RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://justthenews.com/government/security/amid-missile-test-surge-much-bidens-north-korea-policy-still-unknown

As North Korea starts 2022 with a barrage of weapons tests, the Biden administration’s policy toward the country remains largely undefined to the public, raising questions about how Washington will respond to what could be a year of North Korean provocations and brinkmanship with the U.S.

North Korea on Monday launched short-range ballistic missiles near the capital, Pyongyang, in the country’s fourth missile test in less than two weeks — the most such launches the North has ever conducted to start a year.

It took Pyongyang 10 months to conduct the same number of missile tests last year.

North Korea said the purpose of its latest launch was “evaluation,” describing it as a success.

The test was aimed at “making a selective examination of the tactical guided missiles which are being produced and equipped and verifying the accuracy of the weapon system,” according to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency. “The Academy of Defense Science has confirmed the accuracy, safety, and operational effectiveness of this weapon system being produced.”

North Korea’s recent missile launches were part of the development of new weapons systems, according to Bruce Klinger, a senior research fellow for northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation.

“Any improvement in Pyongyang’s ability to attack our allies and U.S. forces stationed there is worrisome,” Klinger told Just the News.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/a-staggering-act-of-appeasement/91963/

The decision of the Biden administration to arrange for the payment of Iran’s dues at the United Nations is being described to us as “a staggering act of appeasement.” That is the phrase used by our sometimes legwoman at the United Nations, Claudia Rosett. We had called her to see what she made of the news. Her tirade is probably still echoing down the telephone lines from the fastness of upstate New York.

The gist of the story is that Iran had failed to pay its dues at the United Nations and had in consequence lost its voting rights in the World Body. One would think that this would be a boon for America. It’s the fruit of American sanctions, after all, and would mean that Iran would be able to foment less trouble at Turtle Bay. If that’s what one thinks, though, one would not be a muckety muck in the Biden administration.

No, it seems that the Biden administration wants Iran to have a vote in the United Nations because the UN is the route through which the Obama administration struck its articles of appeasement known as the Iran nuclear deal. Remember, President Obama couldn’t get the deal ratified in the Senate. The pact was opposed, as the Times noted in an editorial, “overwhelmingly” by both houses of our Congress.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18156/christian-genocide

On November 17, 2021, the U.S. State Department removed Nigeria from its list of Countries of Particular Concern…. despite several human rights organizations characterizing the persecution meted out to Nigeria’s Christians as a “genocide.”

Worse, not only did the Obama State Department for eight years refuse to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern; during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State (2009-2013), she, too, refused to designate Boko Haram in Nigeria as a “terrorist” organization… despite [its] being a jihadist group whose adherents have murdered more Christians and bombed more churches than the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria combined.

Her refusal persisted despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and more than a dozen senators and congressmen for her to designate Boko Haram.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy… The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.” — A “former senior U.S. official,” quoted by Josh Rogin in the Daily Beast, May 7, 2014.

Apparently such is the official unwavering and consistent response, whether under Obama/Clinton or now under Biden: Nigeria is not a “country of particular concern” — even as a genocide continues to be waged against its Christians.

A recent and ostensibly insignificant “label change” by the U.S. Department of State sheds light on both President Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama, as well as on a potential presidential candidate for 2024, Hillary Clinton.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18160/biden-colossal-failure-on-iran-redesignate

The Houthis serve as Iran’s proxy in the civil war in Yemen and against Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognized Republic of Yemen government. The UAE, which hosts U.S. military forces at Al Dhafra air base, has been a part of the Saudi coalition to support the official Yemeni government.

With its decisions to delist the Houthis, sideline the Abraham Accords, and focus on diplomacy all within days of each other, the Biden administration demonstrated the lengths it would go to reenter the deeply flawed, Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran.

The State Department most likely realized early on that its decision to delist the Houthis [from the List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations] was doomed to failure. Only two days after they were removed from the terrorist list, the State Department was forced to condemn the group for its continued attacks. State Department spokesperson Ned Price lamely said that the U.S. remains “deeply troubled” by the group’s actions.

Given the clear evidence that its policies are not working, it is time for the Biden administration to shift direction. The administration must redesignate the Houthis as the terrorist organization it is.

A recent drone and missile attack by Iranian-backed Houthis rebels on Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has laid-bare the ongoing failures of the Biden administration’s approach to Iran and foreign policy in general. The attack, which was deliberately aimed at civilian instead of military targets, shows the limits of appeasement and diplomacy in a region where Iran, figuratively and literally, tries to call-the-shots for and against its neighbors.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/kamala_harris_off_to_honduras_what_could_go_wrong.html

Kamala Harris is going abroad again.

This time, she’s upping her game a little from her last one, the Paris shopping trip, and now heading to Honduras, where plenty is at stake.

Arriving on Jan. 27 or so, she will meet the new Honduran president, who’s a historic “first,” a woman president, which will provide plenty of grist for the Kamala identity politics mill, which interests her more than the border surge. She’ll talk about “firsts” and then at some point get to “root causes,” of illegal immigration as if that information were not already available in some place like Yuma, Arizona, where the latest surge is surging. Instead of going to that un-romantic place with no red carpets and saluting military men, or some other U.S. border point of entry, she’ll do her happy hunting for those “root causes” from a cossetted former first lady of a leftist stripe who’s since been elected president. She’s likely to get into some kind of trouble, given who she’s getting involved with.

Who is Xiomara Castro, the about-to-be sworn-in new president of Honduras? None other than the wife and second cousin of “Cowboy Hat,” former Honduran President Mel Zelaya, with that ‘Mel’ short for “Little Melon” — remember him? He was the former wannabe Hugo Chavez of who got booted from the presidency in 2009 on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court. Zelaya broke the law regarding an illegal ‘poll’ he was conducting with the Venezuelan military’s ‘help’ and when ordered by the Court to stop, didn’t. The Court recognized what he was doing as a disguised bid to scrap the country’s constitution through a phony coerced poll in order to replace it with a Hugo Chavez-style alternative. Zelaya wanted to join the club and have the same things Hugo had. After he ignored the Court, the Court ordered him out and he got rousted from his sleep by the Honduran military acting on orders from the high court and legislature, which forced him onto an airplane to Costa Rica “in his pajamas.” (A State department official told me that actually, he was buck naked, so somebody put some kind of clothes on him.) The global left yelled ‘coup,’ but the word on the streets in Honduras was that it was not a coup, based on the number of law-abiding Hondurans who came out to support and celebrate the ouster.  Zelaya tried to rouse a revolt from his asylum in the Brazilian embassy, but no one took him up on it. After that, he claimed the Israelis were doing radar experiments on him or something. He eventually fled to the Dominican Republic where he ran out on his hotel tab before returning to Honduras, leaving the D.R. to pay the bill. Chavez adored the mustachioed, cowboy-booted dictator wannabe, calling him “Commandante Vaquero.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18159/iran-china-threat

“China’s leading diplomat underlined his country’s readiness to expand cooperation with Iran in financing, energy, banking and cultural sectors despite” the US sanctions. – Tehran Times, January 15, 2022.

The agreement grants China significant rights over the Iran’s resources and help to Iran in increasing its oil and gas production. Leaked information showed that one of its terms is that China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses.

The partnership is not only going to assist the Iranian regime to skirt US sanctions, it also enables Iran to gain access to funds, empower its militia and terror groups in the region and continue advancing its nuclear weapons program.

The agreement between China and Iran, defying and challenging the US, also has a military dimension. Iran’s armed forces are currently holding a joint naval exercise with China and Russia. Iran, posing a threat to the region and the United States, will also, in all probability, step up its acquisition of advanced weaponry and nuclear technology from China.

As the largest importer of Iranian oil, China will also have authority over Iran’s islands, gain access to the oil at a highly discounted rate and increase its influence and presence in almost every sector of Iranian industry, including telecommunications, energy, ports, railways, and banking.

The real horror, as China and Iran’s military and strategic partnership intensifies, is that the Biden administration’s reluctance to take a firm stand against the mullahs and Beijing — as with Afghanistan and now Ukraine — can only have incalculably severe repercussions for the national security interests of the US and its allies, who may feel the need to start “hedging their bets” and seeking out presumably more reliable protectors, who may not have our best interests at heart.

The ruling mullahs of Iran are strengthening their ties with the Chinese Communist Party as well as conveniently violating US sanctions without facing any repercussions from the Biden administration.

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

An important pipeline project in the Mediterranean has been caught in a web of conflicting security and energy policy across Europe and beyond. To prevent an energy crisis for our allies and take away Russian leverage, the Biden administration should restore full American support to the project.

The EastMed Pipeline was designed to bring natural gas from the offshore fields of Israel and Cyprus across Greece to Italy and Bulgaria. In 2013, the European Commission designated the pipeline a “Project of Common Interest” and invested tens of millions of dollars in technical, economic and environmental studies. It was estimated that the pipeline could send as much as 20 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe annually. In 2019, the energy ministers of Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority created the East Mediterranean Gas Forum. Notice that Turkey, a NATO member, was not included.

At the end of 2020, Congress passed legislation that included support for constructing pipelines and liquified natural gas terminals, and created a United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center run by the U.S. Department of Energy. Then-secretary of energy Dan Brouillette announced his department’s support for the project.

America’s friends and allies banded together to increase and diversify energy supplies in Europe. So, why—in 2022—would the Biden administration privately and unofficially tell a Greek official that the U.S. no longer supports the project?

EastMed, as it turns out, is in the crossfire of economic, foreign and energy policy across a number of very different countries, continents and operating philosophies.

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

It must be a hitherto unreported side-effect of the Omicron strain, perhaps a malignant protein activated by the rays of the full moon. America’s political class, Democrat and Republican alike, appear to have gone babbling, barking mad, starting with President Joe Biden, but afflicting his political opponents as well.

Biden’s January 19 press conference drew pity from the global press, with verbal gaffes unlike anything that has escaped the mouth of an American president before. He predicted a Russian military move into Ukraine: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.” Russia will be “held accountable if it invades,” Biden said, but added, “It depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”

A baffled reporter asked if he was giving Russia permission for a “minor incursion,” and Biden dug himself in deeper: “If it’s something significantly short of a significant invasion or not even significant — major military forces coming in…for example, it’s one thing to determine that if they continue to use cyber efforts, we can respond the same way, with cyber…There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens. The degree to which they are able to go.”

The White House press office spent the next several hours “clarifying” the “minor incursion” remark. The world simply concluded that Biden was senile.

Wrote Germany’s center-right daily Die Welt: “Biden stumbled several times. He showed lack of concentration. He closed his eyes several times and stared at the ceiling to regain his concentration. After more than an hour of questions, he looked at his watch and asked the reporters, ‘How much longer did you want to do this?’”

“It’s obvious why the White House staff wants to put the president in front of a microphone as little as possible,” Die Welt concluded.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18145/the-uae-is-america-friend-not-rival

The Houthi attack against the UAE, which has long-standing defence ties with the US… makes a mockery of US President Joe Biden’s decision, taken in the first weeks of his presidency, to remove the Houthis from Washington’s list of designated terrorist groups….

The Gulf region has become a major battleground between the US and China, not least because American influence is seen as being in decline by Gulf leaders because of Mr Biden’s weak and ineffectual leadership, especially in the wake of his administration’s disastrous handling of the Afghan withdrawal in the summer.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/16/politics/afghanistan-joe-biden-donald-trump-kabul-politics/index.html

This has led many Middle Eastern states that have previously adopted pro-Western policies to re-evaluate their long-standing relationship with Washington as they feel, quite rightly, that they can no longer rely on the US to defend their interests, especially when it comes to protecting them against the threat posed by Iran and its allies.

From China’s perspective, Abu Dhabi is seen as the “pearl” in its plan to establish what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the Maritime Silk Road, a project that aims to secure Chinese dominance over key trading routes from Asia to the Middle East and beyond.

The fact that the Biden administration…should be pressuring the UAE over its ties with China is a classic example of how the White House has got its priorities all wrong.

As this week’s attack by Iranian-backed terrorists on the UAE graphically illustrates, Iran poses the greatest threat to Gulf security, and it is Washington’s failure to support its Gulf allies against the Iranian menace that has led them to develop ties with China in the first place.

If Mr Biden is truly concerned about nations like the UAE developing relations with Beijing, then the best way to reverse this trend would be to offer the Gulf states better protection against Iran. That would be a sure-fire way to get American relations with the Gulf back on track, and keep the opportunistic Chinese communists at bay.

The dramatic drone and missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels highlight the utter folly of the Biden administration’s willingness to question the loyalty of one of its key Gulf allies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18125/us-diplomacy-iran

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions.
Not only has the Biden administration’s diplomatic route lifted some of the sanctions on the Iranian regime and its Houthi proxy, the administration has also looked the other way regarding the Islamic Republic’s malign actions in the region.
As #BloodyFriday [the Iranian regime’s lethal response to citizens protesting water shortages] trended on Twitter, not a word of condemnation could be heard from the White House. The organization Iranian-Americans for Liberty pleaded with the Biden administration to stand with the protesters….
Sadly, throughout history, “diplomacy” without the credible threat of a military follow-up (emphasis on the credible) can easily be regarded as just a “toothless” bore.
The Biden administration’s policy of “diplomacy” towards the Iran’s ruling mullahs seems in reality to be nothing more distressing to the ruling mullahs than a soggy pile of concessions and capitulations that, far from stopping their predations, will only empower and embolden them.

The Biden administration is perpetuating the idea that the White House is relying on “diplomacy” in dealing with the Iranian regime. However, the Biden administration’s “diplomacy” with Iran seems nothing but capitulations to the ruling mullahs.

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions. This was followed by the first concession toward Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on the Houthis that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group.