RUTHFULLY YOURS

ISIS is expected to execute 180 Assyrian Christians kidnapped as a part of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, international monitors report.

The terrorist group “has specifically targeted Assyrians, looking to drive them out of their millennia-old communities,” according to the Christian Post. Reuters reports that the captives were taken from northeastern Syria in February, and that three of them were executed last month in conjunction with an Islamic holiday. Negotiations intended to secure their release for a ransom have been “suspended due to [ISIS’s] unbearable demands,” Assyrian Human Rights Network executive director Osama Edward said.

The news comes about two weeks after Russia began bombing actions in Syria to assist Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime. Though the Kremlin claims the campaign is intended to fight terrorism in the country, Russian jets appear to be targeting the U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebels instead of ISIS. For months, the Obama administration has been bombing ISIS while calling for Assad’s departure from power, so Russia’s actions put the two nations at cross-purposes in Syria.

On Sunday, Russian president Vladimir Putin mocked President Obama’s efforts to bolster the Free Syrian Army (FSA). “It would have been better to give us $500 million,” Putin said. “At least we would have used it more effectively from the point of view of fighting international terrorism.”

How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East?

Putin’s ascendency was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate.

What exactly was our road to perdition in the Middle East?

1. Reset with Putin

When Barack Obama came into office, the outgoing Bush administration had crafted a moderate response to Putin’s aggression in Ossetia. The U.S. had made missile-defense agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland. Some Georgian forces were airlifted by the U.S. from Afghanistan back home. Indeed, at the time, many liberals complained that America was too soft on Putin. Perhaps. But the Obama administration entered office claiming the exact opposite, suggesting that the Bush pushback was part of a needless American-caused estrangement from Russia.

Pushing the plastic reset button was Hillary Clinton’s sad gesture signaling Putin and his team that Bush was gone, that a new, more receptive administration was in power — and thus that relations must naturally improve. Putin was somewhat perplexed, given that he knew Russia was to blame for the new estrangement. Naturally, then, he saw the Obama–Clinton reset grandstanding as more critical of America’s past behavior than of Russia’s present aggression — a fact that fueled Putin’s further calculations that he could safely move into Crimea and Ukraine.

The chilling rhetoric from Iran Obama doesn’t want you to know about.

Ironically, as the financial rewards and the improved legitimacy that have resulted from Obama’s nuclear deal continue to benefit the Iranian ruling clerics, the Iranian political establishment’s hatred towards the United States is reaching its peak.

This week, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned and forbade any further talks and negotiations between his country and the United States: “Negotiation with US is forbidden.”

In addition, he recently made his new e-book available for download in English. The Ayatollah points out: “The regional nations truly hate America and its European branch, England. This hatred is not limited to our people: all regional nations hate them … Why do they complain about being hated? Yes, we hate you.” The book advocates for annihilating America and Israel. It rants about how the Muslim world hates the US and Israel.

It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world’s ills.

Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister “international network” of Israeli settlers and American “Islamophobes.”

“A liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the ‘other’.” — Nick Cohen, journalist.

Hilary Aked describes moderate Muslims as “native informants.” She also believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the “Islamophobia industry.” She has frequently written for a Qatari-funded media group that is accused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, describes Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as “collaborators.”

To fund his obsession with the “propaganda” ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received £400,000 from the Council, as well as grants from groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

In what Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron is calling “an outrageous injustice,” WaPo reporter Jason Rezaian was convicted of espionage. The verdict was handed down two months ago, but because of the byzantine workings of the Iranian judicial system, it is only just now coming to light.

Rezaian was arrested along with his wife, an Iranian journalist, in July of 2014. He has been held at the notorious Evin prison since that time. For many months there were no charges filed against him, only learning of the espionage accusations in the spring of 2015.

President Hassan Rouhani has repeatedly suggested a prisoner exchange in recent weeks. He has said Iran might push to expedite freedom Rezaian and two other Iranian-Americans if the United States released Iranian citizens convicted of sanctions violations. Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho, is a pastor imprisoned for organizing home churches. Amir Hekmati of Flint, Mi. is a former Marine who has spent four years in prison since his arrest during a visit to see his grandmother.

If you’ve been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that “violence” is killing a lot of people. As in this headline: “Palestinian Killed As Violence Continues.” Or this first paragraph: “Violence and bloodshed radiating outward from flash points in Jerusalem and the West Bank appear to be shifting gears and expanding, with Gaza increasingly drawn in.”

Read further, and you might also get a sense of who, according to Western media, is perpetrating “violence.” As in: “Two Palestinian Teenagers Shot by Israeli Police,” according to one headline. Or: “Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say,” according to another.

Such was the media’s way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults that began when Hamas killed a Jewish couple as they were driving with their four children in the northern West Bank. Two days later, a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem’s Old City, and also slashed a woman and a 2-year-old boy. Hours later, another knife-wielding Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli police after he slashed a 15-year-old Israeli boy in the chest and back.

President Obama and his foreign-policy admirers—a dwindling lot—hoped that the nuclear deal would make Iran more open to cooperation in the Middle East and with the U.S. Mark this down as another case in which the world is disappointing the American President.
Iran’s judiciary on Monday announced that Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, has been convicted. He was on trial for “espionage.” Security forces arrested Mr. Rezaian and his wife, journalist Yeganeh Salehi, in July 2014. Ms. Salehi was later released, but the regime has held Mr. Rezaian “in a black hole for 14 months,” as his brother, Ali, told us. Mr. Rezaian, a U.S. citizen, has been denied even the basic rights the regime sometimes affords political prisoners, including bail and phone calls.

A pair of suicide bombings ripped through a peace rally in Ankara on Saturday morning, killing at least 95 marchers and injuring hundreds. It was the deadliest terror attack in Turkey’s modern history and further evidence that a country that is supposed to be an anchor of Middle East stability is increasingly vulnerable to regional furies and its own domestic discontents.

No group had taken credit for the bombings by our deadline Sunday evening. Turkish security forces believe the attack was carried out either by Islamic State, the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or one of the country’s resurgent left-wing terror outfits.

While all eyes are on Vladimir Putin’s machinations in Syria, deploying Russian fighters and troops, a potentially more dangerous Moscow effort in Iran is picking up steam. Media outlets are reporting that Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems may be delivered before the end of the year.

The S-300 is considered “defensive” and as such is not subject to United Nations sanctions. Each system fielded creates a formidable shield against air attacks over a large area. It operates as a battalion, at the center of which is a search radar that scans out to 180 miles and tracks up to 100 aircraft. All components of the S-300 are mounted on trucks and mobile in minutes.

Surrounding it are six “batteries,” each composed of a guidance radar and up to eight launchers holding four missiles with a range of 90 miles. Each battery can fire on six targets at the same time, allowing a full battalion to engage 36 aircraft simultaneously. According to Russian reports, Iran will receive at least four battalions.

According to a classified document, the German government now estimates that Germany will receive as many as 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, including 920,000 in the last quarter of 2015 alone. With family reunifications, the actual number of asylum seekers could swell to more than 7 million. Separately, German authorities now estimate that at least 290,000 migrants and refugees have entered the country without being registered.

“The behavior of these highly delinquent youths towards police officers can be characterized as aggressive, disrespectful and condescending. … When they are arrested, they resist and assault [police officers]. The youths have no respect for state institutions.” — Confidential report, leaked to Die Welt.

In Berlin, a classified police report revealed that a dozen Arab clans hold reign over the city’s criminal underworld. The report says the clans, which are dedicated to dealing drugs, robbing banks and burglarizing department stores, run a “parallel justice system” in which they resolve disputes among themselves with mediators from other crime families. If the state gets involved, the clans use cash payments or threats of violence to influence witnesses.