberty and his vision that tyranny would ultimately be defeated (recall his other forecast made to the British Parliament in 1982 that the Soviet Union would end up “on the ash heap of history”).

Contrast those remarks with the current president and his trip to the Middle East. A headline in the Connecticut Post asks the right question: “Biden once wanted to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ – so why is he playing nice with the kingdom’s repressive rulers now?”

Biden will meet with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman (affectionately known as MBS), who has been accused by U.S. intelligence of sending a hit squad to murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Apparently feeling the heat of criticism from people opposed to the trip, Biden felt the need to explain himself in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

In it, Biden makes this ludicrous claim: “The Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago.” He must have forgotten the Abraham Accords, which Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner cobbled together. It normalized relations between Israel and five Arab countries, including Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco, something never before achieved. As usual, Biden gives no credit to Trump.