RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3544622-us-is-playing-risky-game-with-saudi-arabia-and-iran/

“This summit,” Khaled Al-Suleiman, a Saudi Arabian columnist, wrote of President Biden’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, “may be a golden opportunity for the American president to restore the [regional countries’] faith in America as a trustworthy historical ally with a solid policy that can be relied upon.

“For the alternative,” he warned, “is that these countries will actually change the map of their international alliances in order to safeguard their interests and enhance their ability to overcome the miscalculations of some of their traditional Western allies regarding the need to defend them from the threat of Iran, whose aggression is known to all and which never stops threatening and igniting fires and wars in the region!”

As Riyadh was planning to seek Biden’s assurances that Washington remains a reliable partner in confronting Iran’s regional expansionism, U.S. and Iranian officials met in Doha in hopes of reviving the 2015 global nuclear deal with Iran — the very deal that Riyadh opposes because it won’t prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons over the long term and because it would do nothing to curb Tehran’s terror sponsorship and other destabilizing regional activities.

For Washington, the question is whether it can have its cake and eat it too — reassure a leader of Sunni Arab nations that seek to contain Shia Iran and reach a nuclear modus vivendi with the latter. The risk, of course, is that Washington will lose on both fronts — fail to revive the nuclear deal and feed more concerns among Saudi officials that Riyadh may need to reconsider its heavy reliance on Washington for regional security.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-middle-east-follies-donald-losman/

From his first day in office, President Biden’s Middle East policies, a seemingly “win them over with kindness” approach, have been misguided and self-defeating. From the start, Biden strongly sought a new Iran deal, as if financially rewarding Iran for its signature would ensure its compliance. Indeed, one basis for the first deal was Iran providing its nuclear history—Iran lied. Apparently we did not learn. During the deal’s tenure Iran consistently cheated, obstructed inspections, and ramped up its ballistic missile program, which was foolishly left out of the first agreement. Iranian efforts to bring uranium enrichment to weapons-grade has continued, supposedly due to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal—talk about excuses! The mullahs are clearly determined. Over the past two years the International Atomic Energy Agency has regularly complained about Iranian non-compliance, finally issuing a resolution in early June condemning Iran after traces of uranium were found at three undeclared locations.

But isn’t it strange, or very convenient, that a country whose self-declaration is peaceful use of nuclear materials would then block 27 inspection cameras. To bring Iran to the now-interrupted negotiating table, the Administration accepted its demand that we cannot be in the negotiating room, which should have stopped everything then and there.  Instead we huddled outside while Putin’s Russia represented us! Further sweetening things, the Administration earlier rescinded the foreign terrorist organization designation of the Houthis, a group armed and abetted by Iran, one which occasionally lobs missiles into Saudi Arabia or the UAE when it takes a respite from augmenting the Yemen civil war. Iran now requires that sanctions against its Revolutionary Guards be dropped before any negotiations proceed. Congress apparently has had enough, resisting this almost silly ceremonial demand, while the Administration currently tries to work around this latest obstruction. There is a clear pattern —the more we overlook and the more we give, the more intransigent Iran becomes. Alas, Robert Malley, previously Obama’s point man, and now Biden’s, has pursued this holy grail mission with enormous, but blind passion. Unfortunately, his dream is likely to become the world’s nightmare.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2022/06/30/how-desperate-are-you-to-cut-a-deal-with-iran-mr-biden/

Here is what happens when a country cedes control of its foreign policy. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a bad deal. The Iranians cheated on the baseline, the commitment, and the execution, and then President Donald Trump walked away. Approve of any given decision or not, the president controlled the action of the United States. Now however, looking for a way to reconstruct the deal, the Biden administration has outsourced American policy.

First, President Joe Biden agreed to Iran’s demand that the U.S. not be in the negotiating room in Vienna, but be represented by intermediaries—including China and Russia.

Then, Washington gave theoretical agreement to Iran’s demand that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be removed from the U.S. designated terror organization list. After strong bipartisan objection in Congress—owing to the fact that the IRGC is responsible for hundreds of American military deaths—Mr. Biden appears to have told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in May that he wouldn’t do it.

But also in May, Enrique Mora, the European Union official coordinating the Vienna talks, visited Tehran. As reported at the time, “Western diplomats are expecting Tehran to put forward potential alternative demands, giving Washington a chance to think about other concessions it could offer. The aim is to find a way around the IRGC hurdle that will let both governments sell the deal domestically.”

The latest such concession is the current American plan to give visas to Iranians who have been drafted into the IRGC, trained by it, and employed by it, “provided they satisfy relevant agency authority that the individual…poses no danger to the safety and security of the United States.” According to The Jerusalem Post, other factors taken into consideration include whether the individual had any “intent or desire to assist a terror organization or activity or had prior knowledge of targeting ‘noncombatant persons, US citizens, or US interests.’”

Sleepers, anyone?

While America grovels in Vienna, it turns a blind eye to Iran’s continuing violations of its nuclear agreements.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18631/iran-sanctions-violated

The Biden administration’s weak leadership — to hold accountable those who are violating Iran sanctions — is likely a critical reason the Iranian regime is flamboyantly ignoring the US and forging ahead — soon, most likely, to become a nuclear state.

Presumably to take even further advantage of the Biden administration’s weak leadership, the Iranian regime is also signing long-term agreements with its oil clients to permanently insulate its economy from the US sanctions.

The ruling mullahs are now producing more oil and selling it at levels close to the pre-sanctions era to countries such as China, which desperately needs more oil, while the Biden administration has cut off US oil exploration.

One of its terms [of the deal recently signed between China and Iran] is that China will invest nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will have priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also receive a 12% discount and can delay payments by up to two years. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses. It is also estimated that, in total, China will receive discounts of nearly 32%.

The Biden administration must impose drastic economic sanctions on Iran’s energy and financial sectors: that would threaten the ruling clerics’ hold on power, forcing the leadership to recalculate its priorities. The US must hold those who violate the sanctions strictly accountable, and make clear to the ruling mullahs that if they continue advancing their nuclear program, military options are on the table.

With total disregard to the Biden administration and the European powers, the ruling mullahs of Iran are defiantly and rapidly advancing their nuclear program to a point where they are now reportedly only few weeks away from manufacturing nuclear weapons according to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the White House.

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe

The belief is growing that the Islamic Republic’s military and diplomatic aggressiveness, along with its imminent possession of nuclear weapons, is tied directly to President Biden’s administration and its policies of weakness and appeasement.

Obama’s previous disastrous domestic and international administration included providing vast funds to Iran, which allowed the jihadist regime in Islamic Iran to construct weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the means to deliver them with ICBMs to the United States.

Likewise, Biden provides the hostile Islamic Iranian regime with additional funds which it is reported to be using to train jihadi terrorists to enter America though the porous US/ Mexican border to plot murderous and destructive Islamic terrorist attacks in American cities and large towns. Recently several such Iranian terrorists were apprehended trying to infiltrate the southern border. But how many may have successfully evaded capture?

It seems that President Biden and his handlers are not interested in protecting America and saving American lives. So, while Biden and his Obama era handlers negotiate, Iran keeps killing and endangering Americans.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/17/us-miliitary-strategy-geopolitics-restraint-russia-china-ukraine-war/

By H. R. McMaster, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former U.S. national security advisor, and Gabriel Scheinmann, the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society.

The Biden administration failed to deter Russia from its second invasion of Ukraine. Like his predecessors in the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden went to great lengths to placate and reassure Russian President Vladimir Putin in return for stable relations. Biden defied Congress when he refused to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, unilaterally extended U.S. adherence to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty without reciprocation by Russia, and honored Putin with a bilateral summit during his first overseas trip. As Putin amassed his troops on Ukraine’s borders, Biden pulled U.S. naval forces out of the Black Sea, refused to send additional weapons to Ukraine, enumerated everything the United States would not do to help Ukraine defend itself, and evacuated U.S. Embassy staff and military advisors. More broadly, the administration proposed a real cut to the defense budget; sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy; restricted U.S. production capacity for oil, gas, and refined products that might have displaced Russian supplies; and signaled its willingness to overlook Russian and Chinese aggression in exchange for hollow pledges of cooperation on global issues such as climate change. After surrendering Afghanistan to a terrorist organization and conducting a humiliating retreat from Kabul, the administration’s attempts to deter the Russian invasion with threats of punishment were simply not credible.

Deterrence, however, does not disintegrate overnight. Contrary to the narrative of U.S. belligerence and imperialism that has been impressed on countless university students, the United States has, since the end of World War II, largely pursued a policy of restraint despite its considerable military power.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18619/iran-nuclear-program-plan-b

There also exists the dangerous likelihood, if and when Iran’s regime has nuclear weapons, that they will fall into the hands of Iran’s proxies and militia groups, or that the regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies, including the Syrian regime and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Iran’s regime has already been setting up weapons factories abroad, and manufacturing advanced ballistic missiles and weapons in foreign countries, such as in Syria. These weapons include precision-guided missiles with advanced technology to strike specific targets.

“The mission of the constitution,” the preamble [of Iran’s constitution] stipulates, “is to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of [Shiite] Islam.” The constitution goes on to say that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”

Eliminating Israel was not only one of the main religious prophecies of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it is also a leading policy of his successor, the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Israel will be erased from the face of the earth.

If the Biden administration allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, President Joe Biden and his associates, like Neville Chamberlain’s illusory “Peace for our time,” will have as their legacy that it was their acts alone that destabilized global security and set the world at risk.

It is therefore imperative that the Biden administration let the ruling mullahs know — credibly — that Iran’s regime must eliminate the possibility of its having nuclear arms, period. No nuclear deal, no sunset clauses. Sunset clauses merely pave the way for Iran to resume enriching uranium at any level it chooses. The regime’s ballistic missile program, which is linked to its nuclear program, must also be eliminated.

It must be made unmistakably clear to the Iranian regime that the United States and its allies will not allow the current regime, a state sponsor of terrorism, to arm itself with nuclear weapons and emerge as yet another global nuclear threat.

The Biden administration’s nuclear negotiations to revive the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran’s ruling mullahs are going nowhere, all while the administration does not seem to have a Plan B.