RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-forever-diplomacy-iran-nuclear-inspections-iaea-ebrahim-raisi-11632772480?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

That was quick. Two weeks ago Iranian officials reached a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that allowed limited entry to nuclear sites, and, wouldn’t you know, Tehran hasn’t held up its end of the bargain.

“Iran’s decision not to allow agency access to the TESA Karaj centrifuge component manufacturing workshop is contrary to the agreed terms of the joint statement issued on 12 September,” the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in a Sunday statement. It was clear at the time that the agreement wasn’t really an achievement, as it merely allowed international inspectors to service surveillance equipment without accessing data. But this makes Iran’s refusal even more embarrassing.

“Any decision taken by Iran on monitoring equipment is only based on political rather than legal considerations and the Agency cannot and should not consider it as one of its entitlements,” an Iranian official tweeted. He claimed that the site—which was sabotaged in June, likely by Israel—was never part of the agreement. Yet the IAEA has said otherwise since the deal was reached. This saga follows news this month that Iranian guards harassed female nuclear inspectors on multiple occasions this year.

Iran’s initial agreement was meant to avert a censure during the IAEA Board of Governors meeting this month, and Tehran achieved its goal. No one should be surprised that its shenanigans continued after avoiding punishment. “We call on Iran to provide the IAEA with needed access without further delay,” the U.S. said in a statement Monday. “If Iran fails to do so, we will be closely consulting with other board members in the coming days on an appropriate response.”

We argued two weeks ago that a rebuke would send an important message, even after Iran’s temporary and limited cooperation. Any nuclear agreement is pointless without a legitimate inspections regime, and an IAEA censure could in theory prompt U.N. sanctions. Supporters of appeasing the Islamic Republic argue that criticizing or pressuring Tehran isn’t productive and could derail nuclear talks. But blame for ending negotiations will lay with Iran for not cooperating with the IAEA—not the West for calling out bad behavior.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17801/china-climate-deal-genocide

The Beijing regime has, over the course of decades, attacked fundamental U.S. interests by, among other things, inciting violence on American streets, deliberately spreading COVID-19 beyond China’s borders to America and the rest of the world, exporting fentanyl to the U.S. despite agreements to the contrary, stealing U.S. technology and other intellectual property, rejecting the principle of freedom of navigation, threatening to grab territory from American allies, and proliferating nuclear weapons technology.

The critical question now is this: What, in addition to the human rights of China’s minorities, is the Biden administration willing to give up to get a climate deal with Beijing?

Democracies tend to deal with each other as Kerry evidently envisions, where cooperation on one issue can lead to warm relations and warm relations can lead to agreement in other areas.

Unfortunately, that is not the way communist states, especially China’s, operate. Kerry’s immediate predecessor as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found that out the hard way in February 2009…. China did not return Clinton’s gesture of cooperation. On the contrary, Beijing pressed the advantage and went on a bender. The following month, for instance, Chinese craft harassed the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the South China Sea and even attacked it, trying to sever its towed sonar array.

China puts its brightest diplomats to work on human rights issues precisely because it knows it has no defense, especially now when Beijing is committing not only genocide but also other crimes against humanity. Mass rape, slavery, torture, and killing of minorities are impossible to justify. When the Biden administration does not talk about these crimes, it relieves great pressure on the Chinese regime.

Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China.

If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness.

“Well, life is always full of tough choices in the relationship between nations,” said John Kerry, responding to Bloomberg’s David Weston on September 22. Weston had asked him, “What is the process by which one trades off climate against human rights?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17785/iran-mullahs-taliban-empowered

Not only did the Biden administration – whose sole purpose in Afghanistan was to prevent another “9/11 attack” – hand the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran a major political and strategic victory, it also rewarded them with sophisticated, state-of-the-art US weapons worth $85 billion – courtesy of American taxpayers — which these terrorists will undoubtedly use to launch an even more deadly “9/11 attack” to kill American taxpayers.

The US withdrawal to the Taliban was so poorly planned that the Biden administration actually delivered seven brand new helicopters to Afghanistan just a month before announcing that it would be withdrawing from the country.

It is mind-boggling that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan without any plans either to secure billions of dollars of US military equipment, but made not the slightest effort to recover or destroy it.

The Taliban and the Iranian regime now are not only able to unleash US-made weapons against the US and its allies, but Iran, Russia and China can also utilize this military equipment for research, reverse engineering, reproducing and selling it.

The Biden administration’s poorly planned surrender to Afghanistan has been causing tragedy and disaster one after another, all while empowering the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran.

The Iranian leaders have close ties to Taliban; both share a deep hatred towards the United States and Israel. Iran, as well as Pakistan, has also long provided shelter to Taliban leaders.

Iranian leaders have therefore applauded Biden administration’s decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif characterized the US withdrawal as a positive action, while President Ebrahim Raisi described it as a defeat for Washington’s Middle East policy that “must become an opportunity to restore security in Afghanistan.” The Iranian regime had evidently been preparing for a Taliban takeover and meeting with Taliban leaders. In January 2021, a delegation from the Taliban had already been publicly consulting with senior Iranian officials, including then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. According to him, both parties held productive talks, and discussed their ties and the future of Afghanistan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17784/left-afghanistan-still-at-war

I never liked that term, “war on terror.” Terrorism is a tactic; it is not the enemy we fought every day. The term has done more to confuse us than enlighten us.

[O]ne can see why the phrase “war on terror” became the widely accepted nomenclature. It was neutral. Gone would be the difficult references connecting the terrorist movement to Islam and Muslims. The need to define good Muslims versus bad/extremist Muslims would be eliminated. We would just paper over the difficult discussions that needed to take place but did not.

The terrorists, and their Islamist apologists in the West, actually used our response to their benefit. They widely labeled those who tried to connect al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to Islamic dogma as Islamophobes and anti-Muslim.

It did not matter that the terrorists invoked Quranic passages as justification, or that groups such as ISIS and others explicitly state that their ultimate objective is a global Muslim state governed by religious law.

President Biden can say what he wants but that does not mean it is so. The other side has a say in this. And as we saw as we were leaving Kabul, the jihadists spoke clearly, they are still at war with us. If the crack team of foreign advisers that the president is relying on, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, advised him that the United States is no longer at war, the world is in serious trouble.

On Tuesday, Joe Biden presented his first United Nations General Assembly speech as president. I labored through almost 32 minutes of the speech when a most profound announcement was proclaimed: “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war.”

It was an odd boast, considering how the United States left Afghanistan and what it means for the future.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/iran-nuclear-deal-shouldnt-be-munich-deal-joseph-puder/

The Biden administration, along with our western allies Britain, France, and Germany, are handling the Iran nuclear deal in an appeasement mode that reminds me a bit of Britain’s Neville Chamberlains dealings with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Eager to have a deal, Chamberlain sold out to Czechoslovakia, and ultimately the free world in his 1938 Munich deal. Let us hope that the Biden administration is not seeking a paper deal rather than a genuine lasting and effective nuclear deal that would protect America and its allies.

Frankly, whatever paper agreement would be signed eventually in Vienna or elsewhere, it will not stand. The Iranians have proven time and again that they will cheat, and deceive the western powers, who are more than willing to be deceived for the sake of “non-escalation” politics with Iran. In the end, the US and its western allies might end up selling out the security of its allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia in a Czechoslovakia-like deal.

Iran has already escalated matters by upgrading the centrifuges far beyond the level allowed by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). They are developing ballistic missiles that are aimed at reaching Europe and ultimately the US. They already possess missiles that might be able to hit Israel and Saudi Arabia. Frankly, they have positioned a huge arsenal of rockets in Lebanon, at the disposal of Hezbollah, to be used by the Hezbollah terrorist group when Tehran gives the green light. Similarly, the Ayatollahs have provided the Yemeni (Shiite) Houtis with enough missiles to paralyze the Saudi oil production and more…

The terror and instability Iran is causing in the region is not an issue the cowed western representatives in Vienna much care to bring up. They want to get along with the radical Iranian regime, and are fearful that the Iranians might bolt and walk away. The Iranians, sensing the weakness of the western representatives, and their eagerness to reach a deal at all costs, have hardened their bargaining position. They know that it is the US, and its western allies who will ultimately give in.

The Biden administration already handed down a victory to Iran’s Ayatollahs in the form of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US administrations admission to its total exhaustion with wars in the Middle East, and its intent to leave the region altogether will grant Iran the ultimate prize: expelling the US from the region. In fact, that is the dream of every jihadist and the Iranian mullahs in particular.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17766/biden-afghanistan-mistakes

Trump’s Doha Agreement only bound the United States to a “complete withdrawal of all remaining forces” with the “commitment and action” of the Taliban on its obligations as laid out in the accord. Those terms bound the Taliban not to “allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies,” as well as “not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies,” and to “prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies.”

Even prior to the final assaults on Kabul and the suicide bombings at Hamid Karzai International Airport, it was clear the Taliban was neck-deep in a proxy relationship with al-Qaeda via its relationship with the Haqqani network. Once again, the information that should have led to a pause and a hard-nosed assessment of how to complete the withdrawal in an orderly, safe way was ignored to meet a political deadline.

Instead, the Afghan men who helped the U.S., the women who breathed freedom for the first time, the military veterans from the U.S. and its allies who fought and died there all feel a sense of abandonment and frustration at this endgame incompetence. Those in the government who continue to hunt terrorist jihadis have lost their sources, bases of operation, and ability to quick-strike military targets that a resurgent al-Qaeda will now present there.

The details of the Biden administration’s inner planning prior to the pullout from Afghanistan are beginning to emerge, and they are not comforting. “Failure is an orphan,” as the old saying goes, but a paternity test is in order to explain a failed effort that will haunt the administration for years to come.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appearing before congressional panel recently, tried to defend the rationale for the hasty withdrawal, claiming, “We made the right decision in ending America’s longest war.” This, of course, dodges the question of how the withdrawal was conducted.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17773/afghanistan-persecuted-christians

“The State Department has blocked us every step of the way. The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem.  Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety. The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way. In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people… We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.”   — Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson Tonight, August 26, 2021.

Although nearly 80 percent of all persecution Christians experience around the globe is committed in the Islamic world, Afghanistan is actually the worst of all Muslim nations.

According to the World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations in which Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is the second-worst nation in the world, followed on the heels of the worst nation, North Korea…. That report was published nine months ago — when a U.S.-supported government ran Afghanistan. Since then, matters have only significantly worsened for Christians….

Even worse, because U.S. and Western leadership are careful not to show any interest in Christian minorities — a sentiment that goes hand in hand with Western acquiescence to “Islamic sensibilities” — they are more prone to turn a blind eye to the persecution of Christians than even some Muslim governments.

The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.

This information surfaced on August 26, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17733/managing-biden

As we bear the humiliation of Biden’s surrender, remember: the United States has the power to affect whatever it wishes…. It is only a question of political will. Deadlines, such as the artificial August 31st withdrawal from Afghanistan, mean absolutely nothing if we do not wish it.

The US could financially squeeze Pakistan — the country that has harbored and funded the Taliban for two decades — and change the entire operating environment in Afghanistan. Overnight, the circumstances could have be reversed 180 degrees at 100 mph — yet, for this administration, it seemed not “desirable.”

Nothing was “missed.” …. Similar deceit and double-talk have surrounded Biden’s crisis and national security disaster at our southern border.

Are we to expect to be lied to, placated, deceived, or misdirected by our administration?

WWII was predicated on an unconditional “war guarantee” by France and Britain to defend Poland, should any country attack Poland…. At the end of WWII, who got Poland as a war prize? Stalin. Thanks, FDR. Twenty years of combat following the Taliban/al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, and to whom does Biden surrender Afghanistan? The Taliban. Thanks, Joe.

“America is back!” President Joe Biden declared, in February 2021.

If so, what happened?

The last eight months have been a rolling U.S. disaster domestically and internationally. We have witnessed the collapse of U.S, political and moral will to continue in Afghanistan and pretty much anywhere else in the world. Given the daily headlines of the last two weeks, what is the Biden administration’s message for Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and South Korea? Not to mention, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico?

The most disturbing part is that apparently SOMEONE in the US government — or someone whose hands are on the levers of the organs of the state — wants it exactly this way. It is not random, an accident, or a mistake. “They” want a return to the “managed decline” that served as the hallmark of the Obama administration’s eight-year-long “fundamental transformation” of America. Given President Biden’s apparent decline in mental acuity, we are compelled to conclude that whoever is REALLY in power in the United States is not Biden. This is a planned, coherent (NOT BIDEN) strategy. Biden is weak.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/09/joe-bidens-pox-americana/

I was wondering how long it would take for American commentators to come up with semi-plausible reasons for continuing to support a President who has overseen the most comprehensive and humiliating defeat in US history. Until recently we’ve had to be content with the usual blather from the palace eunuchs of main-stream media anxious to protect a cognitively challenged Joe Biden, supported by ridiculous utterances from Washington’s swamp creatures, such as a call from the State Department for the Taliban to include women in its government.

Well, what may charitably be interpreted as a plausible justification has now emerged in an article by Kevin Baker published by the American political news site Politico on August 28.  It’s entitled, The Old Cliché About Afghanistan That Won’t Die and it characterises Biden’s decision to “move on” as “a gutsy decision, however chaotic its execution has been,” which necessarily implies that Biden broadly agreed with Trump’s Doha agreement, but as Orange Man must be blamed for everything, perhaps that’s not something to be emphasised.

As an aside, the article comments on nineteenth century European imperial fantasies, the popular but supposedly racist concept of “a gallant band of doomed, white warriors fighting to the last while helplessly outnumbered by ‘savages’.”  Of course, we now know that in accordance with the doctrines of multiculturalism, savages don’t exist and any publicity glorifying those who resisted deadly attacks by people so misclassified is always racist.

The article notes that the British got their revenge for the debacle of 1842, in which the Afghans wiped out Major General Sir William Elphinstone’s withdrawing army, when they invaded Afghanistan a few months later, crushed all Afghan forces pitted against them and sacked Kabul.  After yet another war, the situation was stabilised during Lord Curzon’s time as Viceroy of India through patronage and multiple agreements with tribal leaders and obtaining supporting fatwas from relevant authorities.

The Russian intervention that commenced in 1979 ultimately failed, forcing a withdrawal that began in 1988.  International media were invited to observe it with its accompanying ceremonies and parades.  As units withdrew, the media accompanied them through Kabul, up to Mazar-e-Sharif and across the Oxus or Amu Darya River into Uzbekistan, where there were more ceremonies and parades. On 15 February 1989, international media watched as the last remaining Soviet soldier, supreme commander General Boris Gromov, walked alone across the Oxus River Bridge back into the USSR.  The regime they supported and left behind managed to survive for another couple of years.