RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18238/biden-erdogan

In early January… in a bolder, less expected and potentially damaging geostrategic move that angered all four of Turkey’s Mediterranean rivals (Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt), the Biden administration silently abandoned an eastern Mediterranean pipeline project (EastMed) that would carry Israeli gas through Cyprus to Europe.

“By undermining the project, the administration is undercutting three of our strongest allies in the region: Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, as well as the European Union’s hopes for energy independence and economic prosperity.” — Press release published on the congressional website of U.S. House Representative Gus Bilirakis, January 24, 2022.

“The Biden administration’s actions in this matter are particularly objectionable and hypocritical in light of its tacit approval of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which will only deepen Europe’s energy dependence on a volatile adversary.” — Rep. Gus Bilirakis, January 24, 2022,

A nosediving, cash-strapped economy, international isolation and plummeting popularity have put Erdoğan back on the defensive. Is Biden actually trying to destabilize this part of the world by provoking Erdoğan’s assertive aspirations just when they had been — possibly temporarily — buried?

In just over one year in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has swung from a pledge to oust Turkey’s Islamist autocrat, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to occasionally appease him, first behind doors, and now publicly.

Appearing to detest Erdoğan’s suffocating regime, increasingly Islamist governance and pro-Russian aspirations, Biden, a year before he became president, had described Erdoğan as an autocrat and promised to empower Turkey’s opposition parties through democratic processes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/no-one-fears-this-pathetic-old-geezer/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

Long before our president invited a Ukrainian invasion by suggesting a ‘minor incursion’ would be fine, Vladimir Putin had his number.

L ast June, ahead of a Russia–U.S. meeting, Time magazine conjured up a piece of embarrassing cover-art propaganda featuring Joe Biden’s aviator glasses reflecting Vladimir Putin. At last, a U.S. president had Putin in his sights! Finally we’d get back to putting Russia in its place.

“How Biden Plans to Get Tough on Putin During Their Geneva Summit,” promised a breathless story by Brian Bennett. A senior administration official suggested Biden, despite the “chaos” that President Trump had supposedly unleashed in the world, would use a combination of unity talk — everyone in Europe was on the same page about Russia, supposedly — and thinly veiled threats about retaliatory cyberattacks to show Putin who’s boss. “The whole goal is to have [Putin] come away saying, ‘The Americans are onto us and have us encircled,’” the official told Bennett. The writer editorialized that, “Biden is qualified to lead the approach. He’s spent decades in debates on U.S.-Russian relations as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Whew, then.

So how’d everything work out? Well, according to Bennett himself, in a follow-up piece that sounded a bit less like a fangirl transcribing a press release and more like someone who had actually observed Biden up close, noted that Putin seemed somehow to have been the one who came out on top. “The stagecraft,” Bennett noted glumly, “played to Putin’s personal vanity and his long-standing desire for Russia to be taken seriously as a major rival to the U.S. . . . Putin seemed to relish the platform in Geneva” because it placed the two countries on an equal footing. Oh, and the “White House said it did not expect any deliverables to come out of the meeting,” despite Biden doing a very Joe Biden version of laying down the law: He handed Putin a list of 16 kinds of cyberattacks that he considered to be off limits. Did that mean all other kinds were okay? Putin may have been forgiven if he went back to his dacha and spent the following 24 hours giggling.

“What ever [sic] happens in Ukraine we shouldn’t underestimate the fact the United States has retaken the adult chair in the world,” claimed former Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart on Twitter yesterday. “Biden has restored American leadership so damaged by Trump. The world needs us and we have a President who can and does lead.” The grownups are back in charge? Granted that Trump behaved, and behaves, like a toddler. But is a woke undergraduate a grownup?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/bidens-putin-appeasement-has-been-years-in-the-making/

As VP, he mocked Russia hawks, treated Putin as a partner, and helped Russia join the WTO. Then came his presidency.

O ne small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He’d side with Russia,” tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man. The headline on Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column reads, “With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where’s Trump when I need him?” You could find similar sentiment from foreign-policy experts strewn across social media.

Surely, even Trump’s most passionate antagonists must be slightly curious as to why Putin didn’t move on eastern Ukraine after successfully installing the orange man as an alleged infiltrator in the White House. What better time could there have been for an invasion or annexation? Why now, and not then?

Then again, the notion that Biden has shown firmness or deftness on foreign policy is at odds with not only recent events — most notably the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan — but also 50 years of his history. On the issue of Putin, Biden has been relentlessly wrong.

In 2009, Biden went to Munich and delivered the Obama administration’s first major foreign-policy speech, arguing that it was “time to press the reset button” after eight years of purported American antagonism toward Russia. The speech was framed as a return to diplomatic normalcy after the tumultuous Bush years. “The leaders of Germany and France as well as the deputy prime minister of Russia — all countries that clashed with Mr Bush — were all in the audience for Mr Biden’s speech,” reported The Financial Times. It was Biden who then spearheaded the effort to reward Moscow by giving Russia access to the World Trade Organization: He told nominal Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s access to the WTO was “the most important item on our agenda.” At the time, a Reuters headline announced, “Biden backs Russia WTO bid, praises Medvedev.”

https://bit.ly/3hdmQ57

In 1979, US policy toward Iran crashed against the rocks of reality, when Ayatollah Khomeini assumed power with the help of the US, but – contrary to US expectations – transformed Iran, “The American policeman of the Gulf” into the world’s leading epicenter of anti-US subversion, terrorism and drug-trafficking.

In 2015, US policy toward Iran crashed, again, against the rocks of reality, when – contrary to US expectations – Iran’s Ayatollahs did not harness the mega-billion-dollar bonanza, yielded by the nuclear accord (JCPOA), to upgrade domestic standards of living. Instead – as expected – this bonanza bolstered Iran’s preoccupation with anti-US subversion, terrorism and the development, manufacturing and proliferation of non-conventional military systems.

In 2022, once again, US policy-makers seem to stick to the 1979 and 2015  practice of basing their Iran policy on assessments of the future behavior of Iran’s Ayatollahs, rather than on the Ayatollahs’ rogue, systematic track record since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
US policy-makers base their policy on the hope that a mega-generous Western gesture could induce Iran’s Ayatollahs to depart from their 1979-2022 systematic and rogue anti-US policy, which is driven by a 1,400-year-old religious, cultural, historical and imperialistic vision.

The hope (rather than reality)-driven policy toward Iran has led to a display of eagerness to conclude an agreement with Iran’s Ayatollahs, downplaying the Ayatollahs’ non-good-faith conduct, and waving the military option and the regime-change option.

However, on February 1, 2022, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, the powerful Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a strident warning to President Biden on the Senate floor: “Hope is not a national security strategy!”

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

In one of his first official acts, President Joe Biden canceled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which had been expected to carry upwards of 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude per day to the U.S. In the same month, Biden banned new oil and gas leases on public lands. One year later, the U.S. pulled support from a pipeline designed to bring natural gas from Israel and Cyprus across Greece to Italy and Bulgaria. Amos Hochstein, now Biden’s senior advisor for energy security, was reported by The Jerusalem Post to have previously said he would be “extremely uncomfortable with the U.S. supporting” EastMed. “Why would we build a fossil fuel pipeline between the EastMed and Europe when our entire policy is to support new technology…and new investments in going green and in going clean?”

Clean, green and more expensive, with security implications for European allies who will be increasingly reliant on unreliable Russian gas. But hey, it’s for the environment. Unless…

Hochstein was recently in Lebanon and Israel, trying to resolve a long-standing maritime border dispute to enable Lebanon to take part in the natural gas drilling and exploration revolution in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Yes, that would be the same Lebanon that is occupied by U.S.-designated terror organization and Iranian proxy Hezbollah, and which has built an enormous and increasingly powerful military force aimed expressly at Israel. Yes, that Lebanon.

In an interview with Lebanese media released by the U.S. State Department, Hochstein never mentions Hezbollah.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-weakness-chaos-us-world-liz-peek

How have so many things gone south so quickly? Is it fair to blame Joe Biden?

I believe it is.

Joe Biden ran for president as an enfeebled 78-year-old. There are plenty of vigorous and brilliant septuagenarians; Biden is not one of them.

Joe knew, his wife knew, our current White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain knew and the press must have known, that Biden was not up to the rigors of four years in the White House. And yet they pushed him forward, a candidate with few convictions and even fewer capabilities.

But here’s who also knew: China’s President Xi and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The worlds’ despots saw what clear-eyed Americans saw: weakness. They saw a president whom they could bully, whose convictions were shallow. Now, in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is testing Joe Biden.

Biden assures us that Putin is about to invade its neighbor. Others speculate that Russia’s leader will simply annex Russian-leaning parts of Ukraine, and indeed it appears the Moscow is set to start that process imminently by declaring two regions as independent republics. In effect, Putin is grabbing what he wants, while we stand by and watch.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18261/arabs-biden-administration

Prominent Arab political analysts, commentators and journalists are continuing to express fear about Iran’s “expansionist” schemes in the Arab countries, especially Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They say that they are worried that a return to the JCPOA would further embolden the mullahs in Tehran and the Iranian-backed terrorist groups.

To many, the hesitation of the Biden administration is incomprehensible. The White House and the National Security Council are apparently open to redesignating the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” while the State Department supports targeting specific Houthi leaders with sanctions. The question is why? One could do both.

Another question is: Has the Yemen crisis become a political issue rather than a humanitarian one?

Moreover, why are aid organizations insisting on aid coming through Hodeidah port when there are six ports… plus aerial deliveries via Marib?

Isn’t this a “humanitarian” political position in favor of the terrorists, the Houthis?

Judging from the Houthis’ recent heightened aggression, many in the Arab world are asking: why are the Houthis not immediately being designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” again?

The Arabs are also warning that Biden’s decision last year to delist the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” has only encouraged the militia to pursue its aggression against the Yemeni people — the very people about whom the Biden administration is claiming to have “humanitarian” concerns – as well as the neighboring countries.

[T]he failure of the Biden administration to designate the Houthi militia as a terrorist organization poses “a threat to regional peace and security and harms international peace and security.” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Emirati political analyst, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“The Biden administration has forgotten that militias are an arm of external forces that use them to achieve their own agendas, and they are not concerned with the interests of the Yemeni people….” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“This move [reclassifying the Houthis as a terrorist organization] will not harm efforts for reaching a peaceful settlement in Yemen. On the contrary, it will be a decisive and firm message from the international community that it will not accept this terrorist behavior from the Houthis.” — Dr. Amal Al-Haddabi, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.

“Tehran views the negotiations only through a unilateral perspective — to lift the economic sanctions imposed on it without making any serious concessions.” — Professor Mohammed Mufti, Saudi communist, Okaz, February 10, 2022.

“Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has come to consider himself the president of Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries, and this is because he relies on 90,000 [members of] forces affiliated with Tehran.” — Former Jordanian Minister of Culture Saleh Al-Kallab, Asharq Al-Awsat, February 10, 2022.

If and when the Biden administration signs a new deal with Iran, the sense of betrayal in the Arab world is extremely likely to broaden.

The US may then find out that it is the Americans who have been delisted as untrustworthy friends and allies by the people of the Middle East.

As the Biden administration and other world powers continue to negotiate with the Iranians about reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there is growing concern in the Arab world about the destructive actions and policies of Iran and its proxies, especially the Houthi militia in Yemen.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18260/ukraine-budapest-memorandum

To induce Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons inherited on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S., Great Britain and Russia agreed to provide assurances. If Washington were to allow Russia to gobble up the rest of Ukraine, it would tell non-nuclear states they must have nuclear arsenals because they cannot rely on the nuclear weapons powers for security.

Biden’s threats have been unpersuasive and so far Putin has not been persuaded.

Biden immediately sanctioned the two regions but did not impose costs on the bad actor, Russia. He has promised further measures, but only after an invasion. Moreover, his sanctions are unlikely to be so severe as to force Putin to leave Ukraine. In fact, on the 15th of this month, Biden made it clear that sanctions would be less than regime-threatening.

It is now time for the United States to remember the promises made—those in writing and those made informally.

Putin, after all, will not stop at Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an emotional speech on the 21st of this month, made it clear that he believes Ukraine is a part of Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden must now demand that Moscow withdraw its forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and Donbas. The Kremlin has, among other things, violated the assurances it gave Kyiv in the Budapest Memorandum. Biden, however, has so far shown little inclination to hold Russia to its promises.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18245/iran-terrorism-mullahs

The administration, however, then made an astonishing announcement: that it is unfreezing $29 billion to the Iranian regime, despite that Iran is still, according to the State Department, an officially designated state sponsor of terrorism.

The move is apparently part of a US effort to appease the mullahs into redoing the 2015 nuclear deal that gives Iran a glide path to having nuclear weapons. Three American negotiators have already resigned and the US is not even welcome in the room.

A recent report by the United Nations, based on the last six months of 2021, acknowledged that in Iran, “terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history.”

Even Iran’s leaders have pointed to their ties with terror groups. A former general of the IRGC, Saeed Ghasemi, shared a surprising revelation in 2019 when he pointed out that the Iranian government sent agents to Bosnia to train Al Qaeda members, and that those operatives hid their identity by posing as humanitarian workers for Iran’s Red Crescent Society.

One only need look into the Iranian regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda to understand what a catastrophe it is to give billions of dollars to Iran’s regime. Iran has reportedly had ties to Al Qaeda for nearly three decades.

Appeasing the ruling of mullahs of Iran and unfreezing billions of dollars to give them will only further empower them, increase their terrorist activities and accelerate their destabilization of the Middle East – another legacy of failure for which the Biden administration will be able to claim credit, along with the worst inflation in 40 years; the skyrocketing price of gasoline and heating oil from shutting down America’s historic energy independence; more than 100,000 U.S. deaths in 2021 from fentanyl and other drugs; enriching and empowering Russia as well as Mexico’s drug cartels; failing to give Ukraine adequate materiel to deter a Russian offensive or to protect itself from one, and the crowning $83 billion surrender to the Taliban terrorists of Afghanistan.

As long as the Biden administration is surrendering to the Iranian regime and pursuing appeasement policies with the ruling mullahs, the administration’s counterterrorism strategy will be ineffective and counterproductive.

The Biden administration, to its credit, recently reported the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi as a national security win and a sign of success of its counterterrorism strategy.